
An Update on HN Comments - sama
Several people have mentioned to me that the comments on Hacker News seem much better recently, and asked me what changed. As far as I can tell, two of our experiments are working.<p>The first is posting feedback in the threads about what&#x27;s good and bad for HN comments. Right now, dang is the only one doing this, but other moderators may in the future. We&#x27;ve learned some things about how to do it: 1) the feedback should be as neutral as possible; 2) it should be about the comment, not the commenter; and 3) where possible, it should say what would make the comment better.<p>Other HN users have been pitching in with feedback too, which is great! If you&#x27;d like to help, please do. Just try to follow the three guidelines above.<p>The second experiment is a change we made to the comment scoring and ranking algorithms. These algorithms do more than just counting and sorting because pg wrote a lot of code to address systemic issues as they came up over the years. But the community doesn&#x27;t stay static, so the algorithms shouldn&#x27;t either.<p>After studying the data, dang and kogir tuned the algorithms to make some downvotes more powerful. We&#x27;ve been monitoring the effects of this change, and it appears to be reducing toxic comments.<p>The majority of HN users are thoughtful and nice. It&#x27;s clear from the data that they reliably downvote jerks and trolls (and specifically, they don’t silence minority groups—we’ve looked into this). What dang and kogir found was a way to turn the volume up on this kind of downvote. We believe this has made the comment scores and rankings better reflect the community.<p>We will be trying a lot more experiments. We&#x27;ll stop the ones that don&#x27;t work and continue the ones that do.<p>dang and kogir, great work so far. I&#x27;m enjoying reading HN much more.
======
bravura
I appreciate the changes. But while we're on the topic, could I throw out a
thought?

It should be easier for a late-arriver on a post to add a useful comment, and
have it be promoted. Have you considered using randomization to adjust the
score of certain comments?

HN comments seem to exhibit a rich-get-richer phenomenon. One early comment
that is highly rated can dominate the top of the thread. (I will note that,
qualitatively, this doesn't seem as bad as a few months ago.)

The problem with this approach is that late commenters are less likely to be
able to meaningfully contribute to a discussion, because their comment is
likely to be buried.

One thing interesting about the way FB feed appears to work is that they use
randomization to test the signal strength of new posts.

Have you considered using randomization in where to display a comment? By
adding variation, you should be able to capture more information from voters
about the proper eventual location for a comment. It also means more variation
is presented to people who are monitoring a post's comments.

~~~
dang
One new experiment we're currently working on is something like that for
stories. If it works for stories, we may try a variation for comments.

~~~
dfc
So there is something that is different with the ranking/presentation of
stories?

Recently I have noticed that the front page will look dramatically different
(story wise) than it did five minutes ago. By dramatically different I do not
mean story #3 is #15 five minutes later, but that stories #2-12 will be
completely different some of which I remember reading 8 hours before.

~~~
dang
No, the experiment I referred to hasn't been rolled out yet. We'll post about
it when it does. In the meantime it's mostly moderation as usual.

~~~
dfc
So the method for listing stories on the front page has not changed recently?

~~~
dang
Correct.

~~~
dfc
Correct... _dfc, you are going crazy._

While you are here I should take the opportunity to thank you for making my
favorite corner of the internet even better. Thanks dang...

------
alain94040
I'd love to able to fold a nested conversation once I think that particular
branch is going nowhere. HN should treat the folding as a signal similar to a
down vote on that particular sub-thread. I often don't think any particular
comment warrants a down vote, so I have no way to tell HN that the thread
should be pushed back.

Plus everyone has been asking for a way to collapse sub-comments (and many
plugins do it already).

~~~
aeturnum
Personally, I fold almost everything once I've finished reading it. I don't
think it's a a very strong signal about the quality of the comments.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
On reddit, I often collapse long threads of comments if I'm bored of reading
them (I have neither the time nor the attention span). It has no bearing on
their quality.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
Something that I always found a problem was getting "stuck" in the middle of a
huge comment chain of irrelevant content, so I made a chrome extension to fix
it:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-comment-
col...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-comment-
collapser/njmimaecgocggclbecipdimilidimlpl)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
That looks fantastic. If I used Chrome I might even use it.

Its aesthetics are, well, not the best, though. Consider just a solid line?

~~~
mcjiggerlog
Yeah, I need to work on it some more ... that's top of the list!

------
jseliger
_dang and kogir tuned the algorithms to make some downvotes more powerful. We
've been monitoring the effects of this change, and it appears to be reducing
toxic comments._

That's interesting to me because I find myself downvoting much more often than
I used to. But the comments I downvote are not that often toxic in the sense
of being nasty. They're more often low-content or low-value comments that
don't add to the conversation.

