New Comment Features

http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#4feb09

by pg • 17 years ago

107 225 17 years ago

Jebdm4• 17 years ago

I like the orange-username thing. Maybe it would make sense to apply it to submissions as well as comments?

cperciva2• 17 years ago

If we're going to have submissions highlighted based on their submitter, I have another request: Please unhighlight (make grey, or something) submissions from accounts which are less than 1 hour old, at least until someone votes them up. The first thing I do when I see a spammy-sounding submission is check to see how old the submitting account is, and if it's less than an hour old the submissions is almost always spam.

Jebdm4• 17 years ago

Perhaps it would be good to put a karma threshold, or at least a time limit, on the ability to submit stories. (A karma threshold might be bad for people who like to browse but not comment.)

tptacek6• 17 years ago

Wow, I hate this feature. Comment karma was already implicitly self-reinforcing. Now HN has reified that in the UI. Can we opt out of being highlighted?

pg19• 17 years ago

Oy. All day long I slave over a hot repl, and for what? Such ingratitude, I tell you.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

You chose a really nice color for the highlighting. There, I complimented it.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

I have to confess that the idea is clever: but ultimately does not fix the problem.

The issue, as I see it, is not so much the posts as the voting. Which varies wildly and is fairly indescriminate. A worthless but sensationalist message might get lots of upvotes whilst a shy but informative message will get missed.

I suggest it is the voting practices that need to be addressed. I vote very rarely on messages (maybe once or twice a day): making my approval something "to be gained". I know others use that approach too - and I think it makes things worth much more.

Ideally (IMO) a good situation should be one where a post with 5 votes should be stunningly good and 20 votes a "once in a lifetime" achievment.

Some ideas... - Vote weighting (Karma or average Karma effects the weight of your vote)

- Include "Downvotes" next to the total. This helps identify messages with a lot of disagreement (i.e. something with a 1 might have 20 downs and 21 ups - that is worth taking a look at).

- Im not sure how you position the comments (never tracked them in depth) but I think you could try

- - New comments stay at the "top" of the page for a set time (an hr perhaps?) before being ranked properly.

- - Ranked posts: push all negative marked posts below -1 to the bottom. All positive stuff to the top marked on activity (a combination of the direct replies and the number of up&down votes)

That doesn't totally fix the problem but I suggest it might have an impact :D

davidw2• 17 years ago

Shouldn't you be off changing diapers?:-)

brlewis3• 17 years ago

We've seen the Arc code for this site and know you didn't need to spend all day in the repl. More likely you spent all day in a comfortable chair with a hot cup of tea thinking about how the feature should work.

dasil003• 17 years ago

The biggest problem I see is that it will discourage deep exchanges which are one of the most valuable phenomena that occur here.

TrevorJ7• 17 years ago

The other thing that didn't hit me is that I enjoy commenting on things that are on the "new" page -many of those stories don't make it to the front page and as a result comments don't get replied to or upmodded as much.

xenophanes16• 17 years ago

Those are also discouraged by PG asking people not to do them, and punishing people who do.

trominos• 17 years ago

I agree. I think the algorithm should take comment depth into account.

Make it take thread age/traffic into account too. I don't want to worry about posting in dead or near-dead threads.

Overall, though, if we can figure out how to implement this without discouraging good commenting, it could be a pretty nice change.

My biggest problem with the system as it stands is this: there are two HN posters who I think of as exceptionally insightful, prolific, and committed to the maintenance of the community, and one of them doesn't have a highlighted name -- I assume because he's posted a lot in low traffic areas. That's a major bug.

pg19• 17 years ago

Do you mean deeply nested comment threads? I don't think many users would be calculating enough to resist replying to something just because their comment wouldn't get attention. After all, most people who make a comment they really believe in will sit and watch it get modded down rather than delete it.

But if there does start to be a problem, it will certainly be visible.

GHFigs• 17 years ago

I'm not so sure about that. The deeper the thread, the fewer participants, and the less benefit there is to the site as a whole. If karma is considered a measurement of that benefit rather than simply a score (as it should be, but on most sites that use the term is not), then it makes sense that threads with less participation would accumulate less in the way of extrinsic reward.

Also, consider that people so concerned with karma that they would be dissuaded from participating in a worthwhile discussion are among the least likely to have worthwhile discussions.

Jebdm4• 17 years ago

I feel dumb for contradicting myself in a single thread, but after thinking about this for a bit I think I agree with you that it shouldn't be a part of the UI. However, I think the idea of implicitly boosting people with a good history is a good idea.

