Ask HN: Should we have a “total votes” in addition to comment points? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should we have a “total votes” in addition to comment points?

4 pointsdusted11 comments

I'm often seeing my comments fluctuate between positive and negative, which is fine, but also interesting.. Am I the only one who'd find it very interesting to also be able to see how many total votes your "0 points" comment actually have?

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I would like that. If a comment of mine is downvoted to -4, I'd like to know if the upvotes and downvotes are (0,4) or (36,40). In the latter case it could mean that I wrote something controversial but not nonsensical.

exactly!

I would also like to see a list of the most downvoted comments. Would be interesting to know what the most downvoted HN comment of all time is!

Can't you derive upvotes/downvotes from knowing score/total?

score = upvotes - downvotes

total = upvotes + downvotes

Therefore,

upvotes = (total + score) / 2

downvotes = (total - score) / 2

yes, but I can only see "points" on my comments..

Like, I'll have some slightly controversial comment and it will oscillate between +1 and -1 points, and I know there's a lot of interaction with it, but I can't know how much, It'd be cool to see the total as well as the points.

As far as I know, I can't see the amount of upvotes or downvotes on my comments?

Yeah, you can't, and that's what I was thinking about - there's some reason exact upvote/downvote numbers are hidden, and by disclosing "total votes" one would disclose those numbers too.

votes are not the only thing that contributes to points, subcomments come into play, not sure how their points factor in

I was mostly referring to the points we see on our comments themselves, like the one that would be on yours (it should now read 2 or more, because I upvoted it... unless (and that's my point) someone else downvoted it))

I was referring to the same comments, they also get point increase for the number of subcomments, it is not solely based on votes. It is also the case that it requires more votes to get a single point the more votes you have.

tl;dr it is not a simple linear relationship between votes and points

>they also get point increase for the number of subcomments, it is not solely based on votes. It is also the case that it requires more votes to get a single point the more votes you have.

Is there a source to read on this?

Ah, I was unaware of that! thanks :)

Yeah, I can see how we might not want to bloat the site with "points, upvotes, downvotes"

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