
Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores - Maro
I miss comment scores.<p>Perhaps we could strike middle ground by displaying a range, eg. 1,  2-5,  5-10,  10+
======
blhack
People can be wrong about things, and comment scores are useful information
that helps us know if they are.

"that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "that is not how mysql works"
with 102 points Are not the same piece of info.

I don't see any benefit to hiding this from people. It also helps newbies
understand the customs here (they can get feedback on other people's comments)

edit now that I'm not on my phone:

When you google things, you probably skip over results like daniweb,
about.com, or expertsexchange.com, and hope for a stackexchange page.

The little URL at the bottom of the description tells you "hey, this is from
$foo source" and you're a smart human being that can put this information to
good use.

Of course, you _could_ make a case that this is bad, because you should read
each one of the results and judge it based on its merits. Maybe we should even
strip all of the identifying information away from the page, and just let it
stand on its own (this would be a neat experiment, actually [and that's the
experiment that I think we're performing here]).

The point counts on the comments act just like the URL does on google results.
It's not saying "this is definitely 100% accurate", but it is useful piece of
information that we can put to good use. Depriving us of this information
doesn't _break_ the comments, but I have certainly found myself reading
comments a bit less lately as a result of it (instead of actually reading
comments, I'm usually just skimming them now). With comment scores, things
seem to have a bit of order to them, without, it just feels like a lot of
people shouting at one another.

(Maybe this was the point?)

Naturally, I'm never going to stop reading HN; it is by far my favorite
website on the internet. Complaining about the lack of comment points here is
like complaining that my favorite bar switched to a new, very slightly
different glass. I can see the difference, but it's not really going to change
my habits.

~~~
lwhi
You can see how agreeable a comment is by how far up the page it is.

I think having the scores hidden is a good decision. It means that we
concentrate on content rather than a 'karma game'.

" _"that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "that is not how mysql
works" with 102 points Are not the same piece of info._ "

In my opinion, both of those comments are bad comments unless they further
qualify the statement. I don't think karma should be used to infer whether a
statement is correct.

~~~
tolmasky
Just expand the example: pretend it was "that is not the way mysql works blah
blah explanation". I agree that I don't want to read this if it has 2 points
but I do if it has 100.

~~~
Terretta
So many of the discussions around these points here center around the "TL;DR"
point of view.

I wonder how these people ever managed to make it through a newspaper without
scores telling them which articles are worth it.

Learn to survey, skim, and dive in. All your endeavors will be the better for
it.

PS. Your method (don't read if don't like score) also ensures you won't be
soiled by accidentally reading an unpopular but truthful point of view.

~~~
BoppreH
A better example would be choosing which newspapers to read based on your
friend's recommendations, versus choosing by yourself. All articles from the
same newspaper share a source and it already ensures some quality.

~~~
Terretta
> _All articles from the same newspaper share a source and it already ensures
> some quality_

You make an excellent point, applicable here: newspaper brand = web brand.

Articles not flagged [dead] on news.ycombinator.com already ensure some
quality, and both similarly share a "front page".

~~~
BoppreH
Wait, are you talking about articles on HN? Because only comments have their
score hidden, you can still see how many points each article has.

My point was comparing newspapers brands/articles to HN _comments_ , not
articles, since you don't have much guidance anymore over what _comments_ are
worthwhile or not.

------
jplewicke
The only place I really miss having them is in older articles and on
searchyc.com. I feel a much greater compulsion to engage each comment on its
merit when voting and when reading, and I feel like reading HN has become more
intellectually stimulating.

However, this is more of a problem when I'm trying to assess information in
areas that I'm not already familiar with. If I'm searching for information on
which DNS providers are best and I find an Ask HN from 4 months ago, I can no
longer tell what the true community consensus on it is. I expect the current
masking of comments will provide less biased voting, so I think displaying
comment scores on stories that are more than two months old would eventually
provide the best of both worlds.

~~~
raganwald
ABSOLUTELY.

Comment scores in the midst of an active discussion narrow thinking. Comment
scores on historical artifacts are useful for research.

