

Ask PG: How has voting habit/volume changed since being hidden? - scorchin

It's been over a week since you started experimenting with HN [1]. It would great to hear some feedback on what significant changes (if any) this has caused to the voting habits of the user base.<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333<p>Edit: Seems that PG answered a similar question recently http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002
======
Smirnoff
I personally do not like the fact that the voting process is being hidden. I
hope PG will take it away soon. These are my reasons:

1\. From my experience, I stopped voting because I am not being educated on
the fact that we need to vote (well I can't see the rating, so why vote). I
have a feeling that other users act similar. Please confirm.

2\. The voting process shows the values of HN. Comments that are ok in
techcrunch would be downvoted here within a second. And I feel that voting
system needs to be open to educate new hackers & founders about what's
acceptable and what's not. I know there are rules but we learn by practice.

3\. When voting process is open, good comments get even more votes, and
irrelevant or bad comments get even more downvoted. I personally don't want to
read irrelevant posts. I have limited time but now I feel like going through
comments that really don't have enough information.

PG, I hope you take my personal opinion into consideration. Thanks

~~~
sliverstorm
In regards to #2, I still think hiding low-value comments in some fashion
would be the way to go. For example, how about hiding comments that fail to
receive X upvotes within Y days? (And, of course, an obligatory link to
display all comments, or perhaps all comments in a sub-thread)

Something simple like (for example) a comment needs 1 upvote per day to remain
unhidden, until some number of days pass or some number of points are achieved
(4? 5?), and then the comment remains visible in perpetuity.

I like the new no-points system, but I do agree #2 is a concern and could used
some tweaking.

~~~
Smirnoff
Yes. I agree that we need to hide some comments that really don't add any
value.

On the side note, I got more votes right now than ever before. Go figure how
people think about voting o_O

------
random42
My personal observation has been that, while blind-folding _might_ have been
good for curation of the comments, by avoiding the bandwagon effect, but it
has serious ill-effects on the readability, especially for the new subject
matter for the reader.

In the past, there were 2 signals of the comment-quality in the thread.

1\. Vote count.

2\. Positioning in the thread.

Now, that Vote count is not visible, There is only one signal left.

1\. Positioning in the thread.

It makes it very difficult to segregate good comments from the bad ones, and
decide which comments add to the topic, and hence worth reading/discussing,
_especially_ on a large thread, on a new subject matter, reader does not
understand very-well.

Few suggestions to improve the comment readability of the thread.

1\. Would it make sense to hide the comment count of a thread till a
particular threshold (say votes < 7, comment time < 10 mins), or of the entire
thread comments (thread time < 30 mins, number of comments < 30) and the
likes, and make them visible to add to the readability/visibility of the
thread?

2\. Would it help if the up-votes are capped?

~~~
grandalf
There was always a huge first-mover advantage to getting a high scoring
comment... so I think your #1 above was actually a misleading signal.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>There was always a huge first-mover advantage to getting a high scoring
comment

It's right for good comments that are read by more people to receive more
votes. Also that the first person to make a particular comment should be
higher voted as repetition of the same insight isn't improving the thread.

~~~
grandalf
_It's right for good comments that are read by more people to receive more
votes._

I don't agree with this. Just b/c someone was first to post a mediocre comment
doesn't mean it's good or worth reading.

Also, early posts are often knee-jerk and among the least thoughtful of the
thread.

------
tokenadult
This is an interesting question. Thanks for the link here to a recent comment
by pg on how karma scores are looking on various individual comments.

In sizing up what this means, let's all review together the stated reason for
the experiment, expressed in a thread-opening post by pg titled "Ask HN: How
to stave off decline of HN?"

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

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

How do the highest-voted comments visible in the bestcomments list

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

look to all of you recently? Are there fewer mean comments than before? Are
there fewer dumb comments than before? Are the comments that are "massively
upvoted" since the experiment began mostly comments that are reasonably kind
and well-informed, helpful comments on the whole? In most of the treads you
visit, do helpful, thoughtful comments seem to rise to a position of
prominence, while mean or dumb comments gray out?

