Ask HN: Would HN be even better if comment karma scores were invisible?
Many years ago[0] I asked which mechanisms were in place here to punish noise and reward signal.
Overall I think: dang does an incredible job, the guidelines are great, and the site itself is really well designed.
But I often wonder: Would HN be even better if comment karma scores were invisible? By all means, continue to use votes for sorting, and perhaps continue greying out items once they fall below some threshold (ideally -2 or worse, not zero). But what value does the visible score provide? And does that value outweigh the negatives? From observation of myself and others, having the score visible leads to some unhealthy behaviour.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=239058
6 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 31.2 ms ] threadI would personally prefer to never see the actual numbers, as I know really high scores make me feel good, and low scores make me feel bad, and in a lot of people that sort of thing drives addiction and unhealthy habits (like checking and re-checking your upvotes as some sort of personal validation). Every so often I see people complaining about their scores which suggests it does affect people more than it should.
I think one of the reasons HN is so much better than other sites is the minimalist design, including the avoidance of "engagement" (i.e. addiction) anti-features, like emojis/reactions, automatic scrolling, and personalisation of the feed. Showing the scores also falls in that category to me and should be removed.
Getting downvoted or flagged on a comment isn't fun but it is important in understanding the community and how to interact with it. Ultimately every person needs to manage how they use HN so that it is a resource useful to them rather than a distraction.