~~~
cyanbane
I think if people in general see a comment that has been upvoted heavily they
are less likely to contribute their opinion to it if they agree with it. I
like not being able to see its weight as I feel like more readers will comment
with their opinions rather than just upvote, which creates more discussion,
etc (I have no numbers to back this up, just what I believe).

~~~
rb01usa
This is true for me--I have felt more encouraged to contribute to discussions
now that the votes are hidden as opposed to before; As long as the higher
voted comments bubble up to the top I don't see a reason to see the votes
count with a comment.

------
awakeasleep
I really like the lack of comment scores. Things are still sorted, so the
cream floats to the top, and it made me realize I felt group-impulses based on
the score.

Now, there is little to no incentive to one-up someone, and I don't consider
people refuted based on their score, but rather based on what I think of their
comment. That last part has nurtured my curiosity, I find myself exploring
thoughts I didn't on the 'old' HN

~~~
JacobAldridge
This is my dilemma, and based on pg's recent poll may be part of why that vote
was split. Basically, I feel that I'm interacting more intelligently _but_
receiving less value from the conversation.

I feeling that I am contributing differently, assessing comments more on merit
and adding my own thoughts less. I'm certainly voting on comments less (both
up and down).

But I find I lack context in many of those discussions - when there are two
different views on technical matters, I can't tell the difference in the
group's opinion (especially if one is a reply to the other, so not comparable
by which is 'higher' in the tree). Group think is bad, by blhack's mysql
example is positive group interaction.

I also notice a similar lack of feedback on what is and isn't acceptable by
the group. If a snide one-liner sits at the same level as a well-reasoned
response, there's nothing to tell us all that one has 15pts in support and one
has 1pt (an extreme example - other, more subtle ones, are now only noticeable
if someone is greyed out for a negative score). There's no opportunity for us
to learn from other's experience.

All in all, I want them back.

~~~
temptemptemp13
How do you vote down?

~~~
JacobAldridge
When you get to a certain level of Karma, you will have the ability to vote
down comments (but not articles). The figure changes - I think the level is
currently 500 (it was less when I rose through the system, but there were
fewer members so fewer votes to go around back then).

------
losvedir
Nah, I like not seeing the comment scores.

But today I did think of a different improvement I'd like to see, which for
lack of better place to put it, will say here:

When I click on "reply" to a comment, it takes you to a page with just that
comment and a text box. I'd like to see that comment's parents all the way to
the OP, to give me some more context as I frame my reply.

I think it would improve discussion as you'll see the context in which the
person you're replying to replied, and might interpret their words a little
differently.

------
achompas
I'm struggling to understand why you need comment scores to know what to think
about something. I can make up my mind about a comment's quality using the
info available to me right now.

Let's take the oft-repeated example in other comments: two comments on MySQL,
one with a handful of points and the other with a lot of points. There are a
number of indicators of comment quality:

>> comment sorting works very well

>> if a low-vote comment is controversial, you will surely find spirited
discussion below it--the volume of discussion would be an indicator of
community disagreement

>> hit up Stack Overflow and find out if MySQL works as stated in the low-vote
comment or if it works like the high-vote comment describes.

The arguments for visible points boil down to "I don't know how to think about
this statement, so I need external confirmation." Indicators of comment
quality still exist, and karma gamesmanship looks like it has decreased a lot.
Finally, you _really_ want to avoid groupthink--hiding scores accomplishes
that pretty well.

------
iterationx
I like the new system. It discourages winning an argument with numbers. 20
people upvoted the previous comment so that guy must be right.

~~~
bzupnick
so why cant we start down voting with less karma, as opposed to now it being
500. so more people could counteract your issue. AND i think that if a comment
has more upvotes, then they DID win the argument and that should be seen that
they won.

