New users wouldn't have this feedback. They might think they're making good contributions at +2-3.
People talk about "group think", but when you've got an intelligent group (like HN), a bit of group think can be a good thing.
* A comment made by someone with name recognition whose comments are read in RSS by 20 people.
* A comment on a political thread that states a clear polarizing opinion for people to glom onto.
* A mystical winged unicorn "good comment".
* A mediocre comment on a buzzy thread ("TechCrunch Says Apple App Store Approval Process Makes iOS Better Than Android!").
My best comments on the site are not, as a rule, my top-scored comments.
Meanwhile, public scores clearly do create problems: they promote groupthink, they prod reactionary voting or, worse, reactionary commenting, and they act as nerd pheromones driving tangential discussions to the tops of threads.
The harm of public scores outweighs the good, in my opinion. Reasonable people can disagree about that point. But I'm not sure they can disagree that there's nothing bad about public scores (which is not an argument you made).
My best comments usually get about 5 points. That's because the best things that I write are usually on very specific topics that I know a lot about. However, the way that breaks down is that there's a tiny number of people who also know enough about those things to know if I'm just talking out of my ass or actually saying something useful. And even if they could tell, there's often not enough backstory for someone who doesn't at least have a passing interest in those areas to make sense of them.
On the other hand, my 50+ point comments tend to be some combination of well-timed, snarky and generic. Basically, they're the sort of thing that HN wants to discourage. As such I'm generally a fan of the scores being hidden.
One of my highest-rated comments (inexplicable; I'm embarrassed by it):
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2184067
Meanwhile, here's a comment I actually had to do research to write. Skim it and take a guess how its karma relates to the previous comment:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1994085
Hint book: ZBER GUNA RVTUG GVZRF YRFF XNEZN.
Among my first comments to HN was a single word: "Yes." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1533506
It has 34 points.
Albeit witty and appropriate in context, I think we can agree it's highly overrated. Meanwhile some of my much longer (and I think better) posts sit with only 1 point.
If you manage to comment relatively early on an article that winds up being popular, your comment is much more likely to itself be upvoted (or downvoted) a lot.
The later you comment, and the less popular the articles you comment on, the less chance your comment will be voted on at all.
I've often commented on articles which were "old" (by HN time) and on articles which I personally found interesting but which which hadn't received many upvotes, and those comments were very rarely up or downvoted (probably because most people never even saw them).
Comment placement is another important factor. "Top-level" comments (ie. comments without any parent comments) are more likely to be voted on than comments buried deep within a thread. Though replies to high rated top-level comments are often more likely to get voted on than top-level comments which appear later on an article with a lot of discussion going on.
But that can be a false signal. It's quite possible to have eloquent writers make total crap written in an authoritative style sound believable enough to have 5 people nod and upvote. Having no scores forces people to do their own research and form their own conclusion about trustworthiness, which is more work, but better.
Why anyone wants to hide useful information is beyond me.
Most of the comments where I feel like I said something insightful or genuinely useful end up with a score of 5 or 6. The others are higher or lower (depending on timing.) I don't have any 50+ comments though, I haven't posted much and I try to avoid making the kind of low-signal comment that I expect would get that kind of result.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2556647
This isn't a joke, nobody recognizes my name, it's just a comment that I did a bit of research on before posting.
I'm sure there are plenty more like this. Of course some comments get upvoted "incorrectly" (A comment on made about "Winklevoss" being a verb got a lot of points).
How does hiding the points negate this? In my opinion, it does the opposite. If you can see scores, you can decide that a comment is "high enough" and ignore it.
Disagree. Intelligence doesn't undermine groupthink; in fact, the veneer of intelligence seems to make people more prone to groupthink because they'll say, "hey, this group is pretty smart, so they must be right!" Critical thinking is what is necessary, and I don't see enough of that on HN. Also, comment scores are not always indicative of quality, they're indicative of how many people agree. Don't conflate the two.
If you want an echo chamber, go to Reddit.
I want to go on record as strongly agreeing with this.
Hadn't thought of this. Really good point. How do I know what's a 'good' score if I only have myself to judge against?