Poll: Should HN display comment scores?
I hid comment scores after tptacek suggested it as a way to reduce arguments. There was a nasty kind of argument that used to happen, where people would literally try to score points off one another, and users voting on the thread became like a mob egging on two people fighting. I prefer HN without comment scores, because those fights really disturbed me, and they've practically gone away since I hid comment scores.
I realize there is another side to the story, though. Lots of people have complained that without comment scores it's harder to pick out the good comments. Some say that's better, because now you have to judge a comment for itself. On the other hand, with sufficient discipline one could presumably judge a comment for itself despite seeing the score.
Last time I tried asking this question, the voting was roughly even. I'm curious if there has been any drift toward a consensus.
290 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] thread1. comment scores let you quickly scan to see the most interesting comments
2. comment scores provide an additional layer of information ("what did the community think about this?")
3. comment scores make it easier to assess comment quality in threaded discussions (the most popular top level comments will move to the top of the page, but little information is provided about the quality of replies)
As a hacker I'm generally on the side of getting as much information as I can, as fast as I can get it. I'd love to bring back the comment scores and think of other ways to address the problem of nasty arguments.
I like when sites treat this as a fuzzy metric, such as on Newgrounds.
"This comment is helpful."
"This comment is not helpful."
"A consensus can't be reached about this comment."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696
in which you said 55 days ago, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted." I have never known exactly what the problem was previously. I suppose few people read this site exhaustively now that the message volume is so high.
Since you announced you would experiment with changes in the site,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333
I haven't noticed any inconvenience from comments not having visible scores. I have noticed several threads with much discussion of that meta-issue. And I think you have answered your own question here about the issue of site quality when you say, "I prefer HN without comment scores, because those fights really disturbed me, and they've practically gone away since I hid comment scores." I too like the new way of doing things. Some discussions that I participate in seem to have been better than they would have been three months ago.
But in one thread complaining about lack of visible comment karma scores that was fizzling out as these suggestions were made, several users wondered if a user who had accrued enough karma to upvote, downvote, and flag might be allowed to optionally view comment scores while giving up voting power. That's an intriguing idea. To some participants here, finding the comments with highest point values for skimming threads is perhaps more valued to them than voting. I have thought about that issue for a while. It seems to me that there are several possible responses to the suggestion that voting power be separated from visibility of comment karma scores. Perhaps the learned readers here can suggest other possible responses. In any event, I think it is your call to decide what to do.
If HN offered participants a choice of either voting (without comment karma scores visible) or seeing comment karma scores without having voting power, would that be a good idea? Possible responses include:
1) Yes, then some readers can skim threads for information, while others vote on comments, and everyone is happy.
2) Yes, because readers can skim threads for information, even if that inconveniences voters.
3) No, because comment karma scores are misleading as a guide to what to read. (See the post from just before when the experiment began
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696
in which some kinds of high-karma, low-value comments were identified.)
4) No, because everyone should be able to vote, and everyone should have a clue about which comments have a high score (through colors or fonts or approximate scores).
5) No, because the interface should be like it was last month, when everyone could see comment karma scores and could vote based on personal karma.
6) No, because HN users will use sockpuppets to get around any such distinction between viewing karma and voting.
Personally, I haven't committed myself to any one position on this issue, or indeed even committed to whether this is a fitting way to look at how to improve the site. I appreciate you asking for user response, and I wish you all the best in setting site defaults that build a civil, thoughtful informative community on HN that helps innovation flourish.
How about this as a counter mechanism. If a benevolent dictator admin decides that a comment is mean or dumb, they can mark it as a troll trap. Its votes go down to a maximum of 1, voting it up above 1 now harms the voter's karma and doesn't increase its vote tally. People who habitually upvote mean, dumb stuff will soon lose the right to vote at all.
It would be a boolean flag in the comment that turns it into a trap. The operation of the trap is: set points = min(points, 1) and then if someone clicks upvote when points == 1, then rather than set points = 2, instead set karma=karma-100. Simple.
If someone's being a jerk why not just use the current moderation/ban system that's in place? And if it's a specific idiotic/malicious set of characters that keeps popping up, just add a censor for it.