~~~
iterationx
I think you're missing the point. Logic wins arguments not upvotes.

~~~
alain94040
Yes, logic wins arguments, but to continue with metaphors, I'm sure you have
heard of the halting problem. Without upvotes, the thread will go on forever.
Vote counts allows for closure. So threads are shorter and I'm happy to
extract more information faster.

------
hooande
The most important aspect of the comment scores was that they let me know what
the HN community thought of a particular point or argument. I'm capable of
making up my own mind about any topic. I find it interesting and useful to see
what other people think. As a geek I miss being able to see that "people
agreed with this side of the argument at +20 as opposed to that side at +10".

If some people want to treat it as a "who can get more points" game, then so
be it. I find that I can learn a lot from looking at which way public opinion
is leaning.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
|The most important aspect of the comment scores was that they let me know
what the HN community thought of a particular point or argument. I'm capable
of making up my own mind about any topic. I find it interesting and useful to
see what other people think

That seems like cognitive dissonance to me and a rationalization. If you truly
make up your own mind about something then why would you care so granularly
about how much/little HN likes a comment. The ordering of the comments allows
you to know where the comments all compare, so I don't see what you're really
missing other than the exactness.

~~~
jaxn
Why care? Because up votes are also coming from the community and I believe we
are all here because we respect the opinions of the people here.

Also, comments sort within threads. Sometimes the best reply is to a no-so-
great parent comment.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
|I believe we are all here because we respect the opinions of the people here.

What does that even mean? That by not showing the comments we're somehow
disrespecting those opinions?

|Sometimes the best reply is to a no-so-great parent comment.

And even then those replies are sorted again... what is your concern? Time? If
you were saying hey, I only have so much time, I could maybe understand.
But... I think it would be better for HN as a community to train people for
more thought out discussions, fewer flame wars, and more of a focus on
actually reading the comments and evaluating them based on their own content
and not just on what others have said.

As someone in this thread also pointed out, it also ends the perception that
an argument can be won by popularity or upvotes-- I believe this has been
especially beneficial at preventing/reducing typical fan-boy flaming. I think
HN has already begun to benefit for the changes. Also, I would rather read
fewer threads with _better_ comments, than more threads with worse comments.

Note: _Better_ subjectively being defined as more thought out, less
antagonistic, more discussion based, more logic, and more citations/sources.

~~~
jaxn
| What does that even mean? That by not showing the comments we're somehow
disrespecting those opinions?

What I was trying to say is that I value the votes of the community. The
culture at HN is that "+1" type comments are noise, but 73 upvotes gives me an
indication that the comment resonates with this community (whose collective
opinion means alot to me).

------
iamdave
I found the comment scores a good motivation for thinking about what I'm
typing before hitting that 'add comment' button. Good imperative to
participate instead of troll.

The opposite is true for others, I'm sure.

~~~
J3L2404
Adding +1, since you can't tell if the parent comment has been upvoted.

EDIT: this -> parent comment

~~~
saturdayplace
The author of a comment can tell if it's been upvoted - no one else. I really
wouldn't like to see comment threads full of posts similar to yours; it lowers
the signal:noise.

~~~
J3L2404
Obviously it would be terrible if everyone posted 'I agree' comments, that's
the point. Numbers show the viewers sentiment towards a comment without
clogging the thread.

~~~
gloob
It is self-evidently true that removing visible comment scores mostly removes
methods for trivially measuring "viewer sentiment". It is the contention of
those in support of non-visible comment scores that trivial measurement of
viewer sentiment harms, rather than aids, discussion. You have made no
argument against that point.

~~~
J3L2404
Trying to aid discussion by limiting information is fine, unless you happen to
want that information.

------
thekevan
I don't usually want to post, "me too" posts but...

I really miss the comment scores.

Sometimes I am not totally familiar with whatever the original post is talking
about, often the top rated couple of comments give me some good insight or
jumping off points to look into it further.

I respect the HN community and have learned a lot here. I generally trust
their judgement and I have found if a comment is rated highly, it most likely
adds a lot of value to the discussion.

Sometimes I disagree with the highest rated comment(s). I then see my opinion
is in a minority and maybe I re-examine it or stand firm and make a comment to
the contrary.

------
RuadhanMc
Without the comment scores we're confronted with a wall of text that is hard
to filter. Should I have to read every single comment just to find the gems?
Comments scores have their downsides but they make filtering out noise much
easier.

