Ask HN: Not having comment scores? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Not having comment scores?

22 pointspbhjpbhj27 comments

For me the site is sub-optimal without comment scores.

Part of the usefulness of the site is in presenting what other people think about a particular topic and a quick way to ascertain that is to look at comment scores. Having scores available is like having a digest of opinions, without the scores one has to read a lot more; skimming threads is a lot harder for me now.

I was also one who liked to "upvote a comment if it looks too lowl" and vice-versa which I think gives a better view of things.

Does any one like HN without comment scores?

I don't think it would matter if I had all day to read and digest every comment thread but as I don't it does, it grates with me terribly. For me reading HN now is too much work.

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I agree with you, it is more work now, but I think I've noticed at least one advantage. This is not always the case, but some comments usually end up getting voted very high, and they take away views from newer comments which may also be very good.

It's also the same with 'famous' posters, they suck up all the attention, partly because of who they are and partly because their score count quickly racks up to the detriment of some of the lesser known peoples comments.

The way it is now I read everything, which is probably giving me a better overview of opinion.

The scores told you only which comments were popular not which comments were worth reading. So it's no great loss for me. Personally I would go whole hog and remove the usernames so we wouldn't have to deal with the celebrity poster fixation.

I know this didn't quite work out like it was supposed to for the *chan boards but the idea appeals to me.

I've never been in to the idea of celebrity. However connecting people with previous comments on other stories is helpful. Also sometimes it is nice to attempt to follow someone who's previous comments you've found helpful.

Not having it there feels like the hole left by a tooth that just fell out; vaguely unsettling. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.

Note that if you consider HN users as nodes in a bayesian network classifying comments as "good" or "bad," we should not be influenced by the score a comment already has. We should just give our own opinion on it.

I'd like to know how the variance in comment scores for the time since the feature was implemented compares with an equal period beforehand.

I don't mind the missing comment scores, but I do mind seeing "DAE" in a HN headline. As long as we're discussing voting systems, "DAE" is inappropriate because it asks people to vote you up if they agree with you, not if they think your post or comment adds to the discussion. "I hate not having comment scores" gets the point across, and is actually more active writing, I think.

Not trying to be too critical here, just my two cents.

What I've noticed is that I get a lot more upvotes on snarky comments, since people can't already see that I have a ton of upvotes.

No complaints, as I'm good at snark.

Isn't that sort of the opposite of what pg intended, though?

Yes. That's why I'm bringing it up.

As with everything, no one really likes change, even when it is hands down an improvement. So you have to give it some time I think. I didn't like it at first, but I know it has changed how I vote/use comments now and I have a feeling in another week or so I will love it just like I did the old way.

I do think that scores should show after a 24-48 hour window though, but I pretty sure PG just made this change the simplest way possible and will fix that in the future if he ends up thinking this improves things.

Scores were an important way for me to learn what constitutes a good comment.

I realized this only after the scores went away.

So I second the idea of showing the score for older articles. (or a fuzzy indicator of the score e.g. @=2-5, @@=6-10 etc)

edit: use @ because stars were being escaped

What is a good comment though? I think our minds can be tricked that something is good just by a high score. I'm liking this new way as it makes me actually think about the comments more and I determine if it is good or not. This probably ends up taking more "time", but maybe it is worth more.

You're right - I should be thinking and deciding for myself.

But if judging the value of a comment requires expertise or experience that I do not have the score is valuable to me.

This is more so when I see a comment and a counter-argument. And if I wrote the parent, a high-scoring reply would make reconsider my position.

>"no one really likes change"

I find that a bit of a lame aphorism. Especially in a forum rife with entrepreneurs I'd expect this to be demonstrably incorrect.

Personally I love [some] change, I hate having things the same every day.

That said not all change is good. Your claim in your first sentence sounds like petitio principii and internal contradiction all in one: clearly you think this change is good (contradicts 'no one'), 'no one really likes this even though it's an improvement' (assuming the conclusion, ie petitio principii, though you can weedle out of this objection by claiming it is a presentation of personal opinion).