Pretty much all other moderation needs could be solved with slashcode-style meta-moderation.
You can only vote while you you can't see scores. If you toggle "show scores" you lose your ability to vote in that thread forever.
This eliminates the snowball issue, while letting those who want to quickly skim have a good way to do so.
Also someone will probably end up writing a browser extension to show the comment scores automatically on every single thread using information from another account.
In a similar fashion, nothing prevents someone from writing a browser extension to add comment scores back today, e.g. http://hnpoints.com/ ; The scores aren't official, but they serve the same purpose. Most people aren't going to install a browser extension. Of course, some will. But most people will just use the site as-is, out of convenience.
My personal opinion is to let it run it's course. RiderOfGiraffes at the beginning of this whole dilemma posted single page mirrors of the frontpage of HN taken once a month (or week) for the past few years. Looking through that, specifically the comments, the only difference I saw was that the commenters were much more buddy buddy and on a first name basis. Unless PG wants to redo the entire site and use some sort of invitation system much like a private BitTorrent tracker uses, I highly doubt a public community site would ever "avoid the Eternal September". Open registration means anyone can come in and be themselves. This will always change the community. Moderation can only go so far. If further action is desired, further action must be done.
What would you suggest, if anything, about being able to comment when you can see the scores? Would there be a risk of votes turning into additional comments, perhaps with deleterious affects similar to those of "voting based on visible scores"?
You would be correct in arguing that it does not resolve the sort of argument as describe in the second paragraph.
However, with regards to your third paragraph, in this situation each person can decide whether or not to see the scores
As far as I know, all users can still see their own individual karma per comment on comments that they themselves post (even for newly created accounts, I'm pretty sure), so everyone who makes an effort to post a good comment gets a delicious cookie now.
On a more serious note, pg might be misattributing the removal of scores for the improvements. HN is full of smart people who were already talking about community quality before the scores vanished.
I would like to see a second experiment where scores return, and someone makes a thread every month or so asking us to talk about the direction HN is headed in. Formal introspection could have the same effect without losing visible scores.
i think both of those could help solve the commenting-for-points issue, while still helping users determine which comments are of higher quality.
A possible solution is to scale by the number of people who look at the comment, although this might be difficult to do well. You could probably get better results by estimating a regression containing the following variables: age of post, score of post, number of comments, average score of comments in the thread, and the depth of the tree in which the comment was posted to get a good determination of how many points an average comment in that situation would get.
This seems like a rather poor assumption to me. For instance, am I mindful of not having an avg. karma that makes me look like a twit? Sure. But do I let that keep me from posting comments that I wish to post, just because I fear they will get low ratings? No, I know that things will tend to work out overall, because from what I've observed, if you make an honest effort to not be a total idiot on here, you will end up with a decent rating.
I trust the userbase, basically. It saddens me that so many users here, apparently including some of the site's creators and authority figures, seem to lack such faith to an extent that makes them want to hide features of the site from the userbase, even though a strong majority of the userbase says they want to see those features, in poll after poll, without exception.
I understand that the users are not always right, and that one can often achieve better results from ignoring the userbase. I just don't think this is one of those times.
I followed a multi-prong strategy and increased my karma from ~2 / post to ~4 / post over the course of about 4 months.
Things I (mostly) stopped doing:
(1) Carrying on personal conversations or debates about a specific topic. (2) Commenting on controversial topics, esp. with an opinion that might not be in the mainstream of HN readers (3) Commenting on things more than an hour or two old (4) Commenting on items that already have a lot of comments and points where I expect that my comments will not get noticed.
I also find it sad that I have to consider such a thing...
...but it works.
You don't. I don't care about average comment scores, just whether I recognize a username for consistently saying intelligent things.
Does this really happen? My gut tells me in a pool of 400 or so applicants you might recognize about 40 handles, with a recollection of comment quality in about half of those. Which is to say, comment quality has bearing in about 5% of applicants and virtually always positively.
That's roughly correct, yes.
For example, perhaps red = highly voted (based on averages), orange = moderately high, yellow = just a bit higher than average. Without an actual "score" perhaps the point-jousting would be reduced. If the jousts continue, you could reduce the resolution in the color grading system, so the incremental incentive for arguing is reduced.