Unfortunately I don't think everyone has time to judge each comment on its own
merits -- there are simply too many comments -- so we need a little crowd-
sourced ranking. It does lead to some group think at times but that's a
(relatively) small price to pay.

~~~
Terretta
In my experience, "wall of text" and "TL;DR" began as terms used by those
generally uncomfortable with literacy or focused attention.

Skimming is a valuable skill, becoming even more important as the world
generates information ever faster.

~~~
RuadhanMc
How about just having a finite amount of time in which to read the news?

I'd prefer to focus on attention on filtered comments rather than waste time
skimming hundreds of comments.

~~~
Terretta
Focus on "filtered" comments is a completely different discussion, and
offering users an unnumbered slider to set personal threshold for where the
grey vs black text divider falls on a percentile line between top and bottom
scored remarks of the given thread, would accomplish 90% of what the TL;DR
crowd want w/o all the problems of showing scores.

~~~
RuadhanMc
It's not really a different discussions if you viewed scored comments as
filtered comments.

------
siddhant
Cant we have a "showcommentscores" option for displaying comment scores?
Personally, I really ( _really_ ) miss seeing comment scores, but its apparent
that there are a lot of people who like HN the other way.

~~~
joshuacc
The problem is that part of what we like about not displaying the comment
scores is the effect it has on other people's behavior. Letting others opt in
to seeing the scores would defeat a large part of the purpose.

~~~
fr0sty
> The problem is that part of what _you_ like about not displaying the comment
> scores is the _apparent_ effect it has on other people's behavior.

That, I believe is more correct. I miss the scores, personally, and found them
rather useful.

------
known
Previously, I used to read the comments first and then the article. Now I'm
reading the article first and ignoring the comments/vote.

------
grandalf
I think that people are missing the point. A comment's quality is not
measurable by it's score. If anything, that is a rough aggregation. By this
logic, Ke$ha is a better musician than Joshua Bell.

Top comments on HN were becoming more "top 40" and something had to be done
before people started posting links to Trollface, etc.

One approach would be to use category-based voting, which adds a lot of
complexity.

One approach would be to implement some sort of vote weighting sytem (time
based, reputation based, context based), but that's ad-hoc and may not fix the
problem.

And one approach is to simply hide numerical comment scores from all but each
user's own comments. This turns the quest for high karma into a personal
battle against one's self, not a sport.

PG wisely chose to make Karma a personal Everest for each individual to care
about (or not).

------
msluyter
FWIW, I find myself up/down-voting less without the scores. I guess I mostly
tend to vote to rectify imbalances. If a comment has a lot of upvotes already,
I probably won't upvote (I figure once it's near the top, it doesn't matter
much anyway). But if its popularity seems unwarranted, I may be more likely to
downvote.

Conversely, I tend to upvote mostly what appear to be underrated comments that
are low on karma. Not saying there's anything admirable about this approach --
what am I, some kind of Karma Robin Hood? -- but the new system definitely
discourages it.

------
brk
Another thing (and some might accuse me of "doing it wrong" this way) is that
lack of score showing changes my motivation for voting overall.

Some comments are so awesome, they deserve 50+ upvotes. Other comments are
pretty good, and deserve maybe 8. I do not/did not personally try to upvote
every single comment. I try to add upvotes to the comments that seem "best" in
a particular thread discussion, and allocate votes in this way.

Perhaps my behavior is something that pg was attempting to fix with this
change, but I have a feeling I'm not alone in this regard.

------
tokenadult
Since I registered a username here on HN 890 days ago, I've seen a lot of
comments about comment karma and about upvoting and downvoting. The most
significant statement I have seen about comment voting here on HN was posted
recently by pg, the founder of HN, in a thread-opening post 22 days ago titled
"Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>

He wrote, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean
and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted."

So the founder of HN thinks that before the recent experiment there was a
comment voting problem: (a) mean comments were getting too many upvotes, and
(b) dumb comments were getting too many upvotes, and (c) too many of the
comments that got the most upvotes were either mean or dumb or both. Let's
stop and think about what that means. That means that, according to pg posting
as of that moment, comment karma scores were often NOT reliable signals of
good comments, comments worth finding rapidly when skimming a thread.

