What difference would exposing counts make? Why should this data be mineable?
We're already helping to create a training set of slightly above average English speaker discourse for free.
We're already helping to create a training set of slightly above average English speaker discourse for free.
This would include mod commutations and mod logs; unless it was security related, which would have a formal process with deadlines for release.
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To address you specific question as why the comment voting data would be of use, among other reasons, it would allow users to have custom filters. For example, posts and comments with high up/down votes tend to be flamewars. Mods also random boost/ding posts/comments too.
Lobste.rs actually exposes even less and doesn't provide an API because the users haven't consented to such intrusions.
Personally, I don't want to be able to review every vote for or against my HN account. It wouldn't be productive and would likely lead to me not wanting to be here at all. It'd be like having a super strong mirror and then looking at your skin and being confronted with too much information about the reality of how nasty looking and imperfect being human is. Basically not a healthy pastime.
FWIW, if you're truly passionate about this, it's not difficult to setup your own site with the lobste.rs open-source code. Maybe there is a whole subset of like-minded folks.
The lobste.rs origin story may also be of interest to you. The TL;DR is jcs was being singled out and abused by pg on HN. Thankfully there is no evidence dang has (or would ever) do this, it was certainly toxic behavior on Paul's part. Being a moderator isn't for everyone, it's a Certain Thing, and net-positive mods who avoid power tripping are truly rare gems on the Internet. Open information would guarantee such abuses couldn't happen in the dark, but at what cost to the best aspects enabled by the HN ecosystem?
References:
And yes, aware of Lobste.rs mod logs, but Lobste.rs is basically dead compared to HN — largely because it’s an HN clone.
My outsider opinion is that lobsters is dead because the sign up process is designed to keep people out. I appreciate there's also the network effect of people coming here because people come here, but I for sure would visit lobsters too if I could participate without having to know a friend to get past the velvet rope
In 2019 I set up a bot to store titles for HN stories as soon as they appear on the "new" page, so that I could then compare them to the current version.
I had also made a browser extension for FF and Chrome that compared the current version of any HN story to the stored one, and displayed a warning if they differed.
There was zero downloads of the extensions, so they fell into disrepair and don't work anymore, but the cron job for storing the titles is still active.
If there is any interest I could resuscitate the extensions, or some other system to make that information useful.
To me, if users have concerns about “unfair voting” to me the solution is not to hide them. Also, if comment points aren’t important, why even allow them? They are obviously important and if a users is not available to respect guidelines not to complain about them, what’s difference between that an guidelines related to comments about being downvoted?
If votes being public impacts voting patterns, listing top users, having usernames publicly associated with comments, being able to follow given user’s comments, etc — for sure does too. What’s the difference?
A moment later
Maybe it'll help if you get your head around the goal of HN. There are a bunch of things you personally seem to want to accomplish with HN. But HN itself has just one goal: to nurture curious conversation. Other sites have other, equally valid goals: propagating the news as quickly as possible, or relentless focus on a particular topic, or getting the best Q&A pairs to the top of Google's search results. HN, though: curious conversation. That's the whole ballgame.
Anything that drags on curious conversation is a non-starter on HN, even if it might make a bunch of things better for you.
We don't have to guess about whether making comment scores available is a drag on curious conversations; it manifestly was, for years. People have an innate, visceral reaction to comment scores they feel are unjust, and they talk about them, and those conversations choke the landscape like kudzu.
A lot of things about HN make more sense when you accept the premise of the site, and understand that HN will make most sacrifices it can come up with to optimize for that premise.
Personally I see this site as the Reddit of tech with 20% of its flavor coming from YC companies. That is how it behaves, as opposed what moderators say the site is about.