The most important type of info that is lost in the current implementation, is that, as an observer, you can't currently be trained in what the culture of the site is by observation. Because of this, I think the current setting will cause the culture to eventually dilute entirely as it is no longer heritable. Posting comment like "Thanks" or "very interesting!" which, while polite, waste everyone's time is the type of cultural affectation I mean. It is no longer obvious to newbies that this is discouraged--and when newbies are the majority, it won't be discouraged.
The non-voting view comment scores option is very interesting though...
If you still need more depth, add a fourth level to the scale.
I noticed that downvote buttons disappear after a while (24 hours after posting is my non-scientific impression), but upvote buttons never do; If e.g. 95% of the votes happen within 48 hours of posting, it might make sense to drop the upvote buttons as well at that point, and display the points -- if you believe they are useful.
Personally, I'm happy with the comments just sorted by points and don't care for the actual number -- although, while you're at it, I would be happy if there was a controversy indicator of some sort -- when I read threads, I'm often interested in the consensus and the controversial. I can find the consensus in the first few posts; I can't tell where the controversy is.
I mostly see this in the form of low quality or offensive comments that get lots of up-votes from people who agree with the poster's opinion - usually if a good comment gets down-voted because the majority disagrees, someone says "why the down-votes? its' a legitimate point", and it gets boosted back to positive.
Having the comment scores show up after some fixed amount of time (1 month?), would add a little to that experience.
I think they would, could... ok, might have more value, if there was some way to get them more easily in front of the right eyeballs at the right time. How many "seeking advice..." threads appear that remind us old timers of one or several prior discussions that would still be highly relevant.
If we have the time and inclination, we google or otherwise search up a link or three. When someone else does so, I know that I for one am inclined to follow those links.
Seeing comment scores is useful, because it lets me easily see the "best" comments. I don't see the problem with showing comment scores once the discussion has died down.
It's also useful to be able to see comment scores when browsing old threads, looking for specific information (using searchyc, bookmarked threads...).
*: of course, this approach is good for simple HN "consumption", but participating is harder, since few people reads the comment I make on week-old threads...
This is actually why I think comment scores should remain off indefinitely. People (including myself) have become too reliant on scoring as a measurement for the merit of comments. That may have worked when the site first started and had a small close-knit group of users. However, any site which experiences growth as HN has will inevitably become diluted for both quality of comments, and scoring, I believe. Yet, people will not adjust for that as they continue using scoring to inform them what is "best".
In other words, when I use HN on a daily basis for the community, I'm browsing the latest articles in high-volume fashion. When I use it as a technical resource, I'm probably only hitting a few old articles. But pageview-for-pageview, the old articles that pop up when I'm doing a search offer me much more value than the ones I browse daily.
While you must certainly be right re: the degree to which traffic goes to old vs new articles, I think you might be underestimating the value of old HN threads. The traffic going to old articles probably has different purpose and those pageviews are probably not isomorphic to typical pageviews coming from the front page.
Judging from the replies to your comment, pg, at least some people read old threads. I know I do. I find helpful advice and information from them all the time. I think that people reading these threads should be able to get the benefit of seeing the scores.
The arguments against showing comment scores are almost exclusively about the thread quality. If the scores aren't shown until it's too late to comment, there isn't going to be any noticeable impact.
If I haven't overlooked anything significant here, you wouldn't be hurting any aspect of the site, but you'd be helping some people get more out of it.
On threads older than 24 hours there is no reason to hide, so just always display comments if older than 24hrs.
Just a thought, seems like it might work.
1. Use labels to indicate score comments. Rather than using precise numbers, labels like (low, medium, high). That way we can still see which are the interesting comments, but not see the exact score (so people stop nitpicking on 1-2 random points).
2. Remove the name of the person who posted the comment. Keeping it completely anonymous might help your mob egging concern. Also, that way the comment gets more attention than the person who made it.
The reason is because HN was (is) becoming more affected by the same cycle we've seen play out where content from a small set of users which reflect core site values makes the site good, but this draws more attention and users until content quality begins to suffer; quality posters leave, and find some new site which starts the cycle again.