A link and comment in the thread referred to by the edit on this submission
largely sums up the back-and-forth about visible comment scores as a signal on
comments in active threads:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357>

>> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the
comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them.

> I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm
> not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's
> comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was
> worthwhile.

My impression too is that even with comment scores not visible, it is still
convenient to browse threads to find thoughtful, informative comments, but now
there is less anchoring bias

<http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm>

of most votes on a comment converging to one score level that shows up early
in a thread's development, and more engagement by readers of HN in actively
reading comments and upvoting (or downvoting) based on each comment's
characteristics in light of the context of the thread.

But the main criterion of the experiment is to "stave off decline of HN," and
that is what will decide if the experiment was successful. For that every
reader can help by actively upvoting informative, helpful comments, and also
by downvoting comments that are either mean or dumb--and especially comments
that are both. As I recall, the experiment has also involved some changes in
the effects of flagging, so flagging inappropriate comments is also helpful.

~~~
bfung

      but now there is less anchoring bias
    

I think this is a large one. I've been participating more in discussions
lately because the content seems more thoughtful.

    
    
      How do I know what's important without vote counts?
    

Read and decide what is good and what is bad. For posters, being concise helps
people reading. The higher voted comments should move to the top like in the
past(?) Forcing both sides to be more thoughtful makes the quality content and
participation better.

~~~
AndyNemmity
Agreed, I think quality has improved, and either by placebo or by reality, I
dig it :)

------
jdp23
To me, the site has gotten a lot less informative and interesting since the
votes have been hidden. The voting numbers really help me understand what
people are thinking: how strong the consensus is, how much support there is
for dissenting opinions. Without that data, at least for me the value of the
discussion here is significantly reduced.

~~~
stonemetal
I would have t agree. There was ask HN recently where someone was asking for
advice. The advice I would give was already posted so I up voted, but now the
guy doesn't know if the advice had 100 up votes and really well regarded or if
he just got really few responses. I could have made a yeah what that guy said
comment to make my agreement more visible but that is rather frowned upon.

~~~
ollerac
I'd guess that "yeah what that guy said" comments won't be as frowned upon
with the new system.

~~~
pyre
But how does that affect the "Decline of HN?" I would think that threads
filling up with comments where the summary of the content is a "+1" or a "-1"
detracts from the rest of the conversation thread. Especially with something
that would have normally gotten 100 "me too" upvotes.

------
pg
Sorry guys, but YC interviews started today so I'm busy all day for the next
week and a half. Maybe after that I'll write a little code to do some
analysis.

~~~
instakill
Many people seem to be saying they've been voting less. Could you please
include a script that counts total weekly votes prior to the change and post-
change to see if the total number of weekly votes has shifted downwards?

~~~
pg
Crude tests suggest there is about 20% less voting.

~~~
palish
This seems like a good thing for comments. The goal for comments is civility,
not democracy.

Actually, the goal is for the comments to be _interesting_ , but they will be
because there are interesting people on HN. If interesting people are leaving,
then that's a problem.

I feel that the tone of comments in general has improved significantly. Maybe
that's confirmation bias, but I feel much more "at home" on HN now.

~~~
joeyespo
It's still a democracy if high-scoring comments float to the top though. Karma
just adds to it by functioning as a reward system.

------
praptak
My personal totally unscientific observation is that I seem to upvote less
often. On the other hand, I seem to be getting slightly more upvotes than
before the change.

~~~
jraines
I upvote more because I never think, "well, I'd just be piling on at this
point". And it's more based on agreement or appreciation instead of righting
karmic injustice.

~~~
praptak
That seems to be in line with pg's response in the linked thread with the same
question.

------
redler
Since scores have been hidden, voting on a comment feels less like a
contribution and more like talking to myself. I vote less. It seems like one
dimension of the community -- an admittedly imprecise form of collective
intelligence -- is missing. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but the comment
threads feel ever so slightly "flatter".