One idea would be to invisibly boost the ranking of comments by orange users, at least at first (we don't want to give a bad comment more credit just because the commenter has made good comments in the past). Let a new comment by an orange user rise for the first hour or so, and then drop it back down to where it would be if it was posted by a normal gray user.

gabriel• 17 years ago

I agree. It seems a little too self-reinforcing to me. It may look nice when graphed out, but I think this feature may end up discouraging the discovery some of the variety of posts (more so than things already are).

Difficult to quantify. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.

pistoriusp• 17 years ago

It's not that I hate this feature. It makes me a bit sad. I've been coming here almost everyday for just under 2 years. I'm not orange. And that makes me wonder if I really should be here? Am I, actually, one of those people that HN doesn't want?

tptacek6• 17 years ago

There are people in the top 50 on the leaderboard that won't be orange, either, for what it's worth.

xenophanes16• 17 years ago

I'm orange because I posted a 50 point comment the other day. pg replied to it saying my comment violated the site guidelines (which it did) and calling it superficial (which was an unfair insult). So, that's how my name got pretty. Now does life seem fair? ;-)

diN0bot12• 17 years ago

i was just having a similar thought: won't this "flaunting" of karma create more social unrest (defensiveness, ego-grabbing, immature or strategic conversations)?

when i first came here i loved seeing my karma grow. it gave me a feeling of acceptance that reddit's meanness never could. (i found the content more interesting, too, and of course hope that i'm part of that, just as you do.)

i say karma should stay private. it is useful for personal gratification. the path to good discussion is humility and insight.

TrevorJ7• 17 years ago

I think if you are self-aware enough to be worried about your impact on the community, you are exactly the type of user HN wants.

azanar3• 17 years ago

Not everyone that deserves to be made an example of gets the privilege, nor does everyone that deserves to be marginalized so treated. It doesn't imply you aren't in either group if you aren't singled out; it just means the stage isn't that large. :-)

The problem is that gauging worthiness of something is a very difficult, even -- or especially -- when human judges are involved. I think of this as a first stab at a very complicated problem; making sense of votes made for a variety of motivations, not all of them what this algorithm is trying to isolate and encourage. I suspect several iterations will follow.

wastedbrains• 17 years ago

Yeah I have been coming and participating in this community for a very long time, but I am just not that incredibly active. I don't post many stories, and I don't comment very often.

It is funny how many times the HN community it trying to protect themselves from 'noobs', I feel like they push the more casual users a bit further away.

pg19• 17 years ago

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by a version 1. Basically, you've been hosed by the time-zone problem froo mentioned (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466967). I need to figure out some way to normalize.

run4yourlives• 17 years ago

Well, I'm not orange either, FWIW. So don't worry about it.

I do think though that this is basically going to result in the "orangemen" being upvoted into the stratosphere simply for being that colour, regardless of what they say. I don't think an overt display of what is essentially "I'm pg and I approve this message" is really the right way to go, but I applaud his effort.

SwellJoe3• 17 years ago

My first real thought when reading this thread was, "Hmm...strange that he's not orange" about a few different usernames I recognized.

I think I have to come down on the side of not liking the feature, but I'm not sure I'm right about my reasons for not liking it. I've always thought one of the great things about reddit and HN is that identity of the poster is understated. It's not anonymous, but it's possible to read comments without seeing the user who posted them. Every comment thus stands alone and is judged on its own merits. "Bad" users get a fresh start with every post, and "good" users have to say something interesting or not at all. Now, I have some sort of stamp of approval the moment I post.

Then again, most people are idiots, and if software can make it more apparent who the idiots are, maybe it'll make it easier to tolerate them when they start showing up here in larger numbers.

Eliezer• 17 years ago

Okay - this is exactly the problem that occurred to me within 2 seconds of learning how this feature works. If it's going to work any way, it should at least be a GRADIENT from grey to orange. This way of doing suddenly splits your whole user community into two groups, the Greys and the Oranges.

Anyone remember what happened to the Blues and Greens in Rome? To the Eagles and the Rattlers in the Robbers' Cave Experiment? If not, see here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/01/the-two-party-s.html

There's a huge difference in human psychology between a gradient and a divider. Not that this is necessarily a good idea anyway - it encourages people not to post on old threads, or even not to post too far off the top of the page, etc. But in any case - if you're going to do it at all, make it a gradient!

3pt14159• 17 years ago

Here I was, just days away from being able to down-mod people and they double the karma requirements.