I think leaving off the comment scores is the only way to check that unwanted behavior. We have to deal with the inconvenience of not relying on scores to skim comments, but I think that can actually be a good thing; I think that's just HN at a new (more sustainable) maturity.
So I guess you can put me down in the category of "Don't show numbers, but do discretize the points and show colors/symbols/something based on that." One thing I'd especially like is a designation for replies that outscore their parents.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/05/following-the-cr...
I'd be interested in seeing the results of a poll with just the top 100 users* participating.
*http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
Nasty argumentative comments should always be voted down, right or wrong. That people gained karma from them is a failure of the community, not the HN UI.
It fits my use cases which are skimming for good comments and figuring out if something I don't know much about has value (for example, if someone says, "they should have done it this way. . .", it can act as a barometer of the suggestion's value). It also seems like it would be easy enough to implement.
I'm not going to vote on the poll because I've actually found that the level of discussion has felt better without the votes shown. I enjoy the site more for the reason you've cited. Not to psycho-analyze too much, but the lack of vote scores removes the pressure to have the best comment or a better score than someone that has a different perspective. Even if two people are being totally respectful to start with, it can become psychologically difficult when the other person is getting more votes. One might try to make it a debate (that they're trying to win against the other person) more than a discussion (in which two parties are trying to figure out the truth together).
However, the site has become a bit less utilitarian and it sometimes does take me longer to weed through the information in the thread. Maybe varying the color of the usernames based on the comment score (and capping at 12) would add some limitations and fuzzyness to it that would meld the two. Capping at 12 would mean that both parties arguing might get the same public presentation of 00FF00 and that might quell the need for parties to prove that they're the winner of the argument by popular vote. Likewise, humans don't perceive colors exactly and that might add another layer that would diminish people comparing themselves so much and trying to score points. I guess I think it would be interesting to see if this would be a nice balance.
Example: A person posts that they think VPSs are better for hosting than renting a physical box and they talk about their reasoning (machine images that you can bring up more boxes of, launching new instances within minutes, whatnot) and it's a good comment. Someone replies espousing the virtues of physical hardware (a tad more speed, not sharing IO, whatnot). Now it becomes a bit of a competition between the two ideas (and the two posters). They were both good, valuable comments about different approaches. There is no right answer and there might not even be a better answer. The community knows this and both have comment scores above 12, but each person feels pressure to "win". With the green usernames, they're both at 00FF00 and have no idea if the community has given the other person more votes. There's no need to score points off each other or need to defend one's ego. You know you've made a valuable contribution and the other person has also, but for all you know they've gotten a good fewer votes than you. It still allows everyone reading the two comments to know that they're both generally good advice. So, there isn't a fight and an on-looker can see that both comments should be read and headed.
This. ^ As someone pretty new to the HN community, I really feel like the idea in the above comment would make it easier to contribute my ideas and thoughts to a discussion.
People only need a general idea of the score for it to be informative of value.
Also, I think we should switch it up so that comments are dimmed at more like -1 or -2. Otherwise, if the first vote is a downvote, people might overlook an otherwise decent (or controversial) comment.
This is needed. I'm constantly upvoting valid, neutral things even if I don't really have an opinion on them simply because their first vote was down, likely by a disgruntled parent post.
You've never been able to downvote replies to your own comments.
However, that is merely the method, and the idea of identifying quality stories is still sound.
That said, I don't think hiding scores is the only solution to this problem. I'd like to suggest an escape valve of sorts: If we accept that, from time to time, a bandwagon-bait comment will inevitably get voted up, we can consider a mechanism to deflate it. There is a simple way, to designate moderators who can demote these comments; then there is a more interesting way:
I hypothesize that there is an observable pattern to the votes over time of bait comments. It would be very interesting to see a comparison of highly-rated comments through a histogram: Is there a particular curve that insightful comments follow? Do bait comments have a signature spike at their tipping point? Can these be modeled in a straightforward way? The system could then be set up to slow, halt, or even reverse upvoting when a comment fits the model.
[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271
Just as long as you don't overdo it, or say anything too controversial.
