Ask PG: Are comment scores ever coming back?

[hanifvirani]

The hiding of comment scores affected readability for me and as a result my participation in comments went down. Although I have gotten used to the new system now, I was just wondering if the hiding of comment scores worked out as well as you had hoped and if the scores are ever coming back. It will be interesting to hear everybody's thoughts regarding this.

[tokenadult]

The site founder, pg, asked for suggestions on how to "stave off decline of HN" in a thread he opened 787 days ago

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

He then announced the current (now long-standing) experiment of not showing comment karma scores just more than a week later.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333

He noted back then that he might change settings back and forth as the experiment continued. About two days later he opened a simple yes/no poll about the current experiment

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039

and not long after that he replied to a question with a preliminary report on how voting behavior has changed.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271

Since then we have quite a while with comment karma scores being visible only to the persons who submit the comments. (In other words, I can see my own score on each comment I submit, and I have no idea what scores there are on any other comment.) I think this system is working well. Comments in threads I follow have become better, and the better comments are more visible in the threads I frequent. I use the bestcomments view of Hacker News

https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments

from time to time as a reality check on how comments in other threads that I never read in the first place are doing. Generally many, but not all, of the comments on the first page of bestcomments are informative and interesting, and not mean or dumb. Paul Graham has stressed civility as a goal for our community here, and I know he is still thinking about further software tweaks to reduce the number of mean or dumb comments. It seems the direction he is going in now is to track how people use their upvotes and downvotes, so that upvotes of bad comments will somehow be discounted. I am not privy to the technical details of site administration here. I'm just replying as one user among thousands.

[tptacek]

I predict: no. Paul Graham seems to think that hiding scores has suppressed one form of pointless flame war (the one started by people watching comment scores fluctuating and carping about the unjustness of it all). For what it's worth, I agree.

Moreover: at this point, it's hard to see the value of putting them back. What would be gained?

[hanifvirani]

Comment scores helped me parse comments in long threads and helped me figure out the correct comments in discussions of topics I am less knowledgeable about. That being said, I also the see the point in having them hidden and the potential solution it offers to certain problems. I agree with and support these points too. Two years later, has it actually been beneficial? That is what I was looking to discuss.

[incision]

I like the lack of comment scores on HN. I don't even want to see my own scores or usernames.

Personally, I tend to associate discussion scores and counters with competitive/adversarial commenting, "bandwagoning" and "crowd-pleasing".

[hanifvirani]

There are pros and cons to both. I think I liked having them, but I would like them to stay hidden if it is indeed making the community better. And that I guess was the point of my post. Has it made the community better? Can that even be effectively judged?

[staunch]

I think it'd be really fun if voting revealed the username and the score. It'd massively drive up voting, which may be good or bad though. Perlmonks solved this by adding a null vote option (+1, -1, +0)

[ScottWhigham]

Good question. It hasn't affected "readability" for me but I think two side effects have impacted how I use/view HN:

1) It has led to a lot more "Me too!" and "+1" responses, just because no one can see the effect of your vote anymore.

2) It has given people less of a reason to vote up

Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5778412

Does this comment "have value" to the community? I don't know if any other members have voted for it. If I vote for it, what effect will I and the other members of the community see? Nothing. And that's a problem I see with not showing comment scores. The submitter will see his score, but the rest of the community will not get any "value" from voting for his comment.

I've also seen times where the first comment in a popular thread has no comments. Is that because it's a new comment, or because it's a comment from a member with high karma, or is it because it has a lot of upvotes? I have no clue. You have no clue. We have to guess ("I think it's because he has a bunch of karma and it's a new comment, so it floats to the top.").

So because there's less effect you immediately get from voting something up, I'd guess it's something that a lot of people just don't do anymore.

EDIT: It would be nice if you could see the comment score for items you have voted on.

[tptacek]

Why would that be nice? And, why give people a reason to vote on comments they wouldn't normally vote on?

[1123581321]

In addition to what's been said, I don't think it will be happen because it's a trend across social news sites to hide this information. On MetaFilter, hiding favorites totals is gaining popularity. On Reddit, more subreddits are experimenting with hiding comment scores and seeing less vitriol. So long as the best information can still be filtered (excepting Metafilter's sequential conversation format), there is little downside.

[daniel-cussen]

I like them off.