
Ask PG: Can we see the response to the HN changes? - ZackOfAllTrades
Have people commented more? Does user karma matter?
Are there more "quality" posts? 
Is there a different subset of users posting?<p>Probably too early to tell, but it would be nice to see what happens when you take karma away from comments. I am trying to imagine reddit without it and it doesn't seem quite as interesting. Some hard data would be cool to look at.
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simonsquiff
Personally I'm really missing seeing the karma on comments.

Fundamentally, removing them has changed the balance of what karma is all
about. Karma previously had a function for the reader. It highlighted and
bubbled up the good. It showed where there were good counter points.
Now...well it's just for the account owner. It feels just like it's there for
your own rpg-levelling style dopamine hit. It feels pointless.

I really feel this is a mistake. Comment karma had a function for readers, not
just for account owner's inner satisfaction. This role has now been lost. It's
making browsing comments - especially for very popular topics with lots of
comments - much harder. I'm skimming a lot more or actually skipping the
comments altogether because I don't want to read them all to find the
goodness. It also means people can't learn from others what is or is not a
valued contribution.

So I really hope this will be reversed or at the least make a better way (more
than just what is the top comment) to make karma benefit the community not
just the individual.

~~~
angrycoder
I don't miss the karma at all. If you don't have time to read the comments and
evaluate for yourself which ones are good or bad, why are you even here?

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taphangum
What are you even talking about? The point of sites like HN is curation.

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nolanw
Do you ask museum curators what point value they assigned the paintings in
their exhibits?

The curation still happens without numbers attached.

~~~
taphangum
You don't need to. It's there, therefore it has value. Not at all like HN
comments.

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Terretta
I'd still like to see an experiment where the up and down arrows (generally
interpreted to mean "agree/disagree") are replaced with "| interesting | spam"
before the present "|link" in the comment header.

Or any two words that intellectually interrupt the "vote up / vote down"
reflex to vote down unpopular or dissenting points of view no matter how well
thought out.

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scott_s
I think we need to let it go on for at least a week before drawing any
conclusions. People need to integrate this way of displaying posts into their
mental model for the site, and that takes time. Before that happens, none of
the data will be meaningful.

~~~
dhimes
I agree. I feel like I need to get used to it first before I can decide
whether or not I like it. Besides- maybe more change trials are coming? I'm
actually curious as to how pg (and others?) is /are going to evaluate the
changes. Monitor chatter? Randomly distributed survey? I'm curious because I'm
not sure how much thought/effort it's really worth, and I wonder how much pg
&co think it's worth.

~~~
ZackOfAllTrades
Way too early to tell, but I figured I might as well get the idea out there
early.

And pg & friends probably have some different goals than what some hn users
are used to a online forum having. HN doesn't need to be monetized or have
huge page views for it to be a success. All pg needs hn to do is attract the
right people and scare off the wrong people. And I imagine that creates some
metrics that are more quality based than what most hn users are user to.

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pg
From a visual inspection things look the same as always.

~~~
mixmax
from this users inspection things don't.

\- I spend substantially more time wading through comments because I can't
pick out the good ones. This is particularly true of nested threads.

\- I often vote based on the current score. If the score is as the comment
deserves (in my opinion) I leave it, otherwise I upvote. I rarely downvote.

\- I can't pick out whether a comment is valid (based on scores, and thus the
opinion of other users). For instance if a user writes in a comment that
joshua schachter never invests in B2B startups I don't know how valid it is.

\- When someone responds to a comment I like to see the votes. This is
particularly useful when someone disagres with me - if the response gets a lot
of upvotes I can be fairly certain I'm wrong. If I don't see the votes I won't
know.

Besides, if we don't see scores they're not much good to users. My bet is that
over time people will vote less, since they don't immediately see their impact
anyway.

~~~
mixmax
This comment thread is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2438577>

Do people here think this is a forum for entrepreneurs? Do people think it's
OK to link to the HN thread and not the post? Without the votes I simply don't
know.

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noonespecial
I've made one important change in how I vote as a result of the hidden score
change. I'm now more afraid to downvote. My usual downvote algorithm was: If
offtopic/noise and score >-4 then downvote. Now I don't downvote for fear that
it already has 100s of downvotes and I'd just be dogpiling.

~~~
chrisduesing
Maybe I am misinterpreting it, but comments seem to vary in color from black
to nearly white. I am not sure how many levels of gradation there are, but it
seems that ones that have been down voted are lighter than those that haven't?