With that condition of HN less than a month ago in mind, how do the highest-
voted comments visible in the bestcomments list

<http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments>

look to all of you recently? Are there fewer mean comments than before? Are
there fewer dumb comments than before? Are the comments that are "massively
upvoted" since the experiment began mostly comments that are reasonably kind
and well-informed, helpful comments on the whole? In most of the treads you
visit, do helpful, thoughtful comments seem to rise to a position of
prominence, while mean or dumb comments gray out?

A link and comment in another recent metadiscussion thread largely sums up the
back-and-forth about visible comment scores as a signal on comments in active
threads:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357>

>> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the
comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them.

> I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm
> not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's
> comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was
> worthwhile.

My impression too is that even with comment scores not visible, it is still
convenient to browse threads to find thoughtful, informative comments, but now
there is less anchoring bias

<http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm>

of most votes on a comment converging to one score level that shows up early
in a thread's development, and more engagement by readers of HN in actively
reading comments and upvoting (or downvoting) based on each comment's
characteristics in light of the context of the thread. So far I can still find
good comments quite readily here on HN. Indeed, I think that since the
experiment began I am seeing more good comments more readily than before.

The main motivation stated by pg for the current experiment with making
comment karma scores less visible is to "stave off decline of HN," and that is
what will decide if the experiment was successful. If the previous visibility
of comment karma scores led too many casual readers of HN to upvote mean or
dumb comments, and too few readers to upvote thoughtful, informative comments
and to downvote mean or dumb comments, the arguments on the side of reader
convenience aren't going to be convincing. It isn't convenient for ANY reader
of HN if the comment scores are a poor signal, and if bad comments become more
prominent and good comments get skimmed right over by readers in a hurry. If a
change of rules here makes every reader read comments more carefully and more
thoughtfully, and vote based on comment inherent quality rather than on crowd
appeal, that is a feature rather than a bug. For comment scores to be a good
guide to every reader here, every reader can help by actively upvoting
informative, helpful comments, and also by downvoting comments that are either
mean or dumb--and especially comments that are both. As I recall, the
experiment has also involved some changes in the effects of flagging, so
flagging inappropriate comments is also helpful.

After edit: many comments in this thread ask about the karma rules and voting
rules imposed by the software. We can all read the news.arc software ourselves

<https://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc>

if we would like to see what the rules do (except I think that maybe a few
aspects of the current experiment are hidden from the current distribution of
the source code), as previous HN threads have pointed out.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1307128>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034449>

~~~
blhack
One of the big assumptions that's being made here is that people are dumb
calculators.

I can tell the difference between a stupid comment that got a lot of points
for being stupid, and a useful comment that got a lot of points for being
useful.

When I look at amazon and see that twilight has 3000 5 star ratings, I don't
assume this means it's a great piece of literature, but it _is_ useful
information to me: it's a popular book.

Same goes for comments.

I'm not stupid, I can tell the difference between "popular because it's
funny/pandering" and "popular because it's useful"

~~~
tokenadult
_I'm not stupid, I can tell the difference between "popular because it's
funny/pandering" and "popular because it's useful"_

Let me make sure I understand correctly what you mean in light of what pg said
about the reasons for the current experiment (quoted in my post to which you
reply). Is it simply a mistake to say that high comment scores on comments
that are mean or dumb is a problem? I ask, because pg has said that there has
been a recent problem with comment scores.

 _One of the big assumptions that's being made here is that people are dumb
calculators._

I think that there is a huge body of research showing that all human beings,
without exception, high-IQ or low-IQ, are "cognitive misers"

<http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Cognitive_Miser>

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/11/04/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/11/04/are-
you-a-cognitive-miser/)

(there is a good self-test at the link above)

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ey/a_taxonomy_of_bias_the_cognitive...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ey/a_taxonomy_of_bias_the_cognitive_miser/)

in the sense of preferring less effort-demanding problem-solving techniques to
more accurate, but more effort-demanding, techniques. Snap judgments spare
mental effort for everything else that we are busy with.

Here on HN, the only thing most participants contribute to the community is
good comments and good submissions and votes about other participants'
submissions and comments. A few founders, pg and his core of curators
(editors),

<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

do actual work to keep the site running, and they get the best compensation
for their volunteer efforts if all the signals about story quality and comment
quality are true, thoughtful signals rather than noise.

