While we're on the topic of suggestions that aren't likely to be implemented ;)
I like to see the user name hidden on comments and submissions until after you vote and/or reply. Judge the content on the content alone, not on the author.
I like to see the user name hidden on comments and submissions until after you vote and/or reply. Judge the content on the content alone, not on the author.
Threads get really confusing when [name withheld until you vote] argues with himself all the time.
You could upvote someone for being funny, informative, insightful, and so on.
If someone has a high karma for being funny in topics related to computer security, you probably wouldn't trust their security advice so much.
In the first case though, it still seems that the majority of comments here are not so specialized as to require the posters identity to determine if the content is accurate enough or not. Ideally, if you could not judge the accuracy of the comment on your own you would leave it alone. There would be enough others that could judge it impartially that the comment itself would get voted up or down appropriately.
It's also the case that sometimes I'm not entirely sure what someone's trying to say unless and until I look at it within the context of his or her earlier comments in the same discussion. If I can't match someone's comment with the context of previous comments, I sometimes can't tell if they're being sarcastic, accidentally saying "can" instead of "can't", and so on.
I judge by the content of a comment rather than by name, and I agree that's a good way to do it, but I don't think that needs to be enforced by withholding information from us.
person1:yay person2:people here like intelligent comments person3:go to digg if you want to yay all the time person1:yay
And have an option to reveal names and/or show them on the mouseover link for personX.
How about voting down?
Randomly generated names, until you vote ?
Reputations are important.
"You're forgetting something", you may get:
"tdavis, you're forgetting something."
i've never been able to remember who someone is or what they do. the benefit of trusting A more on a security issue because A has proven himself to be a master of security issues...well, that's a tough problem. i'd rather see anonymous names, no karma and a security certificate.
karma is useful to draw n00bs into the system--i found it pretty darn cool when i started out. now i don't care at all. after 200 points they should disappear: now you've earned yourself a real soul.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=190451
( my memory is a gift and a curse ;) )
PG's my hero, but how would you escape the negative sign below for a Google search so it works:
"-9 points by pg" site:news.ycombinator.com
I haven't had much success.
From your comment : Perhaps it just shows how no one really gets it, and why bother explaining if you do: those who know don't tell.
IMHO this is a dangerous attitude to have towards a disagreement, as it can cloud your thinking.
If all domain names were removed from the blogosphere it would enable a more fair distribution of readership, but it wouldn't make for a better reading experience. It would also mean the regulars would have to qualify things more often.
Basically I care more about utility than fairness and I think reputation is a concept with significant utility.
So -1 anything that would obscure my name more than a handle with a link to my profile does.
To be perfectly honest I never even notice the names on comments.
OK, not totally true, I notice pg and one or two other people that I know personally. I remember when hacker news started and pg would automatically get pretty much every member upvoting him (hence him not being in the leaders section- no one even comes close I assume).
The only problem is that is makes conversations difficult to follow. Who answered this post? The OP? The grandparent? Somebody else? One solution is to display made-up ids, but they have to be easy to recognize. Some help would be if you mouse-over an id to show the name on all the posts of the same user.