

Ask YC: Is the lack of comments on most submissions a sign of declining quality? - jakewolf

Are we turning into another sensationalist news site?
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pg
The average number of comments per submission doesn't seem to have changed
much.

In any case, the number of comments on a link doesn't seem very highly
correlated with its quality: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=106893>

~~~
german
Quality is something hard to measure, we're in a community, so I think that
the quality of a thread is given by the number of points it has, not by the
number of comments.

The number of comments just mean that people have something to say about an
specific thread.

~~~
kingnothing
I disagree with your metric for measuring quality -- all one has to do is look
at reddit or digg to see that it fails. Of course, quality is in the eye of
the beholder. I'm sure there are plenty of things who think that reddit or
digg are the highest quality news sites out there.

Hmm... That's an interesting question. How do we actually measure quality?

~~~
german
I agree with you, for me the number of points a thread has is just a measure
of how many people in our community think it's an interesting topic. About the
quality of the thread, well, as you said, quality is in the eye of the
beholder, for example, the thread that pg is showing as an example,
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=106893>) is a funny and interesting one
for me.

How we actually measure quality?... Hmmm, that would make a great startup
right?

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pchristensen
Some articles don't leave much to comment on. If there some new discovery, I
think it's actually better that there aren't 15 comments saying "Cool!" and
"Awesome!". I think that the comments that are made are generally high
quality, so the signal to noise ratio is still high.

~~~
mixmax
While I totally agree, I read YC news as much for the comments as for links,
hoping to find some interesting or illuminating angle on the article - which I
often do.

And I really resist the urge to post comments that don't give a perspective,
an opinion, or a fact. Often I really want to write a "yeah cool" or "LOL"
comment, but I don't. There are plenty of those elsewhere on the net.

Sometimes I fail though.. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=106983>

~~~
BrandonM
The whole point of being able to upvote, in my opinion, is to be able to say,
"yeah cool" or "LOL" without creating a lot of noise. Our instincts may want
our name to show up saying "I AGREE WITH THIS", but once you get used to it,
it's not such a big hurdle to get over.

~~~
mixmax
Excellent point....

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airhadoken
This seems like a generalization of Warnock's Dilemma (paraphrased, "if a
forum post has no replies, it cannot be determined whether it is because it is
so smart and concise that it cannot be enhanced, or because it is too stupid
to warrant comment").

It's an information problem. We can determine from comment contents what about
an article warranted feedback, but we cannot determine anything from the lack
of comment (i.e. the one that never gets posted).

~~~
BrandonM
That sounds kind of like voting. I have heard people say, "Don't vote, you're
just validating a rigged system." At the same time, others equate low voter
turnout with general well-being; that is, they're not voting because their
life is good and not likely to change much either way. Again, it's an
information problem.

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dawnerd
I only comment when I have something useful to say. I really don't like
posting nonsensical bullcrap.

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jward
You weren't around last time applications opened for YC, were you? ;) The
entire site seems to sort of shut down. Submissions drop off, commenting
becomes practically non existent. The silence is very surreal.

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bitsantos
The problem I have is that with all of the great things to read about, I
forget about going back to the comments and leave my thoughts about it. :-P

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juanpablo
Or a sign of increasing number of submissions?

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mooneater
Seems like a sign of discerning readers.

Better silence than 100s of inane comments.

~~~
thorax
Just 1 this time.

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vlad
The increase in people who think such links are cool to submit and vote up is
the most direct sign of declining quality. This site has switched from startup
news to meta discussion about itself.

~~~
BrandonM
The increase in comments about meta discussion and comparison to digg/reddit
is a more direct sign of declining quality, in my opinion.

------
bayareaguy
Submissions without comments just aren't remarkable.

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ice5nake
If only I could read more than one thing at a time and then come up with
something insightful to comment about.

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thomas
Eh, I think most people (including myself) just read via rss, so commenting is
a hassle

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brk
Damn... I was so tempted to not comment on your submission.

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bprater
How did Slashdot do it?

~~~
kingnothing
They started digg to get rid of all of the idiotic comments.

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inklesspen
Yes.

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sarvesh
RSS feed items don't have a link that takes directly to the comment page. I am
too lazy to go to the main page, search for the entry and post a comment.

~~~
inklesspen
Try this feed I hacked up: <http://feeds.re.inklesspen.com/newsyc>

~~~
sarvesh
Thank you.