------
brk
One of the things I liked about the Slashdot comment system was that you
assigned a rating "Insightful" "Funny" "Helpful", etc.

------
thought_alarm
Removal of the comment scores is a great innovation that has improved the
quality of Hacker News.

With scores visible, most "discussions" end up as little more than opinion
polls.

------
jbail
Seeing comment scores helps me to quickly scan comments to find the ones of
most interest. It's not about "who's right" or "who's wrong" --- but what
comments are more insightful and interesting. This is what the community of HN
provides in voting people's comments up and down. This concept is missing now.

All in all, not showing comment points is a step backwards in helping people
get the most out of the site in the most efficient way possible.

------
bakhlawa
I understand the minimalist theme at HN, but would a simple toggle switch to
show/hide comment scores be a terribly bad idea? These could be set by logged
in users (wouldn't apply to drive-by or anon users).

------
dexen
Please do.

But also, please split upvotes from downvotes. There's a huge difference
between a +25 / - 24 comment (apparently a controversial one) and +1 / -0
(probably a mediocre one).

Or perhaps, display only upvotes, and use some weighted form of (UPVOTE *
U_WEIGHT - DOWNVOTE * D_WEIGHT) for positioning the comment among other ones.

------
mcn
Removing comment scores seems to have increased the amount of mediocre/poor
comments around contested topics: I am noticing more more brother/sister
comments that are basically reiterating each other and more debates that veer
to uncontrollable levels of indentation when the key points were already
covered in the top level post and first child.

The relative absence of these black holes of discussion is one of the things
that brought me to HN in the first place, and I think that showing comment
scores discouraged them on multiple levels. Public upvoting lets people
express their view on the topic without posting points similar to those
already expressed. When two comments have a lopsided point spread it lets one
"side" of the debate feel more comfortable letting the other have the last
word.

------
huhtenberg
Ah, no, don't. Stop fixating on the score and trying to write comments that
other people like instead of writing what you actually have to say.

------
lwhi
How about allocating a 'hotness' quotient to comments?

At the moment, a comment that's down-voted past zero becomes lighter. Perhaps
very popular comments could be made more visible, or highlighted?

I think this kind of _fuzzy_ indication of popularity might be a good
compromise.

~~~
BrandonM
I agree. One of the more useful things I used comment scores for was to be
sure to avoid missing useful comments that were down low on the page. Having a
mechanism for setting apart well-regarded comments would be useful.

It would likely have to be normalized based on the score of the submission or
the total number of comments on that submission, though, which might be more
complexity than pg wants.

------
fr0sty
No one on this thread has picked up on the 'range' suggestion by Maro yet, so
I'll add a thought:

For my purposes, displaying actual scores within the range -4 -> 10 would be
sufficient. the low end is already capped, and the high end could either just
have a ceiling of 10 or a score of 10+.

I am occasionally a "someone is Wrong on the internet!"[1] type and my
inclination to wade in is directly proportioanl to the perceived traction of
the inaccuracy. Without such a heuristic the choices are: reply to all, none,
or a random sample which result in "poor information", "needless pedantry",
and " undefined behavior" respectively.

[1] <http://xkcd.com/386/>

------
rexreed
Disagree. I believe that I can make a fair judgement of the quality of a
comment by simply reading it. I don't do TL;DR on comments that I care about,
so using scores as a proxy for quality doesn't mean much for me.

------
jsherry
Hidden comment scores help us avoid groupthink.