The jerks and trolls are out there but I'm not positive they're most
pernicious problem.

~~~
whiddershins
I am very circumspect about downvoting, and rarely do it as I am still unsure
of the criteria. I rarely have the opportunity to downvote vitriol and trolls,
as others have usually done that and there seems little point in piling on.

I personally have a much higher threshold for comments which are worded
aggressively, sarcastically, or humorously. I occasionally find myself
upvoting comments which have been downvoted by the community due to "tone," if
I think the core statement has a bunch of validity.

Where I am most tempted to downvote is statements that repeat sticky memes
that have been repeatedly disproven, but "sound true" within areas I have the
most expertise, especially when they are presented as fact. Those kinds of
comments lower the bar more than any other, IMO, by forcing a debate over
whether the sky is in fact blue every single time the community attempts to
discuss weather patterns and cloud formation. However, it is unclear to me
whether that is valid criteria for downvoting, so I rarely even do that.

TL;DR I am unsure when to downvote so I mostly don't.

~~~
vacri
The criteria for downvoting is simply "do you feel like downvoting". pg stated
a while back that it is perfectly HN-acceptable to use the downvote as a mere
statement of disagreement. I haven't noticed any forum staff mention
otherwise.

I've seen downvotes on my comments even when they're neutral statements of
fact ("dang is a moderator, recently announced" got a downvote from some HN
denizen). Most people seem to follow the criterion you lay out though.
Ultimately if a good comment gets a downmod that makes it less visible (why,
oh why, does only one single downmod do this?) someone else _usually_ comes
along and 'corrects' it back to normal visibility.

~~~
pbreit
Some original guidelines suggest it was ok to down vote for disagreement but
I'm not sure "perfectly acceptable" would be the best way to put it. And more
recently I believe he was even less encouraging of the practice. My own view
is that down voting should never be used for simple disagreement (as long as
argument is decent and good faith).

~~~
kelnos
I'd agree with that. Comments I disagree with that are well-thought-out often
add a _lot_ to a discussion, or at least to my understanding of what's going
on and other people's points of view.

I do tend to downvote comments that contain obvious factually-incorrect
information, though, even if the information seems to have been provided in
good faith.

~~~
roghummal
How often do you upvote comments like that? Those comments you disagree with,
yet are well-thought-out, add a lot to the discussion or at least your
understanding of what's going on and other people's points of view.

I don't think people do that enough and it leads to comment-bloat. "I'll make
my point and then add in a platitude to draw in the upvotes, hopefully
balancing out the downvotes I'll get for my opinion."

~~~
kelnos
I'm probably slightly biased toward upvoting comments that I agree with,
assuming similar good quality, but I tend to upvote comments I disagree with
fairly often as well.

------
minimaxir
While on the subject of HN comments, I have a request: could the "avg" score
for a user be readdressed?

The avg score is the average amount of points from the previous X comments a
user has made. However, this _disincentivizes_ user from posting in new
threads which are unlikely to receive upvotes. I've lessened my own commenting
in new threads because of this.

~~~
codegeek
You are looking at it the wrong way. You should comment when you feel the need
to add value to the discussion. In fact, the more good/meaningful comments you
post, the more chance you have to get upvoted and _actually_ increase you
average over time.

~~~
doktrin
In my experience, this is a semi-truthful account of how karma on HN is
awarded.

I say semi-true in the sense that it's not wholly inaccurate. Valuable and
thoughtful posts _are_ rewarded and up-voted.

However, if my goal were to game the system for maximum karma per unit of time
& post, I would contribute comments to hot-button issues that were in line
with the prevailing mentality.

This is not to be facetious _at all_. I'm sure the moderators are well aware
of this, but it's quite astounding how many up-votes are thrown around in
discussions on polarizing topics (e.g. gender issues, NSA surveillance, etc.).

------
rdl
I wish there were multiple kinds of downvotes. "This is actually bad" (spam,
etc.) vs. merely useless, vs. factually incorrect but reasonably presented.

I mostly only downvote spam or abuse; I try to ignore "no-op" comments, and
would rather reply to someone with information about why they might be wrong
vs. downvote, but I'm not sure if this is universal.

~~~
ansible
_I wish there were multiple kinds of downvotes. "This is actually bad" (spam,
etc.) vs. merely useless, vs. factually incorrect but reasonably presented._

There's arguments for and against that.

On the one hand, we do want to minimize the mental effort put into making a
valid vote by a good community member. Up/Down is the simplest, and it is
mentally the easiest. When you ask someone to put that vote into a category,
that person may or may not then choose to vote at all, and we've missed the
opportunity to capture a bit of information.

On the other hand, requiring a little bit more thinking effort may yield more
information on average, and help better quality comments rise.

We do kind of have a two-tier vote system now anyway. You can downvote a
comment that is just crap. And you can flag a comment that is awful (spam,
etc.).

