

Discuss with HN: Does anyone besides me look at the ratio of comments to points? - ph0rque

I find that if there are more comments than points, then the article has a good chance of being controversial. When vice versa is true, then the article is either being ignored (if there are few points), or a lot of people like it. Maybe this can be made into an official metric?
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yan
When there are few comments and a lot of up-votes, I assume it's a very good
bit of technical knowledge or a nice tip.

When there are a lot of comments and few up-votes, as you said, it's probably
a discussion of a flame-baited blog post or controversial material. But in any
such article, there is usually one post with a huge percentage of the votes in
the first place that sums up the article very effectively.

A lot of up-votes and a lot of comments is probably a news release.

edit: I'm against about making this an explicit, official metric. I've come to
learn from experience that once an organization or site tries to implement
explicitly what emerged from its community, it's almost universally panned by
the community.

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unalone
_I've come to learn from experience that once an organization or site tries to
implement explicitly what emerged from its community, it's almost universally
panned by the community._

That's because features often come from the community rather than from built-
in functionality. The users still control that process. Once it's built in, it
becomes law, and that sucks.

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barredo
I do, but HN it's the first socialmedia news site where comments remain
insightful and interesting and without meme-jokes even after dozens and dozens
of comments.

I, personally, usually like more the conversations and comments here than the
original posts

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Femur
I found that I tend to enjoy topics with a lot of up-votes and low comments
the most.

I would say that your assessment is correct. I am, however, against making
that an official metric; things are working fine as is.

