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There must be a better way to asses the "value" of content. I agree that the down vote is arguably a good gauge for how the community at large "feels" about t

There must be a better way to asses the "value" of content. I agree that the down vote is arguably a good gauge for how the community at large "feels" about the content but not a good indicator for "value". There are two metrics here that I do not believe can be extracted from a voting system. I rarely comment, one of the few time I did I got down voted. I returned 3 days later and tried to defend my position, but it was too late and the community had move on. Oddly enough my comment did start a thread of discussion. As I mentioned in my followup comment assessing the value of user contributed content is an area that we are trying to solve in a web application solution soon to be deployed. Below is an excerpt from my comment. "Using my initial comment as an example had I not posted that comment "value adding" content would never have been created. If my contributed content resulted in "value adding" content, is it not then "value adding" content? Is a good proxy of "value adding" content, content which produces or causes other content creation?" So if a comment gets down voted but starts a wave of discussion surely it has value.

borism 17y ago
Of course comment score doesn't display value objectively or comprehensibly or indefinitely. Every topic has it's decay period, you may have made a good point, but if the community doesn't feel that way during lifetime of the topic, then that was a lost cause. If it really matters try again, as you just did. If it doesn't - leave it alone. There are many other things that HN doesn't do and leaves for people to figure out. Perfect? No. Good enough? I think so.
- dfragnito 17y ago
  I agree the marginal improvement may not be worth the effort.The web application I alluded to would offer this "content valuing" service to a community. It's actually on our wish list and not the main value-add of the offering
bendotc 17y ago
Not seeing the original comment to which you're referring, I can't offer any opinion on it in particular. However, I generally disagree with the statement "if a comment gets down voted but starts a wave of discussion surely it has value." Trolling is, at its heart, the creation of discussion by posts of negative value, usually by eliciting a strong emotional response from readers. Most troll-posts don't have value to those trolled (though there may be exceptions).
- dfragnito 17y ago
  That is a valid point. The minority view however does have value, and at times adds the most value to the discussion. When the minority view is treated in the same way the troll-post is then I believe the community suffers.

borism 17y ago

Of course comment score doesn't display value objectively or comprehensibly or indefinitely. Every topic has it's decay period, you may have made a good point, but if the community doesn't feel that way during lifetime of the topic, then that was a lost cause. If it really matters try again, as you just did. If it doesn't - leave it alone. There are many other things that HN doesn't do and leaves for people to figure out. Perfect? No. Good enough? I think so.

dfragnito 17y ago
I agree the marginal improvement may not be worth the effort.The web application I alluded to would offer this "content valuing" service to a community. It's actually on our wish list and not the main value-add of the offering

bendotc 17y ago

Not seeing the original comment to which you're referring, I can't offer any opinion on it in particular. However, I generally disagree with the statement "if a comment gets down voted but starts a wave of discussion surely it has value." Trolling is, at its heart, the creation of discussion by posts of negative value, usually by eliciting a strong emotional response from readers. Most troll-posts don't have value to those trolled (though there may be exceptions).

dfragnito 17y ago
That is a valid point. The minority view however does have value, and at times adds the most value to the discussion. When the minority view is treated in the same way the troll-post is then I believe the community suffers.