~~~
rdl
Upvoting should be lightweight, but I'm ok with downvoting requiring slightly
more effort (picking a reason).

I probably upvote 20x more than I downvote, if not more. (this would be an
interesting statistic to show the user on his own profile page, or even to
make globally visible).

~~~
roghummal
>but I'm ok with downvoting requiring slightly more effort (picking a reason).

How about downvoting requiring a reply? I reply to everyone I downvote, the
exception being copypasta, strictly-copypasta. A one-word variation on
copypasta gets a reply.

Be anti-echo.

~~~
kijin
> _I reply to everyone I downvote_

Thanks for doing that. I really hate it when a comment that I put some thought
into gets downvoted without a single reply. I'm pretty sure I didn't do
anything obviously wrong, so if somebody still doesn't like my comment (e.g.
they have a reasonable disagreement), I would like to know why.

Requiring downvotes to be accompanied by a reply would also make trolls
hesitate before they downvote something just because. Otherwise they
themselsves will be downvoted for their failure to provide adequate
justification for their downvotes.

But it might also have unintended side effects. For example, all those replies
will take up valuable screen space without actually adding anything useful to
the discussion, especially if the downvoted comment is worthless to begin
with, and especially in the downvote-the-downvote scenario that I just
outlined above.

~~~
roghummal
>I really hate it when a comment that I put some thought into gets downvoted
without a single reply. I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything obviously wrong,
so if somebody still doesn't like my comment (e.g. they have a reasonable
disagreement), I would like to know why.

This is exactly why I have that personal policy. If you pass the CAPTCHA, the
'post-to-account-age' ratio, and whatever tests you took to post then you
deserve a reason when someone clicks 'DOWNVOTE'. Let the software take care of
the real shit-posts.

>Requiring downvotes to be accompanied by a reply would also make trolls
hesitate before they downvote something just because.

If you think "trolls" are doing a statistically appreciable amount of
downvoting, I would suggest they aren't. "Disagreeable" people are more
interested in making their point than they are with suppressing the ability of
others to make theirs.

>For example, all those replies will take up valuable screen space without
actually adding anything useful to the discussion

'folding' comment branches would fix this. Not folding by default (unless
nested deeply enough to justify it anyway); That's just another way to hide
'undesirable' content.

>especially if the downvoted comment is worthless to begin with, and
especially in the downvote-the-downvote scenario that I just outlined above.

Put the power in the user's hands. Downvote-the-downvote comments create
transparency.

------
codegeek
"make some downvotes more powerful."

Yes this will be great. Any comment that has personal attacks,abusive
language, racial slurs, trolling, off-topic self-promotion/marketing etc.
should allow downvotes to be more powerful. Usually, comments like these get a
lot of downvotes pretty quickly but I am sure there are a few who upvote those
comments as well for their own reasons.

May be comments like those should not be allowed upvotes once it reaches a
number of downvotes ? Also, not sure if you guys already do this but really
bad comments should be killed automatically once downvoted a certain number of
times within a short time span ?

Now, when it comes to unpopular comments which are not necessarily outright
bad, I am sure those are tough to program because how do you handle the sudden
upvotes and downvotes at the same time ?

~~~
brudgers
I've experienced minority view comments being hit with downvotes, so I'm not a
fan of creating permanent statuses...or rather creating coarse rules for
applying permanent status.

It is also the case that comments with poor tone can be rehabilitated and
getting people to edit poorly presented thoughts to be presented more clearly
and directly.

~~~
te_chris
Totally this. I've normally been well received but believing state
discrimination is bad regardless of what ones personal beliefs are saw a wave
of down votes rain down (re: eich- don't even try to reply to that point, I've
given up arguing about that here).

Hopefully the algos take into account that sometimes one just holds views
which go against the community but aren't malicious.

------
stormbrew
Something that I've been finding lately is that replies to my posts have been
downvoted when to me they're fairly reasonable disagreements with what I said.
I've actually taken to upvoting replies to me that go grey a lot of the time,
even though I don't particularly agree with what they're saying.

To me it seems like a lot more stuff is getting downvoted than used to, and
I'm not sure I see a meaningful pattern in the places I see it happening.

