

Ask PG: Are comment scores ever coming back? - hanifvirani

The hiding of comment scores affected readability for me and as a result my participation in comments went down. Although I have gotten used to the new system now, I was just wondering if the hiding of comment scores worked out as well as you had hoped and if the scores are ever coming back. It will be interesting to hear everybody's thoughts regarding this.
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tokenadult
The site founder, pg, asked for suggestions on how to "stave off decline of
HN" in a thread he opened 787 days ago

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>

He then announced the current (now long-standing) experiment of not showing
comment karma scores just more than a week later.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333>

He noted back then that he might change settings back and forth as the
experiment continued. About two days later he opened a simple yes/no poll
about the current experiment

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039>

and not long after that he replied to a question with a preliminary report on
how voting behavior has changed.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271>

Since then we have quite a while with comment karma scores being visible only
to the persons who submit the comments. (In other words, I can see my own
score on each comment I submit, and I have no idea what scores there are on
any other comment.) I think this system is working well. Comments in threads I
follow have become better, and the better comments are more visible in the
threads I frequent. I use the bestcomments view of Hacker News

<https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments>

from time to time as a reality check on how comments in other threads that I
never read in the first place are doing. Generally many, but not all, of the
comments on the first page of bestcomments are informative and interesting,
and not mean or dumb. Paul Graham has stressed civility as a goal for our
community here, and I know he is still thinking about further software tweaks
to reduce the number of mean or dumb comments. It seems the direction he is
going in now is to track how people use their upvotes and downvotes, so that
upvotes of bad comments will somehow be discounted. I am not privy to the
technical details of site administration here. I'm just replying as one user
among thousands.

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tptacek
I predict: no. Paul Graham seems to think that hiding scores has suppressed
one form of pointless flame war (the one started by people watching comment
scores fluctuating and carping about the unjustness of it all). For what it's
worth, I agree.

Moreover: at this point, it's hard to see the value of putting them back. What
would be gained?

~~~
hanifvirani
Comment scores helped me parse comments in long threads and helped me figure
out the _correct_ comments in discussions of topics I am less knowledgeable
about. That being said, I also the see the point in having them hidden and the
potential solution it offers to certain problems. I agree with and support
these points too. Two years later, has it actually been beneficial? That is
what I was looking to discuss.

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incision
I like the lack of comment scores on HN. I don't even want to see my own
scores or usernames.

Personally, I tend to associate discussion scores and counters with
competitive/adversarial commenting, "bandwagoning" and "crowd-pleasing".

~~~
hanifvirani
There are pros and cons to both. I think I liked having them, but I would like
them to stay hidden if it is indeed making the community better. And that I
guess was the point of my post. Has it made the community better? Can that
even be effectively judged?

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ScottWhigham
Good question. It hasn't affected "readability" for me but I think two side
effects have impacted how I use/view HN:

1) It has led to a lot more "Me too!" and "+1" responses, just because no one
can see the effect of your vote anymore.

2) It has given people less of a reason to vote up

Example: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5778412>

Does this comment "have value" to the community? I don't know if any other
members have voted for it. If I vote for it, what effect will I and the other
members of the community see? Nothing. And that's a problem I see with not
showing comment scores. The submitter will see his score, but the rest of the
community will not get any "value" from voting for his comment.

I've also seen times where the first comment in a popular thread has no
comments. Is that because it's a new comment, or because it's a comment from a
member with high karma, or is it because it has a lot of upvotes? I have no
clue. You have no clue. We have to guess ("I think it's because he has a bunch
of karma and it's a new comment, so it floats to the top.").

So because there's less effect you immediately get from voting something up,
I'd guess it's something that a lot of people just don't do anymore.

EDIT: It would be nice if you could see the comment score for items you have
voted on.

~~~
tptacek
Why would that be nice? And, why give people a reason to vote on comments they
wouldn't normally vote on?

~~~
dennisgorelik
Voting score communicates social proof. It's easily digestible and valuable
information.

All other reasons are secondary.

~~~
tptacek
See that seems like a reason to _hide_ them; we hardly need more mechanisms to
validate superficial snark and dismissive snark.

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1123581321
In addition to what's been said, I don't think it will be happen because it's
a trend across social news sites to hide this information. On MetaFilter,
hiding favorites totals is gaining popularity. On Reddit, more subreddits are
experimenting with hiding comment scores and seeing less vitriol. So long as
the best information can still be filtered (excepting Metafilter's sequential
conversation format), there is little downside.

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daniel-cussen
I like them off.

