Upvote the Gray! Downvote the Orange! Vive la Révolution! | Hacker News Reader

Upvote the Gray! Downvote the Orange! Vive la Révolution!

16 pointsallyt17 comments

May the endless cycle of mindless voting never stop!

I worry about this division between users but kudos to pg for trying an worthwhile test. It's an example where I wish there was some content analysis with karma to illustrate spheres of influence. But I just don't think we can ever get there with such small samples of text, as is typical of the vast majority of comments.

If you don't like the current "division" between users, then please offer some alternatives. I'm stumped. I recognize the need but I'm not sure it fits. Rather than be outed as an Orange, I might prefer some increased weight on comment upvotes but behind the scenes. At least then there could still be some behavior modification, but it would be mostly without division between the haves and have-nots.

EDIT: Maybe it's just my latent fear of getting beat up as soon as we walk out of the room?

Hey, you've got it easy, you're orange :)

Ok, that's an attempt at humor, which I understand is risky in and of itself. But seriously, orange or not is really not relevant, what you have to say is. The more visible distinctions there are between users the more people will be given an incentive to try to game the system.

My 'alternative' would be the exact opposite, remove all distinctions between users in the layout, including the visibility of the 'points', use the points system out of sight to give/remove functionality and to influence the order in which comments and submissions are sorted.

Right, I agree. Content matters. But without some really powerful content analysis, points may be the best that can be done.

Isn't there something useful in having some feedback measure of things you've contributed? If anything, without points, I'd worry that the devaluation of comments would get much worse. At least now there is some valuation.

I don't think his idea is to remove points completely - they would still determine where the comment gets placed on a page, they just wouldn't be displayed as prominently.

This would really change the UX of the site, actually - I find myself scanning over just points/names after having read the first few posts in a long thread.

If they're all trollbait, the least offensive wins?

OK, here's my alternative:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467574

Anything that doesn't segregate the users? Has nobody read The Sneetches? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sneetches_and_Other_Stories

I liked neilk's idea a lot better: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466155

And jacquesm's idea best: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467573

Why do we need to show points?

I don't mind the current model - probably need to let the paint dry before I can really judge.

An extremely popular Aussie website (http://www.whirlpool.net.au) uses a different system. For every user you can make them :( , :| , :) or :D . It then gives you an "Aura" based upon the aggregate view.

Seems to work ok, but to be honest I'm not sure people really pay that much attention. I find it useful because it helps you weed out and ignore people you specifically find trollish.

Yes, more comment influence would be more useful than the orange.

Does this remind anyone of facebook when they introduced feeds? When it was released, everyone hated it and people were whining like crazy, Facebook heard the feedback, tweaked it and now, the feed is an indispensable part of facebook and others have built whole startups based on just that ( friendfeed, socialthing..etc ).

So, I would say that, give these new features a chance and give PG time to tweak these features and lets see how it goes =)

That's a bad comparision.

- feeds is a feature, orange names are a gimmick

- not everybody hated feeds, tweaking made them a lot better, I've yet to come across someone that says the 'orange' names are a great idea but there are plenty of good arguments against.

- I wonder if there will be a startup formed around the colour of your name in a community but it's always possible I guess.

My personal view on this (and again, as I've said before, I'm a total rookie here by any standard) is that if there are going to be more such 'visual distinctions' based on the karma count that it will change the dynamic of the site towards people trying to game the system (which according to at least one post today is already happening) instead of people trying to have intelligent conversation about subjects that are of interest to hackers.

All your arguments are based on the grounds that the new feature is just "orange names". However, if you read pg's original post, the "orange names" are to accomplish the 2 purposes of:

- Reward users who has an history of making good comments - Make reading threads easier by highlighting comments which are likely to be better.

As a result, I think the change does qualify as a "feature". I think PG's intentions are noble and I agree that there could be better ways to accomplish these 2 purposes.

if you need to go back to the post in which a feature was announced to be able to interpret it as a feature then imho you've already missed the boat. It needs to be obvious, self explanatory or there should be some kind of easy to understand explanation of what it means on the pages where it is used (which is pretty much all of them).

Simply change the sort order, let go of any coloration, 'good' users have their reward and no need to scan for the 'better' people. That will cause enough postive feedback in and of itself to be a problem that will need fixing in the long run but at least it does not openly invite people to game the system.

Otherwise you might as well brace for an influx of sock-puppets, how-to-game-the-system guides (we already saw the first example of that) and 'let's moderate each other up and the rest down' gangs.

What's next ? Gold members ? little stars ?

To me the whole mechanism of segregating a userbase by the introduction of artificial means of distinguishing one user in a visual way from another has all too many bad resonances to feel comfortable with it.

If I were an 'orange' right now I'd definitely opt out, and I applaud all those that have done so.

Boy, that didn't take long even by my standards.

And flag the meta-posts. Viva la less crap on the front page.

Precisely! I, for one, welcome our oppressive Orange overlords.

Next up: "Special Orange" people who are even more worthy of our attention

I'm leaving when we get to smiley faces and frowny faces.

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