~~~
simonsquiff
Agreed - I'm voting less. Voting seems to have less 'point'. Previously it
would feel like voting was (in a minor way) helping the community, by helping
to point out to others comments that deserve reading. Now only the comment
writers see the score, it feels voting up is only to 'reward' the writer with
a bit of karma. To me it devalues what karma is about and makes it feel very
selfish. Its lost its value to the community. Whilst karma influences the top
comment, this doesn't seem enough to make it valuable enough to vote
regularly.

------
ary
Having done some redesigns of HN to see my own reaction towards the
concealment of scores and other elements I have to come out in full support of
concealing comment scores. After playing with a layout that concealed the
scores for comments _and_ stories I'm also a big fan of ditching score display
for stories.

My experience was what I think common sense dictates. Since I couldn't see a
score I couldn't let that color my opinion of a given comment and _had_ to
read it. This point alone has significantly increased my engagement in the
threads I care to read and made me more carefully consider the top level
comments on a story. Since pg turned off comment scores I've wondered if the
primary reason people have reacted negatively is due to losing a positive
status indicator. This is to say the score might have nothing to do with one's
_own_ engagement with HN, but with one's concern for other user's perception
of their comments.

One other change I experimented with was moving the score of stories and
comments to the far right top of the story/comment so that it wasn't the first
thing in my line of sight. This helped with my bias as well.

At the end of the day this all anecdotal, and your mileage may vary.

------
citricsquid
I can't explain _why_ but it's pushed me away from commenting.

~~~
Locke1689
Is that a bad thing? I personally think the greatest threat to HN is not bad
comments, but too many mediocre comments. I think the best case scenario is if
only the people who had a lot of knowledge or things to say about a given
thread commented. It's equally easy for HN to be dragged down in a comment
deluge as it is for comments to simply become worse.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Thank you. One of the implicit assumptions of user-generated content sites is
that every user should be given a voice. Unfortunately, this creates feedback
loops around certain topics (around here, it tends to be Linux/C/vim) because
there are too many benefits attached to discussing those topics; namely, karma
and [illusory?] in-group status.

One idea is to give each user only a finite number of comments they can make
in a time period. As their karma increases, so does their comment allotment.

------
SeanDav
One idea I really liked from the previous discussion on this was to hide the
Names of all comments for a few hours.

This way comments really can be voted on their merits rather than the fan club
of the commenter.

~~~
jamesbkel
This could become very confusing on new comments with several layers of
response/conversation going on. That said, I like the spirit of the idea.

~~~
ary
Perhaps the names on a particular thread in the discussion could be revealed
once you vote or comment on that thread?

------
joeyespo
I'd be interested in seeing how we'd react with a logarithmic voting system.

Base 10 for example: the most-significant digit would be visible and the rest
be zero's: '5' -> '5', '42' -> '40', '256' -> '200'.

That way, you could still see the impact of a comment while hiding the voting
trends and other numeric details that keep you from unbiased (err, less
biased) voting.

