Apologies for crossing the first rule of HN (The first rule of HN: do not talk about HN on HN) but there seems to be no other good spot to have a discussion about an idea like this.
This is the first meta-discussion that hasn't started off on a sour note for me, because the OP is not just saying "Heyyyyy I hate it when people downvote boo hoo etc." He's offered his thoughts on the causes of downmodding tension and has put forward his idea of how to approach the problem. Sure, it's still meta-discussion, but at least it's productive.
Comments
Is it time to start treating posts about points like political posts?
Apologies for crossing the first rule of HN (The first rule of HN: do not talk about HN on HN) but there seems to be no other good spot to have a discussion about an idea like this.
What would you suggest I do instead ?
I believe the feature request link at the bottom goes to an appropriate place to have such conversations.
That thread looks quite dead to me.
You could fork the source and run your own A/B testing.
Except that wouldn't be sampling the HN community which would make the test unable to answer the original question.
Code in hand goes further than request in hand.
I believe the feature request link at the bottom goes to an appropriate place to have such conversations.
Indeed it does. I count on the curators of the site to read that thread.
This is the first meta-discussion that hasn't started off on a sour note for me, because the OP is not just saying "Heyyyyy I hate it when people downvote boo hoo etc." He's offered his thoughts on the causes of downmodding tension and has put forward his idea of how to approach the problem. Sure, it's still meta-discussion, but at least it's productive.
I didn't criticise meta-discussion in general; I only commented on points discussions.
Hiding points is not a new proposal. It came up yesterday (under http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739969 ) and has probably come up before.
My success criteria would be whether hiding points results in fewer points discussions than exposing them.
> My success criteria would be whether hiding points results in fewer points discussions than exposing them.
That's an excellent observation.