~~~
dang
What you're seeing is a side-effect of the changes kogir and I made to the
algorithms, and we share your concern about it. We're watching the negatively
scored comments closely to see how much of a problem this is. The fact that
this change has had the huge benefit of reducing toxic comments does not make
it 100% salutary in every respect.

My current sense is that about 1% of the negatively scored comments don't
deserve it. In most cases, though, when users passing by see a slightly-faded-
out comment, they identify unfairness and upvote it back to par. I do that a
lot myself. If enough people do this, it's the ideal solution to the
problem—community practice is better than intervention. If it isn't enough,
we'll eventually do more.

~~~
personZ
>My current sense is that about 1% of the negatively scored comments don't
deserve it.

There is a profoundly strong confirmation bias going on in this whole thread.
Not only from you and the other mods (have comments gotten better? Comments,
in my opinion, have gotten significantly _worse_. Yes, they're "nice", but
more often than not of absolutely zero information or value), but much of the
feedback you get whenever you post is of the pandering, supportive, back-
patting sort. Because really, what is the alternative? The likely hellbanning
or slowbanning that is so often the resort of HN?

For years the same "we're tuning algorithms" argument has been plied on HN. It
is transparent, and I'm surprised anyone actually still buys that.

~~~
dang
I think I'll stick up for us a little bit here. I said "my current sense"
because I like to be cautious. But I literally look at every single negatively
scored comment on the site—a task akin to walking through slop—watching for
cases where the downvoted comment was both substantive and civil. There aren't
many of them, in my view. 1% is an overestimate. If you think I'm wrong, let's
see some examples. They ought to be easy to find.

Lame comments that aren't rude but just mediocre are also a problem, and one
which has been growing for years. That's not really what Sam's post was about,
though. We can't solve every problem at once; we don't even know yet what will
help with that one. One thing that would not have helped, though, is allowing
toxic comments to run rampant. HN already lost some good users because it was
heading that way, and we weren't about to let that keep happening.

Edit: By the way, since kogir and I made this scoring change, noticeably fewer
accounts have been getting banned.

------
specialk
I find the idea that commenters with higher karma having more powerful down-
votes slightly disconcerting. My fear is that if people down-vote comments
that are well meaning and relevant but they disagree content we will only ever
see one train of thought rise to the top of comment threads.

This could start a vicious cycle where voting cabals of power-users form. For
example if Idea X becomes popular among some members of HN they will be able
to always steer the discussion to talk about Idea X or down-vote a competing
valid Idea Y into oblivion. Comment readers could be converted to Idea X, as
it is always appearing at the top of relevant comment threads. So now the
voting cabal as even more members. Growing the dislike of Idea Y. The cycle
then repeats. The discussion is then steered over time by the thoughts of a
select few power-users.

Maybe this is just the natural order of things and I'm subconsciously afraid
of change. Thoughts?

~~~
ibejoeb
Do we know it's directly karma-driven? I'd hope it's more statistical, e.g.,
downvote to other activity ratio. I'd think that people who downvote very
infrequently probably mean it.

On that topic, I'd really love to see downvotes with an accompanying comment
weighted somehow.

~~~
dang
It's not karma-driven at all, except insofar as downvoting itself requires a
karma threshold—a restriction that has been the same for years. It's possible
that we'll lower the threshold at some point.

~~~
specialk
Thanks so much for the response. Can you tell us more about the algorithmic
changes, or is the HN source code public?

------
camus2
In my opinion,just like SO, downvotes should actually cost Karma. Yes
sometimes some messages are just bad and trolling but sometimes people get
downvoted just because they dont "go with the flow",and they have unpopular
ideas. So if a downvote cost 2 , the downvoter should lose 1 for instance. And
please dont downvote me just because you disagree.

EDIT: just proved my point,why am I being downvoted? it was a simple
suggestion yet,someone downvoted me,just because he can and it's free. I was
not trolling or anything... I just wanted to participate the debate.

~~~
xanderstrike
I don't think I agree with this. Remember that downvotes on SO only have a
cost when they're cast on answers, not questions, and that cost is a fraction
of the gain from an upvote (1/2 for suggested edits to 1/10 answers).

It makes sense for downvotes to be free on questions and expensive on answers
because questions are low effort while answers are high effort, and the
community wants to encourage more answers.

On HN, everything is low effort, and everything is worth 1 point. Also, our
problem with comments isn't that we don't have enough, it's that we have too
many low effort/factually incorrect/abusive/spammy comments that we need to
discourage. So it makes sense to keep downvotes free.

------
biot
Will there ever be the ability to upvote a story without it going into your
"Saved stories" section? 99% of the time I upvote a story it's because I want
to save it for future reference. I'd like the ability to upvote (and downvote)
stories based on whether they're HN-worthy without it impacting the "Saved
stories" section.

