

Ask HN: How do you like HN's new karmaless comments? - gnosis

Looks like HN has implemented one of the suggestions on the previous "How to stave off decline of HN?" thread:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696<p>Now there is no longer any display of how many upvotes a given comment has received.<p>What do you think?  Is this really an improvement?
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petercooper
My observation so far is that I am no longer voting any comments up or down
since there's no feedback. Usually I would vote up a comment that was good and
that didn't have the karma I felt it "deserved", and vice versa. Without that
"putting things right" motivation, I seem to have stopped. Interesting as I
wouldn't have predicted that outcome beforehand..

What would be interesting, though, is if _posts_ didn't show karma too. In
that case, I suspect I'd be _more_ inclined to vote because I wouldn't know
how well a post is doing and if I thought it deserved to be on the front page,
I'd vote it up. All comments appear in a thread, though, so there is little
reason for me to vote them up.

~~~
jnorthrop
I've actually found my experience is somewhat different. I'm reading more
comments now and voting more often. I imagine your comment, as it now stands
after 11 hours at the top, has plenty of votes behind it -- previously I
wouldn't have considered voting for it since it already had plenty of
"momentum," now, I can't tell, so I voted. Conversely I'm less inclined to
just vote for a low total post to "promote" it. At the end of the day I find
I'm treating each post more fairly without the count displayed.

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rorymarinich
I mostly read Hacker News without posting. I like the change. Something about
the feeling of reading comment chains changes when you can't see what the
faceless community has thought about every comment. Now you can read the
arguments without such an immediate bias.

It also makes me more aware of the clipped, cold feel of the dialogues we have
here. Most (though not all) exchanges here read to me as humorless and either
blunt or overpolite. I don't know if I entirely like it, but I wouldn't
immediately say it's a bad thing either. It works better, I think, in the tech
discussions, but elsewhere it keeps me feeling distant from the conversation.

Now, the question I'd have for people who post more than I do is: How do you
feel about comment threads where you see _your_ score but nobody else's? How's
that change your perception of threads when your score's high, versus when you
have a comment or series of comments in the greys?

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christoph
I think removing the display of karma will be a big benefit. It tends to be
that when a site gets popular, you attract idiots who want to use it purely in
the pursuit of having a "high score" on a popular site. Keeping the karma, but
not displaying it makes a lot of sense to me.

~~~
veb
If it's not displayed, how can I tell where the 'activity' is happening, so to
speak?

Does this mean I have to read each comment carefully(!), and ponder the
comment in a large psychological way(?!) ;-)

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staunch
1) I want to see my own points really badly!

2) I want to see how many points a comment has _after_ I cast my vote.

This is how Perlmonks does it.

~~~
PonyGumbo
For 1), click the "Threads" link at the top. You should see your comment-
specific points there.

~~~
staunch
This was changed after I posted my comment.

~~~
PonyGumbo
Ah, I didn't notice until today.

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marklabedz
It makes it more difficult for me to quickly scan the most "insightful"
comments when determining whether or not to read the article.

~~~
gnosis
I think the system is designed such that the comments with the most upvotes
tend to drift to the top over time.

So, if there is some correlation between the most "insightful" comments and
those with the most upvotes, you should see them near the top (eventually,
anyway).

~~~
latch
The problem I see with this is that upvote distribution across comments isn't
linear. Just because you are at the 1/2 way mark doesn't, in any way, mean
that the comment can be considered middle ground. A thread with 100 top-level
comments might only have 2 or 3 which the community considered insightful. In
which case, the 4th comment isn't really any better then the last (it might be
a difference of 1 or 2 votes).

Maybe a way to indicate that a certain branch represents X% of all votes?
Dunno, stupid idea probably.

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mooism2
It is too soon to tell whether this is an improvement.

~~~
achompas
I disagree, if only because I'm stopping to read comments way more than in the
past. Hiding karma really solves the "great comments with only one vote"
problem.

~~~
mooism2
You had the benefit of several more hours experience of the new system when
you wrote your comment.

But also, it will take a while for second order effects to emerge.

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latch
Something's really bugging me about this now..

You have a conversation between two people who disagree about a fact. They
both can't be true, but short of people posting useless "I agree" or "you are
right/wrong", there's no way to tell which is right and which is wrong.

~~~
fleitz
I think thats exactly the intent of removing the score, so that you have to
use your head rather than looking at a number.

I promise you that you can figure out which is right and which is wrong with
out without knowing the karma.

~~~
latch
I thought the point of removing the scores was to de-incentivize (??) people
from posting for karma. Or, put another way, to improve the quality of
comments.

I didn't think the goal was to remove the social benefits that come from crowd
sourcing. Now, unless a comment has a negative score, we need to waste time to
filter something that others could have already filtered for us.

