Tell HN: My reasoning as to why points should be displayed on comments | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: My reasoning as to why points should be displayed on comments

2 pointsdools4 comments

There are two reasons:

Comments can appear at the top of the page for one of 2 reasons: because they were only submitted recently, or because they've been upvoted.

I'm assuming also there's some sort of interaction between time since posted and number of points - same as the home page.

So when you're judging a comment's popularity you need to be able to see both.

Why judge a comment's popularity? It's important to see how much others agree with a particular comment because +1 comments are frowned upon.

So this brings me to the second reason:

If you come to a page and see that there is one comment on the page, and you can't see the number of votes you can't see if the community agrees with that person and has simply been upvoting them, or if people have simply been arriving and leaving without interacting at all.

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This reasoning seems neither well thought out nor well written. I'm not even sure where to begin. First, if you know two variables go in to a score and you know one variable, you can make a pretty good guess of the second variable based on the result. Second, a page with only one comment (or just a few) is probably not important enough to serve as a data point.

On this comment, for example, I'm unable to tell if you're the only one who thought this was neither well thought out nor well written.

I disagree with you - I have no way of knowing if anyone else showed up and upvoted your comment.

Are both comments on this page 1 point only? I have no way of telling.

you can make a pretty good guess of the second variable based on the result

If I can make a pretty good guess anyway then what's the point of making me do the work to guess? I scan a story, I just want to see what's going on in the comments. Why not give me all the information required to do so?

top voted comments on the top inflate them so much that later pertinent comments goes to oblivion. Mostly because not-so-relevant comments received a few votes because, well, they were not far away from the top at the time.

Putting new comments at the top give them the benefit of doubt, and make people actually read them and upvote if needed.

showing that it's there just because it's new, would defeat the purpose.

top voted comments on the top inflate them so much that later pertinent comments goes to oblivion

Unless you sit there refreshing the page, you don't see a comment's progression to oblivion.

I don't think that showing something is towards the top only because it's new defeats the purpose.

I agree that comments should be posted at the top to give people the chance to read new comments, but seeing how much others agree with a comment, new or old, influences my perception of the comment. Without exact points it's hard to gauge, unless everyone who agreed upvoted and then submitted a "+1" comment!

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