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Comment by lwhi | Hacker News Reader

You can see how agreeable a comment is by how far up the page it is.

I think having the scores hidden is a good decision. It means that we concentrate on content rather than a 'karma game'.

""that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "that is not how mysql works" with 102 points Are not the same piece of info."

In my opinion, both of those comments are bad comments unless they further qualify the statement. I don't think karma should be used to infer whether a statement is correct.

View on HN

You can see how agreeable a comment is by how far up the page it is.

Except if it's nested.

Sometimes the most useful comments are replies to less-interesting top-level comments. In this case the lower-scored item is positioned higher up the page than the higher-scored item.

Exactly! Right now it's impossible to tell if more people agree with you, or the person you are replying to. Frustrating.

Agree

Does not work that way if a reply has 100 upvotes, does it?

Also I love the discussion in this post since, when with Georgify (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2410195) I had tried first to seperate the upvotes with points of a comment, everyone (and yes a blanket term) had said it was a wrong thing to the extent that I had to make changes.

Of course it is not my site to make decisions for the users of the site, but still almost a dual reaction when the same decision was taken on HN by two different people in a very nearby time span, one being me (for Georgify) and the other being PG himself (for HN).

His opinion is that such a bad comment would never reach +100 upvotes since, the post being devoid of additional information, people like him might downvote if they saw the numbers getting "too high".

But a really good reply to the bad comment could get 100 upvotes yet be down, right? This is my interpretation of the rules here, not sure if they are correct.

I don't think karma should be used to infer whether a statement is correct.

Completely agree. In my limited tenure here at HN, I've learned that karma scores have never been about being correct, factually or otherwise. Rather, they should be given to comments that help increase and move the discussion around the given topic even if that commenters opinion or assumption on something isn't factually accurate.

Just expand the example: pretend it was "that is not the way mysql works blah blah explanation". I agree that I don't want to read this if it has 2 points but I do if it has 100.

Since we don't see points anymore, instead of upvotting you because I agree with you, I just have to add a comment saying "I agree". Is that what people want?

See kristofferR's comment above. He got downvoted for saying "I agree." This may have worked if implemented in the beginning of HN, but now the community has pretty strong norms against simple "I agree" or "I disagree" comments. Either eliminate voting completely or show the results, this in-between situation is foolish, bordering on stupid.

So many of the discussions around these points here center around the "TL;DR" point of view.

I wonder how these people ever managed to make it through a newspaper without scores telling them which articles are worth it.

Learn to survey, skim, and dive in. All your endeavors will be the better for it.

PS. Your method (don't read if don't like score) also ensures you won't be soiled by accidentally reading an unpopular but truthful point of view.

You need to reword this as a top level comment and repost. Some will say that having to make such a request is proof that scores need to come back, but I'm just concerned that everyone on the "pro" comment score side will never see it.

A better example would be choosing which newspapers to read based on your friend's recommendations, versus choosing by yourself. All articles from the same newspaper share a source and it already ensures some quality.

> All articles from the same newspaper share a source and it already ensures some quality

You make an excellent point, applicable here: newspaper brand = web brand.

Articles not flagged [dead] on news.ycombinator.com already ensure some quality, and both similarly share a "front page".

Wait, are you talking about articles on HN? Because only comments have their score hidden, you can still see how many points each article has.

My point was comparing newspapers brands/articles to HN comments, not articles, since you don't have much guidance anymore over what comments are worthwhile or not.

> Learn to survey, skim, and dive in. All your endeavors will be the better for it.

Then why sort comments at all? just order them in date order (or the reverse) and be done with it. Let the reader decide what is useful and what isn't.

Seems like having comments sorted in an implicit order of 'goodness' (even if there is no score) would handicap people in the development of their ability to 'survey, skim and dive in'.

To your point about not beings soiled by unpopular views, the truth is that unpopular views already have that font color applied to them which goes a lot further in making sure I don't ready it (with my eyes I often have to copy paste it to a text editor before I can read it comfortably). I would much prefer all comments be the same font color and being able to see the score so I can make my own decision as to whether to read it or not.

I'd be curious to see how this approach compares to the opposite, which strikes me as being more effective at reducing karma gaming. I.e., your own karma is invisible but you can see everyone else's.

You can see how agreeable a comment is by how far up the page it is.

This comment is near the top of the page. Does that make it agreeable?

lol... ok.. then it is agreed.. we should bring back comment score because the top comment is ----- "bring back comment score"... =)

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