IIRC, the comments I made that got the highest scores were accidental emotional rants that, more than embody some clever original insight, were in agreement with a large number of people. Usually the well reasoned ones get around 5. To get above that, I'd really have to play for the crowd, something I am not inclined to do. I value this place.
Would that actually be better? Heck if I know. It'd certainly make grinding to 600 karma, so you can downvote people you disagree with, harder.[1]
1: Just kidding! Also, vi is better than emacs, and freebsd is quantifiably superior to linux.
Why do we want comment scores?
Because we want to be able to pick out quality comments quicker.
What is broken with comment scores?
They have created a motivation for people to try and game the comment scores. A simple way to do this is by writing polarizing comments, or kicking up an emotional debate. This hurts the comment system.
So what is the root problem? Why do people want to game the comment scores?
The reason people want to game the comment scores is because the comment scores are tied to their identity. If you can find a way to tie comment scores to the comments, and disconnect them from the user's identity, there should no longer be a motivation for people to game the comment scores.
So how can we do this? Here are a couple of my ideas.
1) Kill the current karma system and replace it with some new system. Why? Since karma is tied to comment scores, people don't just get the instant gratification of seeing their comment get voted up. They get to keep those points as long as they have the account. When you log in you see your karma score right next to your name, just begging you to try and raise it.
OR
2) After 10 upvotes (or some other chosen value) start fading the username from grey to green, and immediately replace that user's name on the entire page with a randomly chosen tag. It could be Alpha, or Liono, or characters from the 30Rock, doesn't matter. As long as it isn't directly tied to that user's identity anymore. If you replace the user's name with the same randomly chosen tag, then readers will still be able to see that that person's comments come from the same person, they just won't know who it is.
All I know for sure is that if comment scores come back they can't be tied directly to the user's identity.
IMO Removing karma won't improve the quality of the conversation.
Equally, anonymous, or pseudo-anonymous, comments give the commenter more freedom to make unhelpful comments.
Comments are tied to the identity, which goes at least some of the way towards them being self-moderated.
I still think the perceived reward of having high ranking comments has to be removed somehow.
What do you think bruce?
Karma should be displayed to the logged in user in a vague fashion: "Karma: good." The numeric score can be maintained on the server, but never displayed to the user. Downvotes and other abilities would simply show up one day when you've passed a certain threshold, but the user should have no idea how far along they are, as we're trying to dissuade the people that want those sorts of powers (and would abuse them) from getting them. Meanwhile, negative karma could start rate-limiting you past a certain point, such as only allowing 3 posts/day.
I'm still of the belief that the only way to ensure high quality discussion is to discourage commenting for it's own sake. Everybody does not need to contribute to every article, and having a numeric karma score only legitimizes posting for its own sake.
To reiterate my support for a previous point: the only way to fix the karma system is to kill the ego's involvement in it.
Simple systems, like the current karma system, can certainly be gamed, but with each iteration general value is lost. Displaying comment scores (which I prefer) can be abused. So that's gone, and a data point with it.
Keep them, don't keep them, I don't think I'll lose much sleep either way. But as a general rule, removing data or functionality from the many, to try and prevent the excesses of the few always invokes the ire of unit ended consequences. It's almost never an improvement.
I do like the idea of dumping any visual notification of karma. The system could keep track for whatever things it needs to (minimum karma to vote, flag, etc), but there is really no reason for the community to know what that karma is.
The point I'm trying to make, is that a score is more useful to someone using a plain text browser than a class attribute. Though there is nothing to stop you doing both.
Adding more contrast with the background helps pick out the good/important comments, when skimming, and is consistent with the semantics of text color fading. Although it would be even more consistent if the text color transitioned to something, I think it would look worse.
An additional option would be to adjust text color by downvotes and background by upvotes - this would also highlight controversial posts, which may or may not be desirable.
This is exactly the wrong thinking and is why comments should be hidden. If that's what you do, you won't necessarily find the best comments, just the upvoted ones.
Here's a proposal: You can see the scores, but then you aren't allowed to vote in the thread. Maybe it can be implemented as you can see scores if you are not logged in. Then bandwagoning would have to be a deliberate act.