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, I'd also _love_ to see a separate "save" feature and split out "upvote"
from "save". I upvote a lot of stories just to put them in the "read this
later" list (which is how I view "saved stories") when I might not other
upvote them and give them an explicit endorsement.

~~~
maxerickson
"I think this is worth reading" seems like a high enough bar for endorsement.
I guess it is at least a higher bar than is used for many of the votes for
stories that already end up on the front page.

~~~
001sky
Controversial topics create a problem. People should be reading more than one
viewpoint on them. But submitting multiple stories creates duplication issues.
A 'save' function would allow people to increase access to information without
promoting the visibility of the topic on the front page.

------
kposehn
I'm glad to hear that these changes seem to be working. One thing I am
(slightly) concerned about is the occasional funny/witty/hilarious comment
that will get downvoted into oblivion rapidly. It isn't necessarily that it is
a troll posting, but maybe someone injecting a bit of humor.

That said, I do understand if the mods/community do not feel that witticisms
have as great an importance on HN - yes, seriously - so this is not a
criticism, just an observation.

~~~
chavesn
I've thought about this a little bit lately, and I've started to believe that
it may be difficult to have both; if you let "funny" start to be valued, then
it quickly overtakes the other values.

Having spent quite a bit of time on both Reddit comment threads and HN
threads, sometimes on the same topics, I find the earnestness and
thoughfulness of HN extremely refreshing. At reddit, I feel momentarily amused
but then I'm left empty from the total flippancy and lack of substance.

~~~
gus_massa
I think that most of the “funny” comments usually decrease the signal to noise
ratio. But I have a personal rule of not downvoting them when they are already
gray. I only downvote gray comments if they are very offensive.

------
Serow225
Dang and friends, any chance of tweaking the layout so that it's not so easy
to accidentally click the downvote button when using a mobile browser? This is
commonly reported. Thanks!

~~~
dang
We're going to release new markup that Kevin has designed that is more mobile-
friendly. (Sorry, I don't have an ETA, but we're working on it.) When it comes
out, please let us know if this is still a problem.

~~~
Serow225
Dang, since this is already a meta/feedback-y topic, I'd like to add another
request: consider giving YC employees /HN mods a distinctly colored username,
similar to how the OP is shown in green. I'll probably lose all my cool points
to admit this, but I didn't realize who 'sama' was that posted this thread :)

------
joshlegs
Wow. I am overly happy that you guys have figured out a way to give commenting
feedback. i had an account way back when shadowbanned for i never knew what
reason. Still dont. I feel like if this system had have been implemented back
then I would have had a better idea of what was wrong that I said.

Also, I'm pretty sure you've found the secrets to good Internet moderatorship.
So many forums went offcourse from ban-happy moderators that didnt want to
actually take the time to moderate the community, instead just banhammering
people. Kudos to you guys

------
mbillie1
> The first is posting feedback in the threads about what's good and bad for
> HN comments. Right now, dang is the only one doing this, but other
> moderators may in the future.

I've seen dang do this and I think it's actually quite effective. I'd love to
see more of this.

~~~
dang
Glad to hear it. What specifically makes you think it's effective?

~~~
mbillie1
I think HN is generally inhabited by intelligent but highly opinionated
people. Sometimes an opinionated discussion can degenerate into a frivolous
argument even between well-meaning parties. It's helpful to have input from
someone whose aim is the furtherance of productive discussion. Often all it
takes to turn a flamewar back into a reasonable debate is a prod in the right
direction. Generally the argumentative parties (myself included, perhaps
included foremost) were only carried away; many good conversations can be
salvaged with a bit of third-party influence. Obviously this doesn't apply to
trolling, etc., and I don't think heavy-handed modding is a solution, but at
least in the threads I've seen you participate as a mediator, it has been
beneficial.

------
chimeracoder
> The majority of HN users are thoughtful and nice. It's clear from the data
> that they reliably downvote jerks and trolls

I have to say, I'm a bit confused now. Aren't "trolls" the sorts of comments
that are supposed to be flagged[0]? (I understand that spam is meant to be
flagged, but HN gets very few true spam comments[1]).

What is the difference between downvoting and flagging for comments
specifically - and more importantly, what comments should be downvoted?

I've read conflicting arguments (both sides quoting pg, incidentally) that
disagree on whether or not downvotes should be used to signify disagreement,
or whether one should downvote comments that are on-topic but have little
substance (ie, most one-liners).

