Every time he posts we identify him as the author of Nagle's and someone that's done pioneering research in TCP/IP.
It would be great if HN had some sort of annotation for distinguished commentators.
It would be great if HN had some sort of annotation for distinguished commentators.
Reading the comment without knowing the commenters "notability" let's the comment stand on its own. After the comment I can read that the person did X or Y.
But having the comment distinguished somehow would give it more "weight" than it necessarily deserves. After all, just because someone is notable doesn't make them infallible.
Personally, having a "blue tick" like thing for distinguished posters is helpful psychologically as it reassures me that I am not reading comments by newly minted young adult or a 20+ years experienced person doing mostly rote work. Now, there is nothing inherently bad about comments made by such posters, just that it would be far more reassuring to know that a poster is, hopefully, bringing in his publicly acknowledged experience into what he is saying, especially on topics in which that person is known for. To make it clear, they could even be a 20 something distinguished person! The point is not about age but about accomplishment.
What does that matter, if the comment is good? Nothing is inherently bad about those comments, just like nothing is inherently good about others.
Rather than a blue tick in the comment thread, it might be useful to have something like that inside their user profile. For example, animats has "John Nagle" in his "about" field. Having the information available but not initially visible might be valuable to help support claims like "As one of the early workers on network congestion" without coloring the interpretation of statements outside of his area of expertise (basically, avoiding attaching an "argument to authority" fallacy to every celebrity-posted comment).
edit: Bah, just saw your later comment where you suggested a similar mechanism. Sorry.
I can't believe you were so eager to respond to me that you didn't continue reading my post. I answer your query like in the very next sentence.
I was implying something like why reading something from a textbook is better than a random answer on reddit or yahoo answers. Mind you, I am talking about posters talking about specific things, not giving opinions on a variety of things, which is why I mentioned "topics in which they are known for".
> Why is reassurance a good thing?
I prefaced my post with "personally" specifically to avoid this line of discussion. It is a personal perception, and as I said elsewhere it is futile to argue about perceptions. The answer is, it just is.
> That seems like it'd imply that you're relaxing your guard when considering their opinion.
That's reaching.
Just because it's difficult to remove the "person" from the "message" in face-to-face conversation doesn't mean we can't strive for something better online.
I have a very relevant example! A few days ago I was reading a comment here about someone that drinks tap water and how (anecdotally) they are fine, and they didn't understand the craze with bottled water. Being completely honest, I made a "mental picture" of him as a mid 20's "hipster" silicon-valley type. And I agreed with his overall message. But halfway through his comment, he had a link to his "beverage container of choice" that he drinks water from. I read the whole comment before opening that link. I had assumed that it would point to a glass and leather "artisan" water bottle... The link pointed to something similar to this:
http://assets.suredone.com/1766/media-photos/sd009014-vintag...
After opening the link, my whole view changed. Suddenly that "mental image" changed into a mid 40's overweight sysadmin, and (as much as I'm ashamed to say it), I suddenly "trusted" their message less...
I realized what had just happened, and I realized that just thinking I knew who this person was affected my thinking. If I had known that person's age, size, gender, profession, etc... Would I have given their message a second thought? Honestly I don't think I would have. And that makes me feel like shit. I have prejudisms (is that a word?) that I don't consciously know I have, and if possible I'd like to not apply them. Reading HN comments as faceless-nameless comments helps me read the message with none of that "baggage". And if I later read about the person behind the comment (and learn that it's not what I expected), it can go a long way toward reducing the prejudice that I may have that I don't even know I have.
> If it's important to the conversation, the commenter can point out their own past experience (which Animats did by saying "As one of the early workers on network congestion").
This is basically what I was trying to convey. By making it known via some mechanism, HN would help posters from repeatedly posting their credentials before saying something deep and insightful or unpopular. A mechanism that isn't obvious, as in a button that makes something else visible that shows something about a distinguished poster, would benefit both parties I think.
Are you looking for "prejudices"?
1. Tracking content stats: how much have I read today, how does this compare to trend, what is my trend?
2. Some sort of "spendable ratings currency" that would indicate quality of an item. Ideally that would be some sort of compound metric. Time, commentary, re-shares, multiple re-visits over time, references in other items (from others, from you) as part of that. Also perhaps a specific metric of how good or bad something was (probably on a 5 or 7 point scale), though I'd tend to discount that. Flags for problematic content (bullshit, clickbait, etc.) These are only personal interest metrics. At best they'd be shared with a few trusted friends.
3. Attribution and reputation tracking by both author and publisher. Find someone whose stuff is really, really good, though they publish rarely? Note that. Find someone who couldn't tell a black eye if you gave them one? Note that. You'd end up with a set of ranked sources by quality and credibility.
4. Filters / indicators to note content's likely quality. Based on previous reputation.
5. A tagging / classification system. Having thought about this a lot, I'm inclined to go with an extant ontology, probably the USLOCCS, as that's been developed, is widely used, and isn't constained by IP restrictions as Dewey Decimal is. (USLOCCS: U.S. Library of Congress Catalog Classification System).
6. Uniform presentation + user editing. A Readability / Pocket like standard page presentation model. The ability to edit that (either in stock ways or specific elements) to further clean it up. Export to other formats (ePub, PDF, text).
7. Page annotations. I want to be able to keep notes on things.
I find it curious that the Web today is so metrics driven, but nobody has saw fit to provide metrics to end users themselves.
Since I was using this in large part (though not exclusively) to keep tabs on annoying gits online, this was a less than salubrious "feature". Sigh.
Reddit + RES offers tags. I'll note specific individuals, here usually focusing on clueful. Though it's limited to a word or two, and isn't inherently shared across systems (RES uses local storage).
But yes, generally, this is another of those "why aren't Web developers providing users with a pretty obviously useful tool". It's more than clear who's paying the piper here, and it ain't us.
They never mention whose death it's meant to commemorate, though, you're just supposed to know.
edit: and now that I think about it, a thread is a far more fitting memorial for someone than a minor alteration of the stylesheet, so why even have the black bar to begin with?
I'd say it's a feature. HN is a place with its customs, some of them are not documented and you get to learn them as you participate.
> why even have the black bar to begin with
For the same reason people wear / display black ribbons.
"Hopefully HN readers ++without the famous chrome extension++ know that Animats is the inventor of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagle%27s_algorithm"
...
Reminds me of snooker i.e. "and for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green"
When someone's identity is pertinent, it seems like they tend to state it eventually anyhow.