This is an interesting question. Thanks for the link here to a recent comment by pg on how karma scores are looking on various individual comments.
In sizing up what this means, let's all review together the stated reason for the experiment, expressed in a thread-opening post by pg titled "Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?"
look to all of you recently? Are there fewer mean comments than before? Are there fewer dumb comments than before? Are the comments that are "massively upvoted" since the experiment began mostly comments that are reasonably kind and well-informed, helpful comments on the whole? In most of the treads you visit, do helpful, thoughtful comments seem to rise to a position of prominence, while mean or dumb comments gray out?
A link and comment in the thread referred to by the edit on this submission largely sums up the back-and-forth about visible comment scores as a signal on comments in active threads:
>> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them.
> I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was worthwhile.
My impression too is that even with comment scores not visible, it is still convenient to browse threads to find thoughtful, informative comments, but now there is less anchoring bias
of most votes on a comment converging to one score level that shows up early in a thread's development, and more engagement by readers of HN in actively reading comments and upvoting (or downvoting) based on each comment's characteristics in light of the context of the thread.
But the main criterion of the experiment is to "stave off decline of HN," and that is what will decide if the experiment was successful. For that every reader can help by actively upvoting informative, helpful comments, and also by downvoting comments that are either mean or dumb--and especially comments that are both. As I recall, the experiment has also involved some changes in the effects of flagging, so flagging inappropriate comments is also helpful.
I think this is a large one. I've been participating more in discussions lately because the content seems more thoughtful.
How do I know what's important without vote counts?
Read and decide what is good and what is bad. For posters, being concise helps people reading. The higher voted comments should move to the top like in the past(?) Forcing both sides to be more thoughtful makes the quality content and participation better.
Comments
This is an interesting question. Thanks for the link here to a recent comment by pg on how karma scores are looking on various individual comments.
In sizing up what this means, let's all review together the stated reason for the experiment, expressed in a thread-opening post by pg titled "Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696
He wrote, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted."
How do the highest-voted comments visible in the bestcomments list
http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
look to all of you recently? Are there fewer mean comments than before? Are there fewer dumb comments than before? Are the comments that are "massively upvoted" since the experiment began mostly comments that are reasonably kind and well-informed, helpful comments on the whole? In most of the treads you visit, do helpful, thoughtful comments seem to rise to a position of prominence, while mean or dumb comments gray out?
A link and comment in the thread referred to by the edit on this submission largely sums up the back-and-forth about visible comment scores as a signal on comments in active threads:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357
>> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them.
> I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was worthwhile.
My impression too is that even with comment scores not visible, it is still convenient to browse threads to find thoughtful, informative comments, but now there is less anchoring bias
http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm
of most votes on a comment converging to one score level that shows up early in a thread's development, and more engagement by readers of HN in actively reading comments and upvoting (or downvoting) based on each comment's characteristics in light of the context of the thread.
But the main criterion of the experiment is to "stave off decline of HN," and that is what will decide if the experiment was successful. For that every reader can help by actively upvoting informative, helpful comments, and also by downvoting comments that are either mean or dumb--and especially comments that are both. As I recall, the experiment has also involved some changes in the effects of flagging, so flagging inappropriate comments is also helpful.
Agreed, I think quality has improved, and either by placebo or by reality, I dig it :)