[0] I guess this depends on your definition of "troll", but I think a well-
executed troll is similar to Poe's law: the reader can't tell whether the
commenter is being flippant/rude or sincere. In other words, it's just enough
to bait someone into responding, without realizing immediately that it's a
worthless comment.

[1] eg, ads for substances one ingests to change the size of a particular
masculine organ, or (less blatantly) direct promotions for off-topic products.

~~~
tptacek
Do both, flag and downvote. Think of flagging as something used by data-mining
that the moderators are doing offline; when you flag something, you're calling
it to their attention. Not every bad comment needs to be brought to the mods
attention, so be a little bit thoughtful. But not too much; my understanding
is that not enough people are flagging.

~~~
chimeracoder
Out of curiosity, do you (personally) downvote either comments that you
disagree with (e.g. "We should all be using DNSSEC for better security"), or
comments that are factually incorrect (e.g. "Heartbleed was caused by
incorrect use of null-terminated strings in C")?

(I assume neither of these are inherently flag-worthy assuming they're made in
earnest and not egregious).

~~~
tptacek
I try not to downvote disagreement, except when I feel like downvoting will
keep me from writing a boring disagreeable comment.

------
maaaats
I like the new openness.

------
zatkin
I recently joined Hacker News, and actually read through the guidelines before
making an account. If there was one area where I feel that anything convinced
me to be smart about what I post, it would be those guidelines.

~~~
gargarplex
Just FYI, that first comma usage is erroneous.

[http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/03/david-foster-
wallace...](http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/03/david-foster-wallace-
common-word-usage-mistakes/)

------
Bahamut
I've seen plenty of downvotes around from people who didn't understand what
was being said/wanting to exert opinions. To be honest, that partly gets me to
just not want to contribute thoughts since they may be unpopular/do not jive
with a hive mentality, and has gotten me to visit the site less for the
comments, especially with the recent tweaks.

It'd be nice if something could be figured out to discourage this behavior
through reduction of the value of the downvotes of such, especially if a
comment has not had a response to explain the downvote.

~~~
illuminate
If you can phrase them interestingly and insightfully, they're not going to be
downvoted into oblivion. Perhaps you should put in the effort to explain them
to the uninitiated and you might change the dominant opinion?

Otherwise it seems like a hit and run for many people, from the outside.

------
aaronetz
I have noticed that people oftentimes downvote because of disagreement, even
when the comment seems to be okay (to my eyes at least). How about eliminating
the downvote, leaving only the "flag" which makes it clearer that it should
not be used for disagreement? It would also make comments more consistent with
top-level stories (which I sometimes think of as "root-level comments".)

------
User8712
Are comments ever deleted or hidden from view completely? I've been reading HN
for a year or two, and I've never noticed an issue with comment quality. In
topics with a larger number of comments, you get one or two heavily downvoted
posts, but that's it.

My question, is there an issue with comments I'm not seeing? Do the popular
topics on the homepage have dozens of spam or troll comments that are pruned
out constantly, so I don't notice the problem? Or is the _issue_ those 1 or 2
downvoted comments I mentioned earlier?

HN receives a small number of comments, so fine tuning algorithms isn't a big
deal in my opinion. This isn't Reddit, where the number one post right now has
4,000 comments. That presents a lot of complications, since they need to try
and cycle new comments so they all receive some visibility, allowing them a
chance to rise if they're of high quality. On HN, you have 20 comments, or 50
comments, so regardless of the sorting, nearly everything gets read. As long
as HN generally sorts comments, they're fine.

~~~
dang
There are two ways for comments to be hidden from view. One is "dead" and the
other "deleted". Comments can end up "dead" for a variety of reasons (such as
if the commenter is banned), but they're not really hidden—you can turn "show
dead" on in your profile to make them appear.

"Deleted" comments are hidden, but much less common. If a comment is deleted
it almost always means that the author removed it or (very rarely) asked us to
remove it later for a compelling reason.