>"So you have to give it some time I think."

I gave it a couple of days of moderate use.

I'm not going to pull out the dictionary, but I think we are both right. I actually love change when it is for the better and I think you're right, as entrepreneurs we are always seeking to undo the norm... but the moment something changes that you have no control of, most people are left unsettled for X amount of time. Even us.

Comment scores are not supposed to show which comments people agree with. They are supposed to show which are the good comments, which are the comments that are worth reading.

I absolutely love not having comment scores.

Um, why?

Fair question.

- Hiding comment scores prevents bias. I get a chance to fairly read at your contribution as it is without ever being biased by the opinions of others. If you you're curious about cognitive biases, there's a good list on wikipedia and you'll see a number of them apply (Herd Effect, Focusing Effect, ...).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

- Hiding comment scores prevents turning a discussion into a game of winners and losers. Forcing a discussion into being a measured win/lose debate encourages competition, animosity and opposition.

I am perfectly content listening to opinions different than my own, and I encourage people to voice them. I actually want to know what they think and why they think as they do. I may or may not ever change my own mind, but learning and knowing differing views gives one more perspective. If the discussion was escalated into an adversarial competition, I might not ever get the chance to hear your side.

- There is really no universal definition of up or down votes. To the person making the vote, it could be a measure of agreement, usefulness, appreciation, insight, merit, or many other things. If you don't know what was intended by the voter, letting their views taint your own is entirely foolish.

I care far more about being fair to you, than I care about what other people MIGHT think of you or your opinions.

It has made me recognize that the scores of posts are purely a reflection of opinion and removing that element of opinion reduces the odds of my voting negatively or positively based on my reaction to the opinion the score reflects.

I would not have expected it, but it turns out that for me the comment scores were a probably distraction. The highest rated comments on a topic still rise to the top regardless of scoring 8 points or 48 points - and the difference between a top rated comment being one or the other is often the popularity of the topic and how early in the life of the page it was posted.

I imagine they were removed to make commenting less of a game, but I was using them for a greasemonkey script to be able to highlight comments. That way on posts with lots of comments I was able to scan and find what other reads thought was insightful comments

I wouldn't mind if they were returned as an html attribute.

I agree. Showing the vote level allowed us to get a better evaluation of comment value. Considerations like "this comment is 'worth' n votes bot not 2n votes, so I will not upvote it" are no longer possible now.

Come on : comments are not either good or bad. There are many more quality levels (even thoughsome evaluations are subjective to presented ideas/identity of the poster).

I really dislike not having comment scores.

Could you elucidate why?

Of course.

A couple reasons. If I am not totally familiar with whatever the original post is talking about, often the top rated couple of comments give me some good insight or jumping off points to look into it further. Again if this is something that is new to me, it gives me a hint that the poster(s) of these comments know what they are talking about as opposed to a comment rated at -3 which seems ordinary to me but maybe has a hidden agenda I have not seen. (An example of this could be--and let's pretend I know nothing about domain registrars--a comment saying, "I recommend GoDaddy because they respect wildlife on a corporate level and have family friendly advertising." I know that is a crock but if it were about a Rails hosting company or a feature of node.js I would not.)

I respect the HN community and have learned a lot here. I generally trust their judgement and I have found if a comment is rated highly, it most likely adds a lot of value to the discussion. (Unlike on reddit where the top couple comments may be a clever joke or inside reference to the community--but that is okay because I read the two sites for different purposes.)

Sometimes I disagree with the highest rated comment(s) and sometimes those comments have a bunch of replies from other HNers stating their agreement. I then see my opinion is in a minority and maybe I re-examine it or stand firm and make a comment to the contrary.

Basically it is a nice guide in my perusal of this site. It is not absolute but I like to use it as a reference.

I don't see the need for yet another thread discussing comment scores.

I looked and couldn't find a recent one only this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979 from over 1½ years ago. It's a current issue.

Instead of just stating that it would have been far more helpful to link to one of the other threads that you felt obviated this one.

Why have comment voting at all under this system?

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