

Ask PG: Has comment voting gone down since you hid scores? - breck

I used to be able to judge whether or not my comments were well argued or useful by the comment score. Lately my comments have gotten very little points.<p>Is this because they are crap, or because voting has gone down since points were hidden?
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pg
I did a quick check a few days after the change and IIRC voting was down by
about 20%.

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breck
Thanks. I wonder if the positive skewness has also gone down.

I'd guess there's less "piling on". Previously if a comment had a high point
score, you would stop to read it, and thus probably vote on it, causing it to
have an even higher score. The new system lacks that positive feedback cycle.
Top comments still are more likely to get upvotes because of their page
position, but there's no easy way to distinguish how much better comment #6 is
compared to comment #7 so comment #6 will get glossed over more under the new
system.

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dazmax
It could also skew the other way. Previously, I would often refrain from
voting up a good comment if its score was already "high enough", so that my
vote on an equally good but lower-rated comment would have relatively more
weight.

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ignifero
Have you considered the possibility to add more than just up/down votes, but
also "agree". I notice that oftentimes people downvote valuable comments just
because they disagree, but are too lazy to write a reply (but they don't
upvote them when they agree). thanks.