When we talk about toxic and other low-quality comments, though, we're only
concerned about comments that are live on the page. So yes, you are seeing
them. I'm glad they haven't been spoiling HN for you! Personally I think the
fading out of negatively scored comments is one of the best design choices PG
ever made for the site. I once told him that, and he expressed surprise and
said he never sees it. (The admin version of the software doesn't do any
fading.)

~~~
amirmc
> _" Personally I think the fading out of negatively scored comments is one of
> the best design choices PG ever made for the site. I once told him that, and
> he expressed surprise and said he never sees it. (The admin version of the
> software doesn't do any fading.)"_

I concur. It makes a big difference to how I read the site and react to
comments, especially since comment scores are not visible. I'm kinda surprised
that pg (as an admin) didn't experience this.

------
tedks
>(and specifically, they don’t silence minority groups—we’ve looked into this)

How have you looked into this, and what have the results been?

What efforts are you going to take to ensure it stays true in the future?

There are other comments asking these questions that have so far not been
answered; it would be good to answer them. It's very unsettling when people
(primarily from a privileged/majority standpoint) proclaim that things "don't
silence minority groups" and handwave the justification.

In general I've found HN to be much more positive towards feminism in
particular than similar communities like Reddit or others that I won't name,
but the tech industry has large issues in this area and it's surprising to me
that this would be the case.

In particular, it seems likely to me that HN will selectively not-silence
minority voices that tend to agree with the status quo or pander to majority
voices. I'd be surprised if your analysis accounted for that, but I'd be very,
very happy to be wrong.

------
Thrymr
> posting feedback in the threads about what's good and bad for HN comments.

Am I the only one who thinks that posting more meta-discussion directly in
comments reduces the overall quality rather than increases it?

Maybe a downvote should come with a chance to add an explanation that can be
seen on a user's page or on a "meta" page, but not dilute the discussion
itself.

~~~
dang
Meta-comments do reduce quality—no question. They're almost always off-topic,
and they have an insidious fascination that can easily take a thread into the
weeds. All other things being equal, they're bad.

These feedback comments are a special case, though. First, it's an experiment
that we've always intended to be temporary. Second, there's reason to believe
that what they destroy in local quality they more than make up for in systemic
improvement. Third, I've noticed that—except when I've made a mistake—they
almost always get no (or very few) replies.

------
larrys
"It's clear from the data that they reliably downvote jerks and trolls"

Most people know what a jerk is. Perhaps though you (and others) could define
what a troll is for the purpose of interpreting this statement. (Of course I
know the online definition [1] but think that there seems to be much latitude
in "extraneous, or off-topic messages" or "starting arguments".)

Specifically also from [1]:

"Application of the term troll is subjective. Some readers may characterize a
post as trolling, while others may regard the same post as a legitimate
contribution to the discussion, even if controversial."

While as mentioned I know what a jerk is, I can also see very easily someone
throwing out "troll" to stifle someone else in more or less a parental way.
That is to nominalize something as simply not important or worth even of
discussion.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29)

~~~
dang
The more I think about it, the more it seems like a mistake to nail these
terms down precisely. If we try to, then whenever a comment doesn't match the
definition, people will argue that it must be ok because it doesn't
technically break the guidelines. That's not what we want to encourage. We
want HN to be motivated by the spirit of the law more more than its letter.

It's true that "troll" is particularly ill-defined. Perhaps we can try not to
use that word. I like the phrase "toxic comments" because, while imprecise, it
conveys what those do to the ecosystem. In practice, I'm not sure this is as
big a problem as it seems. As Sam pointed out, the bulk of the community has
little trouble recognizing these things.

~~~
cbhl
I think some of the lessons from "Raising a Moral Child" from two days ago fit
here. We tell people "don't be a jerk or troll", but when an individual makes
a toxic comment, we tell them "you're a good person, even if you wrote a toxic
comment, and we know you can do better".

------
chrisBob
The biggest problem I see is that the combination of a threaded discussion and
the strong ranking provides an incentive for replying to a another comment
even if a new comment would be more appropriate.

This, for example, is much more likely to be buried than if I replied a few
comments down on the thread from bravura.

------
olalonde
I know it would be a pretty big experiment both technically and conceptually,
but I will propose it just in case.

I have noticed that usernames might influence the way I vote. What if
usernames were not displayed in comments? Now this leads to two problems: 1)
it makes it hard to follow who replied to what in threads 2) it makes it more
tempting to post bad comments given the lack of accountability. I think the
first problem could be solved by assigning users a per-submission temporary
username picked at random from a name/word list. The second problem could be
solved by linking those random usernames to the actual profile page of who
posted (just like HN currently does). It wouldn't stop deliberate attempts at
up/down voting specific users, but it would remove the unintentional bias.

------
pearjuice
Can anyone explain to me how this is not putting the common denominator in
more power even further? At this point, unless you extensively agree with the
majority of the echo circle, I doubt you will be able to have any impact on
discussions.

Every thread is a rehearsal with same opinions at the top over and over and
non-fitting opinions float to the bottom. In which turn, they get less
"downvote-power" so they will stay low and can't get their peers above. I am
not saying that the current flow of discussion is bad, I am just saying that
participation is flawed.