~~~
vorg
It might be more mathematical to use e=2.718 rather than 10, and perhaps even
displaying the log value instead of the rounded number, e.g. 3 -> 1, 9 -> 2,
29 -> 3, with suitable fiddling for negative vote totals.

~~~
jimktrains2
Why is it more mathematical to use e? (Hint: depending on what you're trying
to do, it's not.)

------
shasta
Just to toss out an idea that addresses some of the complaints I've seen: you
could always reveal the total score after votes are placed (and you could
replace the score with a question mark until then, clicking on which would
indicate "I don't want to vote" and would reveal the score). If hiding names
is under consideration, you can solve the thread confusion problem by
replacing names by letters in a consistent way. Again, real names could be
revealed by clicking, removing the ability to vote. The main problems I see in
this are when revisiting threads later (now you cant vote on new comments) and
the possibly dominant strategy of beginning every post with an allusion to "my
bingo card software".

------
maverhick
For me the amount of votes did matter - it gave you a quick idea as to where
some of the most important comments were within the thread. Also HN seems to
having far lesser activity - this someone with actual data might want to check
and get back

------
random42
No votes showing up, is bad for "Ask/Show/Tell HN" type of submissions, where
the submitter is asking to see what "wisdom-of-the-community" says (even if he
has the entire knowledge for subject matter).

For example, asking for feedback or feature suggestions on the recently
developed product to the community, will not be much helpful, if comment votes
are not shown up.

------
malnourish
I have a few ideas, but first I will say that I like the hidden karma. 1)
_Show karma after a vote._ I feel this would assuage the claims that voting
has no meaning or impact. 2) _Order threads by replies/length._ Not foolproof,
but in many instances longer comments and threads are more meaningful and
relevant. 3) _Karma visible when not logged in, hidden when logged in._

Again, just ideas, I'm sure they can be improved or refuted (and I'd much
enjoy the discussion). If you feel a comment is inaccurate or misleading,
reply to it and explain. The reply will tell more than a number will.

------
joelangeway
I'm not sure I care about comment scores, but I am concerned by how much other
people seem to. Relying on scores to choose which comments to read is like
getting all your news from the most watched cable news channel. I might prefer
that the comments be sorted chronologically.

------
razzmataz
In being a participant in many of these online communities, these kind of
things sometimes seem like a losing battle to me. There will always be a slice
of the population that will try to game the 'karma' system on sites like HN.
Slashdot went thru this years ago. Kuro5hin went thru it. Digg. Reddit.... All
sorts of solutions are proposed, like hiding a user's 'karma' rating, having
the user population meta moderate ratings on comments...

I do find it interesting that the comment score has been hidden. That's kind
of novel, and it might be the kind of solution needed in this case.

------
Zakuzaa
There was a similar thread couple(?) days back, PG replied. Search.

~~~
scorchin
Yup, here's the thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002>

------
Locke1689
As someone who's been here from a while but not from the beginning, I find
myself relying more on name recognition. For example, on this thread I saw
tokenadult's, grandalf's, praptak's and criticsquid's comments first because I
had a recognition of quality based on their history of commenting.

------
Sukotto
Two ways the changes have impacted my browsing:

1) Removing "by" at the start of each comment stops me from trivially finding
every other comment by the same poster in a given thread. Searching for just
the name adds noise to the results. Usually not a lot, but I find it annoying.

2) Removing comment scores from our thread feeds makes it much more difficult
to skim through all the things a given user has said recently looking for
gems. Instead of a nice pre-filter (skim for posts exceeding some minimum
score) you have to read every comment, no matter how inane.

------
eande
I agree with several statements here that the HN lost some information level
since the removal of the karma. One more voice here would like to see some
statements from PG and how the change affected the community. If there is a
donation button to get the karma back I would contribute.

------
markkat
PG might consider doing something similar to what I am doing on Hubski
(<http://hubski.com>). -Scores have ranged values, only the user sees their
absolute score.

Maybe I can give something in return for the great source code. :) Thanks PG.

------
pbhjpbhj
My given comment score average has plummetted yet bizarrely my actual average
comment score is higher than the average before the alteration (due to one or
two over-regarded comments).

------
pzxc
Unfortunately the changes have broken one of my most used Android apps --
HNDroid. I hope either the changes here revert, or the app developer updates
it, cuz I miss it! :(

------
dimmuborgir
Either get rid of the whole Karma business or allow everyone to both upvote
and downvote. Anything in between is just a hypocrisy.

------
jaxn
I would be really interested to know if anyone is looking at the comment
posting velocity of users before the change and after.

------
thucydides
It's harder to figure out what's worth reading.

------
norova
I have a suggestion: make it an option and give users the choice to view vote
counts.

~~~
norova
HN is going in the shitter these days. Negative karma for posting an on-topic
suggestion. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

------
clarkevans
I've started (just now) using a stupid '+1' comment because I thought the
reader should be looked at.

~~~
michaeldhopkins
Hey, I appreciate you +1'd my comment but it's better not to do that. The
ideal on HN is for every comment to be worth reading. If you want to draw
attention to a worthy comment and are frustrated the votes are hidden, just
contribute something to the discussion. The subthread will grow and more
readers will notice the comment and your reply to it.

------
keefe
...notices that they have been hidden...

