[oltdaniel]

I wouldn't see a good point for this. HN is focused on these counts, because only they allow you to identify the "importance" and "discussion size". Would be like twitter without a like and retweet counter. How do I know its important? Is it something I support and give a like, to boost its rank?

Something like [1] is more useful than hiding information.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23804469

[holler]

> how do I know it’s important?

This is an interesting topic. I’m working on a new discussion site (sqwok.im) and I explicitly opted to exclude voting. Instead to determine importance I’m using a combination of signals like live activity, publish date, etc, with plans to include further ones at a later time. I echo the sentiments from other commenters and even pg himself in regards to groupthink, and I feel that there’s room for exploration on other alternatives.

[brianyu8]

That's a really interesting premise! I'm going to keep an eye on sqwok.

[brianyu8]

It's true that upvote count and comment counts are the best way we have to quantify the quality of a submission. That's why I still browse the top posts page and will still upvote a post that I think is high quality.

But for me, upvote and comment counts bias my perception of a post. I'm choosing to hide these counts so I can read articles uninfluenced by the number of points they have relative to other posts on the front page.

[oltdaniel]

Thats why I read the title first, decide whether it is important or relevant to me, if so I check it out. If I like it, I upvote it and if I have something to throw into the discussion I add a comment. Personally, I use the numbers to indentify "quality" and "valid facts". Invalid posts have a large number of comments and less upvotes.

[2038AD]

> How do I know its important?

How do you choose books to read or topics to study? Sincere question

[oltdaniel]

Because they are recommended or have been explored by a lot of people. Would you buy a product off Amazon without seeing the number of reviews? How do you know it is "quality content".

More votes than comments = something worth reading and seems to be valid content. Less votes than comments = seems to have invalid points with a big dicussion.

HNs "quality index" for each post can be "calculated" by everyone. Without these numbers you don't know these kind of informations. The title of a post should always be in the focus, thats for sure. But thats why it has a larger font.