

Ask PG: hidden mod commenting? - yters

When I mod people, sometimes I'd like to explain why.  However, comments become way too cluttered with noise if many people did this, and not everyone leaves contact information.  Would it be simple to add some kind of hidden mod commenting system?<p>I think this would add value to karma (greater weight to mod points with rationale?).  I suspect conscientious people hold off on modding because they want to communicate their intent, whereas others mod freely without caring about the consequences.  Consequently, there are more "noise" points than "signal" points, and the information content of karma is lessened.
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mdemare
I don't see the point of explaining your mods. I think modding comments is of
dubious value by itself.

Private messaging might be helpful, but I don't see an urgent problem to be
solved.

~~~
yters
Yeah, I see your point. pg probably uses a better weighting for submissions,
and there usually aren't too many responses to read through.

I do see this weighting scheme being useful for the best comments list, or a
meta list weighted entirely this way.

~~~
yters
And I do still think an explanation for modding has merit. I know, it seems
insecure to want an explanation for people's reactions. We macho geniuses are
supposed to know it all and have perfect control of the room (especially if pg
is around)...or at least we need to give that impression; and what better way
to learn how than to get private feedback on hacker news?

Also, why are people modding the grandparent up?

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mdemare
Because people agree with me. And that's why modding is so useless. What you
want is new insights being modded up - what you get is people being modded up
for expressing well what everyone else is thinking, and modded down for
dissenting.

I wish I could say that karma left me cold, but it doesn't - if somebody mods
me down I feel insulted, if somebody mods me up it feels like praise.

To get on YC-topic, there's room for innovation here...

~~~
yters
Along those lines, what do you think of a wikiable application for forums such
as hacker news?

<http://arclanguage.org/item?id=1884>

I think it would be pretty neat for the community here. This would create a
small feedback loop for ideas such as yours, and you don't have to bootstrap a
new community to test new schemes.

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derefr
I had the idea once that when you mod people, you _must_ explain why, or it
doesn't count. In fact, commenting and modding would be one and the same--in
order to reply to something, you must mod it first; clicking the arrows opens
the box. Then, I had the idea that your vote is weighted by what people think
of _your_ comment, and so on... eventually the scheme got too complicated to
implement.

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pg
Who would see the comments?

~~~
bayareaguy
Suppose you could make a reply "private", meaning only you and the person
you're replying to could see your comment.

Their reply to your private reply should be automatically private, effectively
creating an isolated thread.

People who want to disagree indefinitely on some fine point could do so
without creating a ruckus.

If anything especially worthwhile came up in the discussion, either party
could easily just repost it as an ordinary public reply.

To discourage people from harassing each other with private replies, you
should only be allowed to downvote them.

This would also allow people an easy way to say "Thanks" or "I agree" without
having those comments pollute the top level space.

~~~
pg
That's an interesting idea.

News.YC does support sending arbitrary messages to other users. It's just only
turned on for us and YC founders. I could turn it on for everyone. Would
anyone want that?

The advantage/disadvantage of using messages is that they wouldn't be tied to
a particular comment. There's also the disadvantage that everyone would invoke
whatever that quote is about every system evolving till it adds messaging...

~~~
yters
To tie a message to a comment the sender would include the link.

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mwerty
I think you are asking for two features - a way to privately exchange contact
info and a way to publicly/privately explain rationale for up/downmod.

I really like the former but am fine with the noise of explaining mod-
rationale in the comment itself.

~~~
yters
Yes, good clarification, though I would say private messages instead of just
contact info.

So, I propose two independent features that seem simple:

1\. Private option on comments the receiver can turn off.

2\. Weighting of points based on whether the moderator responded to the
moderated comment. This requires a reflective pause in the person's action if
they want it to have greater significance, reducing knee jerk moderation
noise.

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dcurtis
While this is a pretty good idea, it adds a significant amount of complexity
to news.yc. A lot of the appeal of this site is in its simplicity, and adding
this public/private commenting system would kind of sacrifice that feeling.

~~~
yters
What would you say about a simple, self similar surface that allows for deeper
layers of complexity, if the user wants?

Perhaps just adding an invisibility option to a comment, which the receiver
can deactivate?

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dcurtis
Hmm. There's very little difference between actual complexity and perceived
complexity. If you add options for features that could possibly increase
complexity, you also increase the chance that someone feels the perception
that the app is complex.

For that reason, I still dislike the idea of hidden/user-activated features.

~~~
yters
If it was in the text markup, then it wouldn't be perceived.

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DarrenStuart
I like the idea but it will just end up with tit for tat down modding. It
would only work if the down modders idenity was hidden from the person.

I actually think you should get a point for commenting in the first place,
this might get more people commenting and joining in.