~~~
Maro
But make it harder to filter information. I feel safe from groupthink, hence
the post.

~~~
jsherry
Definitely agree on that as well - it's a pros and cons argument. Frankly I
miss the scoring for the reason you mention, but I think this method promotes
merit. Of course, now we are all subjected to whatever secret algorithm pushes
comments to the top of the page, but I'll naively trust that it's doing its
job properly ;-)

------
pclark
I have been quite surprised at how my enthusiasm for contributing to Hacker
News has diminished at the removal of comment scores. Not necessarily a bad
thing for anyone.

------
iworkforthem
By removing comment scores, does it increase/decrease traffic to HN?

My gut is telling me that traffic is likely to be lower. Reality might be
different of course.

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joshfinnie
The only issue I see with not being able to see the scores of comments is that
joke or off-the-cuff comments are probably getting a lot more points.

If there was a comment that made me laugh (while sticking to the point) I will
be more likely to upvote it, but if it already had 10+ upvotes a laugh on my
part probably didn't justify another upvote.

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jashmenn
I really miss comment points on book recommendations. I can't tell you how
many books ive purchased over the years based on a highly rated HN comment.

I second what others have mentioned that it would be good to re-display
comment scores on older posts. This way we could at least see the community
consensus after some time has passed.

------
acrum
I like the lack of comment scores (to avoid everyone piling on one comment),
but I think I would like it more if I knew what went into how high a comment
was on the page. Is it a fact that the first displayed comment will be the one
with the highest score? I know some different inputs are used, such as the
karma of the submitter, how new it is, etc. but I guess we don't know "for
sure".

I don't think the solution is to bring back scores, though. A possible
"simple" solution could be to color/star a comment above 50/100 points, etc.
Comment scores could also be displayed as percentage or on a scale of 0 to 1,
0 to 10, etc. I'd be more likely to read a comment with a score of 95% than
one with a score of 20%. This way you at least get an indication of the
helpfulness of the comment other than just its position on the page.

~~~
T-hawk
> I'd be more likely to read a comment with a score of 95% than one with a
> score of 20%.

Seconding this idea, I really love it. The biggest problem with a linear point
count is the large dependency on a comment's visibility and number of
impressions, which in turn leaves posters competing for that as much as for
inherent comment quality. The implementation would be up for discussion, maybe
something like show a comment's positive percentage once it garners a sample
size of 5 or 10 votes, and maybe round off to the nearest 10% so you can't
triangulate back to the actual score from the change inflicted by your single
vote.

------
techtalsky
I think a middle ground would be good. I understand the reasons for dropping
comments scores but it makes it harder for me to get a quality experience out
of the site and easily find the information I need. The scores mean something
to me.

I liked someone's suggestion of basing the comment score on "upvotes per view"
so older comments don't dominate, and I also like the idea of using a dark-to-
light gradient (dot) instead of a concrete number.

Just sorting to the top (kinda) really just makes it hard to wade in, and
makes me less likely to take a look at a topic I know little about and would
like to see a couple of definitive words on it. It may be groupthink to some
extent but this is a damn smart group.

------
ck2
Remove scores/points for people entirely.

That way only posts/comments get points/scores, not people.

------
uptown
I'd prefer a system that reveals the score of comments you've already either
replied to, or voted on. Gives you some kind of feedback on where the rest of
the community's mind is with regard to that comment.

------
apl
One observation: I think that comment ordering is an inadequate substitute for
numerical scores. A lot of interesting information goes missing when reducing
a scale from interval to ordinal.

------
patrickk
My initial reaction was also "just bring em back".

With reflection, I think a good idea might be to show the score _after_ you
vote.

This way you get the feeling of making some difference i.e. immediate
feedback, but also the knowledge that your vote wasn't subconsciously affected
by a visible score beforehand.

The main downside of this would be people voting out of curiosity to see what
a comments current score is. Perhaps displaying the score of a comment once it
reaches a certain age (maybe three or four days old) would mitigate against
this.

~~~
shasta
[...people voting out of curiosity...]

If voting reveals the score, then there would need to be a new way to abstain
and reveal the score.

~~~
fragmede
Why? If you feel positively or negatively towards a comment, then vote thusly.
Abstaining to reveal the score is far too easily gamed with a secondary
account.

------
hanifvirani
With the comment score not being displayed, I find myself commenting less
often for some reason. Others have echoed a similar sentiment in some of the
earlier threads.

------
ghotli
I found it particularly hard to read the recent Amazon Outage thread. There
was so much information to sift through. It had me missing the comment scores.

