Ask HN: Does anyone else misread the 'time since comment' as karma now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does anyone else misread the 'time since comment' as karma now?

43 pointskaisdavis11 comments

Yes, you're not alone. This is one of those short term effects (i.e. withdrawal), although I agree that it has been annoying.

I initially upvoted this comment, rather than leave a redundant one... except comment karma isn't visible now, so it can't be used as a straw poll.

Since I made this comment, I guess I better answer the actual question: Mmmmmm-kinda.

We spent a lot of time on this issue when Lesswrong was starting out, and didn't come to any real conclusions. Visible comment karma induces some pretty big cognitive biases, and 1-dimensional karma definitely encourages groupthink, but hiding it is just so damn annoying. I've been having a hard time distinguishing the factors of my annoyance from the "boo hiss UI change", "oh geez a feature I used to use is gone", from what annoyance that might be there from an actual poor design decision.

I'm definitely for experimentation, and weakly positive about hiding comment karma; but it's odd that such minor UI changes can so badly annoy users.

I'm in the "show karma only after voting" camp.

Absolutely. In the longer threads I used to use comment karma as a way to decide if a long post/reply was worth reading or if it wasn't. If the rest of the thread was at 10+ and the long comment was at 2, then I knew I could just skip it.

I have to filter information, it is no longer possible with the wealth of information to read everything that is written and decide on its merit. The amount of news I take in daily, and process would overwhelm those who start their day with a newspaper and watch the news at 8 at night.

I hope that pg can reconsider, and add the karma back to the comments, it would definitely help me while reading HN.

You'll get used to it. Give it time.

No.

I'm suprised this comment has so many up-vot.... oh wait. "32 minutes"

Never mind...

I am surprised at how much I miss comment karma being visible. I scoffed at those who said they used it to gauge comments to consider versus skim past, but it turns out, it's exactly what I'd been doing. I guess I hadn't realized the amplification of the comment volume that has happened lately.

Yeah, I'm noticing it is harder with longer threads to get what the "group" finds important. For want of a better way to say it, it feels like I am more "alone" when reading the comments. I cannot see the wisdom of other people. Also, long response chains are really a pain because they "feel" harder to follow.

Posts of this nature contribute nothing but noise on HN. I've flagged this for removal.

From the guidelines: "If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

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