

Ask HN: Seeing points again? - jacquesm

I can see the points again. I take it that I'm not alone (or seeing things due to lack of sleep :) ) ?
======
pg
Users I talked to seemed divided (at best) about the desirability of hiding
comment scores, so I brought them back.

At least one good thing came of this experiment, though. There's now a new
function for ranking comments, with a faster time decay. I should have done
that before, but taking away points made the need for it more obvious.

~~~
dcurtis
I was kind of enjoying it. Can we try for a week, maybe?

Also, the new comment ranking algorithm seems to demote highly ranked comments
a bit fast. I can't click the comments link for an article and then read a few
good comments immediately. I think there's more value in time tested, highly
ranked comments than in new blind ones. Are you tweaking it at all?

~~~
pg
But you were one of the users who didn't like it
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=845254>). What changed your mind?

~~~
skolor
I'd like to jump on with everyone else who has said "a day isn't long enough."
In particular, a day over the weekend, where the site traffic is way down does
not show any real significance as to how it will work out in the long run.

A few people have mentioned simply adding the feature as a greasemonkey
script, but I would like to point out that the only way something like this
works is if everyone does it, not just as an opt in. It may help that user a
little bit, but it makes the problem worse over all.

From my brief experience with the hidden points it looks like it will cause
massive karma inflation. I know it was mentioned that a lot of people set a
certain value that they thought a post was worth, and voted to try and help it
attain that point. It seems (looking at my karma gain over the weekend,
compared to the week before) that far more people vote that way, than were
voting with points hidden.

As far as point/no points, I vote to put it back. I know its rather anecdotal,
but looking at my recent comments I can definitely see which ones were
actually worth posting, and which were rather pointless, due to the points
that I received for them. In the past, it was hit or miss. Generally, you can
expect points for an early comment, no matter what it says, and the total
incoming karma would be heavily related to the time of posting. With points
hidden, that didn't happen.

Figure out what you want to attain, and give it a chance. One day isn't nearly
enough.

~~~
cema
[skolor]I know it was mentioned that a lot of people set a certain value that
they thought a post was worth, and voted to try and help it attain that
point.[/skolor]

Interesting! Would it perhaps be worthwhile testing a "score this post", or
perhaps even "score this comment", on a fixed scale (say, -5 to 10 points)?
Karma could still be calculated the old way, but a post/comment will now have
two metrics associated with it, the (new) score and the (old) karma gain/loss?

~~~
skolor
In the first thread it was mentioned several times that people voted for posts
to give them what they felt was a good score, not as a +1/-1/0, but to give
them a specific score.

For example, I have a fairly reasonable idea of a 1
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848274>), 5
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848482>), and 10
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848201>) point posts (note, these were
just chosen fairly quickly off of the front page items, not trying to call
anyone out for anything). Generally, I won't down vote people unless they are
approaching the next group up when I don't think they deserve it, and will
upvote if they are lower than I feel the post deserves. I know several other
people mentioned feeling the same way, and it seems like there are far more
people who felt that way and refrained from voting on most comments precisely
because of that (at least if the jump in comment scores on my posts are
indicative of the scoring in general).

------
fjabre
Issue as stated by PG: comments section was beginning to feel a little mob-
ish.

Solution 1: Remove scores on comments.

Solution 2, 3, 4, n: ?

------
mkyc
We should use an orange dot, the opacity of which goes up based on the score,
with alt text. This isn't a console. It was refreshing to be able to check
scores with hardly a glance, even at the cost of seeing _exactly_ how well it
scored.

------
lacker
It would be interesting to see the impact of the UI and scoring changes on
stats like average # of threads read per session, likelihood of users
commenting, stay time on a comment thread, etc.

------
mkyc
Turn both on. The dot will allow people to skim, the score will inform the
overly curious.

------
fjabre
Is it heresy to suggest thinking about 2 columns instead of 1 for comments..?
Looks like there is plenty of space to do this.

I know I prefer to process information looking at a grid instead of a single
column.. but maybe that's just me =)

~~~
fjabre
ahh. I've been publicly flogged. I'm going to put on my dunce cap now and sit
in the corner.

At any rate, why allow a comment to get negative points pg? Just delete the
comment or let it sit at 1. It definitely feels a little vindictive and
childish in here at times.

EDIT: For context - My original comment was at the coveted dead last -1
position but has since been up'd. Thanks ;) I still say we do away with
negative numbers. If someone is flaming another or using excessive language,
let the mods do their job and delete the comment.

------
hs
using chickenfoot in firefox:

//begin include('~/jquery/jquery.js'); b=new Button('hide comment heads',
function() { $('.comhead').hide(); }); insert(after('add comment button'),
b)); //end

click the new button injected to hide comments. can be automatically triggered
whenever ff opens <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=*>

you can make it fancy like toggling instead of hiding, or showing only points
or authors, but it's sufficient for me (actually i use auto-hide-trigger-with-
no-button which is simpler)

------
ujjwalg
Thank you PG for bringing it back. However, the time decay is too fast IMO.

Also an orange dot for comments with more than +2 vote difference from the
previous comment, might be useful.

~~~
oxygen
I am not sure if the point system changes my behavior or writing style. It
definitely impacts my reading style. Let me think of a good experiment to
verify.

------
pclark
I'd like to not see the score till I've voted.

~~~
apgwoz
But, then if you wanna just see the score, you'll vote up/down without reading
the comment, which sort of goes against the entire idea to begin with.