------
sktrdie
I'm not going to read all the comments when they're more than 50. Finding
insightful comments is hard without any number next to them. But I understand
that it might bring more karma to "stupid comments" instead of "really
insightful comments"... but who cares, the insightful comments is still there
and probably going to get more karma than it would without any number next to
it.

------
tuhin
Ok I just had another idea, so thought to write it here, in case PG gives it a
look. How about showing votes after you took an action on a particular post.
Say you upvoted a post, or replied to it, then you are eligible to seeing the
points that it has.

This helps because even if in hindsight, I would know if the comment was the
general consensus or a popular one or not?

------
ambirex
I would like it if the comment rating was only available in an html data
attribute (eg data-rating="10"). That way my old user script would still be
able to sort and high light comments.

You would have to go out of your way to see the score but could still be used
by us hackers who like to customize our experience.

------
Symmetry
I wonder if showing the rating of a comment only after you had voted on it
would work? That would prevent some level of groupthink by forcing people make
their own evaluations before seeing what others thought. That would require a
+0 vote option, though, to prevent some obvious failure modes.

------
jongraehl
Ignorance is bliss. I'm happier not knowing that the crowd disagrees with my
judgment of a comment's worth.

I also feel like people are avoiding posting crappy comments with the intent
of tapping into a popular vein for a high score.

This could be a placebo, or perhaps, if real, it's instead caused by an
improvement in voting.

------
coffeedrinker
Comment scores help me get to the best points (even if they are in
disagreement) without spending a lot of time reading the whole page.

I'm reading a lot let now because there are no scores; I just skim the top and
then move on.

Comment scoring allows the community to reveal quality.

------
elbenshira
I wonder how Hacker Monthly (<http://hackermonthly.com/>) will pick out the
"best" comments.

~~~
woodson
Supposedly via <http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments> I don't think that
upvote count alone determines which are to be picked, but I could be mistaken.

------
kqueue
It's interesting to see an 8 hours post that has 374 points, and 156 comments
on the second page instead of being on the first page.

------
sibsibsib
I didn't even notice they were gone at first...

------
chanux
Button to make comment scores visible, please.

------
AndyNemmity
I much prefer it without. I like it like this

------
oscardelben
I would make it an option.

------
dennisgorelik
No middle ground. Please bring exact score number.

------
citricsquid
<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2477527>

My comment here explaining it has made me comment less has 40 points. I think
a lot of people agree.

~~~
alanfalcon
It's interesting because (although I can't explain why) it actually freed me
to post more comments, and I have far lower karma (and avg/post).

So the system could lead to more posts by undesirables (me) and fewer posts by
those with more knowledge (you).

------
lotusleaf1987
I disagree. It forces people to read the comments and judge them on their own
merit. Often times the highest voted comment seemed to be highest voted
comment simply because it was the first comment and kept being upvoted for
being upvoted by others.

Also, the ordering of the comments does the same thing as having the comment
scores!

I do wish there was a way to still search for the highest rated comments on
searchyc.com, but I still think it's a small sacrifice for an overall better
community/environment. I have definitely seen less iOS/Android/Windows
flaming, so I think the site is already benefitting from the changes.

~~~
alain94040
_It forces people to read the comments and judge them on their own merit_

I understand your argument. Just keep in mind that there are multiple ways
that HN is useful. Some of us want to go deep into a topic, will read all the
comments. And some of us are in a hurry and want to a quick feel and extract a
summary.

In the first case (I call it "researcher mode"), not having votes is a good
thing. But it prevents me from browsing in the second mode (the "quick update
mode").

I wish you could set this in my preferences, but it wouldn't fulfill pg's
original goal of staving the decline of HN (that I don't see - but that's
another discussion).

------
ignifero
When i am interested in the subject, i usually read ALL comments. Having them
in order of popularity helps, but does not really discourage me from reading
on. Scores don't really matter.

There is a tendency for short comments to sink down, regardless of how
informative they are, simply because people spend less time on them, so
they're less likely to hit that upvote button.

Also, like all forums, the first upvoted comments get more replies creating a
positive feedback loop, not necesarily because they are the best, but because
people know their replies will be more visible.

It would be interesting to have the statistics of number of upvotes vs
position of the comment in the page.

------
vipivip
+

