pg

I suggest another option: wait to see what it's like.

I don't think people will have to wait so much they'll notice, but we'll see.

That doesn't have to be common for the system to work. I'm just explaining why they're separate.

Right now it almost always means two, because I'm starting with the simplest possible implementation, but there might be optimizations in the future. E.g. the threshold could vary with how active a thread was, or based on the results of applying some classifier to the text.

Yes. It should be possible to endorse something without agreeing with it.

If a comment isn't seen by many users with over 1000 karma then it isn't seen by many users period, and thus doesn't have much influence anyway.

Let's see how much of a problem there is first. I wanted to start with the simplest possible thing. If it breaks in some cases I'll add stuff to fix those.

This was all the code it took:

  (newsop pending () (pending-page user))

  (newscache pending-page user 60
    (listpage user (msec) comments* [if (and (cansee user _) _!pending) _]
              "pending" "Pending Comments" "pending" nil))

In this project I've really benefited from having kept the code tight.

Comments don't have to be brilliant. All they have to be is not stupid or mean.

That's what the delete link does.

It's only an issue if it takes a long time for comments to get endorsed, which we don't know yet. But if that is a problem it's easy to make the restriction per thread. I just wrote the simplest thing first.

I haven't implemented this yet but it would not be too hard.

It is, actually. Comments by users with over 10k karma go live immediately.

People who can see pending comments (= those who can endorse them) will always be able to see them. They just won't be endorsable after a day.

It wouldn't limit criticism of YC. A comment only needs a few people to endorse it to become visible. To suppress comments on any specific topic would require all the users with over 1000 karma to agree not to endorse them, which is hard to imagine.

Oops, yes, another thing I overlooked.

If it is it's pretty reversible as deathknells go.

  (= pend-on* nil)

It's orthogonal.

Separate. Endorsing just means you think a comment is substantial, not that you agree with it.

No, that's not intended. If it happens we'll fix it.

What I was doing before: writing essays and software.

No one can reply to a pending comment, or vote on it, or see it in most cases.

Yes, deletion is possible for a pending comment as long as it's pending.

Don't worry, they can.

That is exactly what happens.

A comment only needs a handful of people to endorse it, out of the large number who could, so that doesn't seem a big danger.

Pending comments won't be visible, except to the submitter and to potential endorsers. That's the whole point of pending comments.

We already have pretty good protections against that from years of spammers and voting rings trying it.

Not currently.

It's impossible to predict the future perfectly, but I hope to leave completely. The only YC thing I'm going to do is office hours with the startups.