We are simply in a system where you get awarded to fit to the masses and you
get more power once you have been accepted into the hive-mind. A circular-
reference at some point.

~~~
bertil
Find a comment that was well articulated and didn’t match what you consider
the hive-mind; find as many as you can, really: show how those got more
downvotes than similar comments matching the majority opinion, and less
visibility as a consequence.

~~~
pearjuice
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7481111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7481111)

Here's one of them. I could spit through dozens of comments and put a whole
list of comments here to satisfy your request further - but would it make a
difference? It's well known (and probably verified research can confirm) that
vote-systems adhere to common denominator circle-jerking.

~~~
tptacek
There's "out of the echo chamber", and then there's "fully out of the scope of
HN", and debating the merits of Turkey's suppression of the Internet vis a vis
the Internet as a conduit for western propaganda is "fully out of the scope of
HN".

There are good places to have that debate, and HN just isn't one of them.

~~~
ballard
Yup. It's not a geopolitics IRC chat. Only the tech aspects of evading
censorship would qualify but only if they were novel.

------
mck-
May I also suggest an update to the flamewar trigger algorithm? Or at least
this is what led me to believe it is a flamewar trigger [1]

Oftentimes a post is doing really well [2], accumulating a dozen up votes
within 30 minutes, jumping up the front-page, but then because of two
comments, it gets penalized to the third page. I can see it being triggered
when there are 40 comments, but there seems to be an awfully low first
trigger?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7204766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7204766)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578670)

------
gautambay
>> _and specifically, they don’t silence minority groups—we’ve looked into
this_

curious to learn how this analysis was conducted. e.g. how does HN determine
which users belong to a minority groups?

------
bertil
> specifically, they don’t silence minority groups—we’ve looked into this

I would love to have more details about that: what do you define as minority,
and how do you measure ‘silencing’.

------
lettergram
"We believe this has made the comment scores and rankings better reflect the
community."

It would be interesting to see how you could actually change the community via
comment filtering.

For example, if some individuals are always posting negative comments and were
previously not silenced. I wonder if now that they are being silenced if they
would leave the community entirely, just keep posting and ignoring the
results, or change their comments to fit the community.

------
mfrommil
I've always thought of upvote/downvote as a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" \- do
I like your comment?

Sounds like the new algorithm penalizes disrespectful/spammy comments, rather
than the "difference in opinion" comments (which is good). Could a 3rd option
be added to differentiate this, though? Have option for upvote, downvote, and
mark as spam (I'm thinking a "no" symbol).

------
dkarapetyan
Awesome. Keep up the good work. I am definitely enjoying the new HN much more.
The quality of articles is way up and the comment noise is way down.

------
raverbashing
I had a moderator intervention happen in one thread, however, I think the
moderators, when speaking "on behalf of HN" should have a way to indicate that
(like an indication on their username, or something similar)

Otherwise it looks like anyone just decided to intervene.

------
abdullahkhalids
It would be interesting if you published stats for each user: how often they
upvote and downvote compared to the average for starters.

It would also be useful to know how often other people upvote (downvote) the
comments I upvote (downvote).

These stats should only be privately viewable.

------
ballard
Definitely gotta give you guys a standing ovation for yeomen's work.

------
rickr
Is there a template or example post for the first item?

I've thought about doing this in the past but I didn't want to seem too
elitist.

------
onmydesk
"We believe this has made the comment scores and rankings better reflect the
community."

Is that desirable? A better debate surely entails more than one opinion. I
also don't know what a 'jerk' is, someone that disagrees with the group think?

I just don't think its that big a problem. But thats just one opinion that
might differ from the collective and therefore must have no merit? An odd
place. Over engineering! To be expected I suppose.

~~~
cbhl
Users can turn on "showdead", which will allow them to see all comments (and
upvote them, if necessary).

In general, disagreeing is just fine; one can do so in a polite way. Being a
'jerk' usually entails disagreeing and being vitriolic about it. (An example
of this is insulting the person rather than addressing why one disagrees with
the arguments in the comment itself.)

~~~
jaredsohn
There is no karma requirement for 'showdead'; it just requires being logged
into an account.

~~~
cbhl
Thank you, I have corrected my original post.

------
darkstar999
When (if ever) do I get a downvote button?

~~~
hashx
Karma threshold for downvoting is around 500

~~~
darkstar999
Thanks.

------
brudgers
It might make sense to increase the amount of time in which a negativemy
scored comment can be edited or deleted.

------
borat4prez
Can I use the new HN comments algorithm on my new website? :)

------
robobro
Thanks, guys - didn't come to say anything more

------
Igglyboo
Could we please get collapsible comments?

------
darksim905
Wait, you can downvote?