~~~
noonespecial
They do, but I don't know at what levels this happens. I'm kind of hoping not
to need a pantone swatch to vote in the future.

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davidw
Where I could see things changing is higher highs and lower lows: previously I
wouldn't downvote a well-intentioned but wrong comment below 0 or -1, but now
I might because I don't know. Also, previously, I stopped voting up the first
comment on an article if it already had a ton of votes, now I'm not so sure,
so I might vote for it.

~~~
Yzupnick
Why would you downvote a well-intentioned but wrong comment? If something is
wrong, explain why it is wrong. Downvotes, I think, should be reserved for
comments that are 1) pointless ex:"agree" or "great post" 2) mean ex: "How
could you be so ignorant!" 3) Way off topic.

Everything else should get ignored or warrants further discussion. In some
cases it is even important to upvote "wrong" comments.

~~~
davidw
If someone states that it is their firm belief that the Earth does indeed sit
at the center of the universe, with the sun revolving around it, I just can't
agree with it, and think it should not be a highly rated comment.

Same sort of deal when people are factually wrong, but aren't being a jerk
about it: I don't think they should rate that highly, but I wouldn't likely
vote them into negative territory either. And yeah, I might leave a comment
too.

~~~
3am
Then don't upvote then, it's simple! Remember <http://xkcd.com/386/>

I always thought that the saving grace of /. was the metamoderation. People
here downvote based on personal bias here frequently enough, and it would be
nice to have the bad actors dinged for it. I'm not saying you do this, but it
is done. Far better to have a highly upvoted correction.

~~~
davidw
> Then don't upvote then, it's simple!

Downvoting obviously wrong comments is very simple too. And useful. Like I
said though, in the past I've tended to do so because it's incorrect, not to
"punish" as I might with a mean-spirited comment, so I would never go past -1.

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mirkules
I really like it. It actually makes me participate more. It's always
interesting though to see how many points someone got that commented on your
comment, so perhaps after a certain "sleep" period we could be able to see the
score?

~~~
scott_s
There's already a timer that determines when a thread gets locked. Perhaps
after it's locked, display scores.

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abcd_f
The downvoting needs one simple change. It should not drop comment's score
below zero until it has been effectively voted down to -10 or thereabouts, in
which case it can be safely assumed the comment is a true junk and grayed out.

I personally used to use downvoting to sink comments that are of no particular
interest to me, and to promote other branches of the thread that I'd like more
people to look at and comment on. So there's gotta be a mechanism that would
allow for rearranging comments in a more popular order, but without punishing
their authors unnecessarily.

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raganwald
I'm delighted to see the end of comment scores, and if they are restored, I
think i will hack HN for myself to remove them when I read comments.

I like having the community filter articles, but when it comes to a
discussion, I like reading the arguments and deciding for myself. Scores do
influence my expectations around what's important and what isn't.

Besides, there is already a filter in place for really bad comments. If
something isn't at -5 or so, I really ought to give it the benefit of the
doubts and read it.

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eande
One more person really missing the karma numbers.

My algorithm was to read the first several high rated karma comments than the
article if interesting. I usually got the picture from the peoples perspective
quickly and it also eliminated lot of the repetition and noise.

Too bad, my hope and wish is that the karma on comments is coming back.

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spitfire
Question, what does the orange dot mean? and why are some users green now?

~~~
pdelgallego
I think green users are those that has been recently created.

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geuis
I'm liking the introduction of the flag link and coloring newbies green. I'm
50/50 on the comment points. I like seeing the points, but at the same time I
no longer feel they're necessary. To me, the flag and coloring are more
important changes that I hope stick around.

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3am
For what it's worth, I _really like_ the change. The almost unconscious
thought of "does this comment deserve more karma than it already has" was
useless, it's much better to decide whether it's a good or bad comment just on
its own merits.

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gluejar
On the iPad, the up and down arrows are close together. when I upvoted a
comment, I couldnt be sure I hit the correct arrow.

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kristofferR
I'm really missing it. It also breaks the user experience completely on other
HN-interfaces like the iPhone apps.