~~~
gnosis
_"I thought the point of removing the scores was to de-incentivize (??) people
from posting for karma."_

How does it do that? People who post comments are still going to get karma for
upvotes.

 _"I didn't think the goal was to remove the social benefits that come from
crowd sourcing."_

Comments which get more upvotes still tend to drift to the top of the screen
over time. So there is still some indication of which comments probably got
more upvotes (they're the ones near the top of the screen).

Whether that's really much of a benefit or not to revealing a given comment's
upvotes is debatable. Apart from some really trollish or contentless comments,
I don't think the number of votes on comments is particularly indicative of
their quality.

As pg stated in the original thread which motivated the change to hiding the
upvotes for comments:

 _"The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b)
dumb that (c) get massively upvoted."_

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

Hiding the upvotes that comments get reduces the tendency of people to vote
with the herd. It also gets people to read more comments and read them more
carefully.

I think overall this is an improvement, but not an unqualified one (for
reasons discussed elsewhere in this thread and others). As I've stated
elsewhere, it might be further improved by revealing the number of votes a
given comment has gotten to each user who votes on that comment only after
they've voted on it. That will encourage voting and still discourage voting
with the herd.

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rwwmike
I like it. Let things move organically.

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joahua
As a relatively new user, I've found the visibility of karma on comments
helpful in observing community standards as to what constitutes a helpful,
constructive comment. Written guidelines can be helpful, but observing
community values by way of votes is much more so (IMO)

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lmeier
Removing the karma overall is a good thing, I think. However, it doesn't allow
us to see how much the community supports (or doesn't) a comment. Maybe a
system showing the percentage of karma per thread would be better.

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prawn
Quick q - what does the green username that I've started seeing indicate? A
new user? Certain level of karma? Got no result searching the Staving Off
Decline thread for "green".

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davesmylie
This should help prevent the reddit 'upboat' syndrome from appearing here...

Having said that, I don't think that this had become an issue on Hacker News
(yet)

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HardyLeung
I hate it. I understand the motivation, but the coin has two sides. Sometimes
I want to contribute, and the karma-less system allows for greater discussion
instead of easy convergence to groupthink. Sometimes I want to just benefit
from the insights, and I can no longer do that effectively without the comment
karma.

~~~
gnosis
One alternative is to hide the number of votes a given comment has received
until after you've voted on it. Then it could be revealed. I don't see much
downside to this. And it would encourage people to vote.

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codeup
This is a clever move.

The quality of social news websites with up-/downvoting of comments suffers
when people behave like in hives. This has increasingly been the case on HN
lately. Let the _content_ of a comment decide if you agree, not the _number_
of others who agree with the comment.

~~~
kordless
Then show me the vote count after I vote.

~~~
codeup
Why is it relevant?

~~~
prawn
As much as anything, I come to HN for the comments and the expertise of the
crowd in general for subjects outside my particular areas. If I don't have
time to read an entire argument/thread or study a topic in detail, it can be
useful to see the prevailing mindset. Sometimes that is akin to consensus.

Would be interesting to be able to enter a thread being able to see the votes
but not vote, or voting without seeing the results. First time you enter a
thread, that choice is locked in so you can't straddle the fence.

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JoachimSchipper
It's good, but it may make a mediocre reply to the top comment even more
"profitable" (in terms of both karma and attention) than it is now. Displaying
'10+ points' (only) may be useful, and will also make finding the "good"
comments easier.

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abbasmehdi
Not sure if it is the silver bullet, but sure does put an end to the
popularity contest.

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momzpie
Why is the order of comments so inappropriate? Is it based on Karma that a
comment has received that you order them?

~~~
raquo
Comments are ordered by smth like comment_karma / log(comment_age) so that
newer comments stay on top for some time

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chopsueyar
I feel naked, but I have been voting on more comments and responding much
more.

It is weird. I guess I like it?

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icey
As long as the comments are still ordered appropriately I guess I don't see
what the big deal is.

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davidmurphy
I dislike this change.

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Semiapies
No improvement.

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Mz
I think it's a good experiment. I have no idea how it will turn out. Like with
anything, I am sure it has its good points and bad points. The question of
most importance: Does it have the desired impact on the culture/comment
quality? If so, great. If not, whatever.

Following karma/votes on HN is one of the more harmless ways I have wasted
time online. The fact that it has such an appeal when I feel like crap may not
be a good sign. :-P