Don't be silly pistoriusp, after being here for two years I'm not surprised your last 50 average comments karma is not 3.5 less than your last 25 average comments karma. Your definitely leveling off, which should be fine. Although there have been many more users lately, so perhaps there is karma inflation that should boost your average karma over time.

dood• 17 years ago

I'm already ambivalent about karma, but I think the highlighting is wholly a Bad Idea:

* it strongly encourages gaming and groupthink, already the biggest problem with social news sites, especially karma-based ones, while discouraging controversial opinions

* it makes those without highlighting feel less welcome or that their contributions are less worthwhile

* it adds excessive weight to the opinions of popular members, and as noted elsewhere this causes a feedback loop

IMHO karma should be a subtle thing, used gently. Shoving it in users' faces is the worst possible thing to do with it.

I don't like sounding so negative, because I appreciate the work and thought that has gone into making HN the great site that it is. But I'd like to keep it great, and I think this is not a good way to go about it, and a bad road to go down.

jeroen• 17 years ago

Opt out for Firefox: put the following in usercontent.css

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://news.ycombinator.com/){ .comhead a font { color: #828282 !important; } }

(how to create a user stylesheet: http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/user-style-sheets.html )

ralph2• 17 years ago

Excellent. Thanks very much. I've made them black and will now set about fixing some of the other poor colour decisions, e.g. the body of the top post of a thread being an unreadable gray which puts me off reading it through no fault of the author.

ajkirwin• 17 years ago

I have to say, I don't like it either. I don't like the limiting of downvotes too. So someone can get say, +100 votes on a comment but, if they say something incredibly stupid, or harmful/bigoted/whathaveyou, it'll take a systematic effort over multiple comments to hit their karma.

Making it virtually impossible to 'punish' idiots.

cperciva2• 17 years ago

Edit: I was seeing some weirdness with different comments by the same person being highlighted / not highlighted, but it turns out that it was just due to caching (see pg's response below).

teej• 17 years ago

I don't believe this is true. I see plenty of orange responses to my comments 30+ days old.

andreyf3• 17 years ago

Caches don't get updated all-at-once. Some older comments will be updated before others.

pg19• 17 years ago

There's just some caching going on.

Shamiq2• 17 years ago

Will this go away over time?

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

My own new comments weren't showing up as highlighted for some reason. Now they are.

I didn't believe I had an average score of less than 3.5 (not to brag or anything... it's only 4.4, for the record ;), so I went back to average my last 50 comments scores, and on the 2nd or 3rd page I noticed my username was finally orange.

Anyway, it seems to be ok now.

joseakle• 17 years ago

Would it make sense to have moving (formula based) thresholds?

ROFISH• 17 years ago

Is this orangey feature retroactive on old comments at real time, or is it permanent for posts regardless of current karma?

TrevorJ7• 17 years ago

While people will no doubt have a lot of differing opinions about any change in this community, one thing I find very encouraging is that PG and co are being extremely proactive and are very willing to try new things. -Whatever the outcome of any particular experiment is, I'm really glad to see that they are on top of things.

slackerIII• 17 years ago

Hmm... not sure about the comment karma thing. People with decent averages may refrain from posting more speculative comments, just so it doesn't drag them down. That would seem to reinforce a tendency towards group-think. Of course, maybe that is good. :)

lallysingh3• 17 years ago

It also really hits those of us who make lots of little comments across several threads. Unless you're early to comment, the structure of the thread's already there -- you don't want to coerce your own discussion into it, just add your thoughts.

azanar3• 17 years ago

Not just people with good averages, but more so people with lower averages who want to make them better.It may keep them from expressing counter-views that the orangey colored folks might, as a collective, down-mod and post ripostes which will encourage others to down-mod or not up-mod further.

Not implying that the orangey folks think as a herd, but it is possible that, by virtue of their prettier coloring, people will be more inclined to follow their lead, and think their opinion the more correct one.

rms2• 17 years ago

Sure, it makes people less likely to post anything that goes against the desires of the group. This will impact inane and stupid and inflammatory things more than unpopular ideas. As long as they are phrased civilly, unpopular ideas usually do fine. It's just that very often people that know their ideas are unpopular go out of their way to antagonize the community.

diN0bot12• 17 years ago

i'd love to see graphs/statistics of comment points over time for hn users.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

You can get a lot of that info from searchyc; a couple days ago, the median average comment score for the top 50 users, (excluding pg) was 2.48, the mean was 3.09, stddev of .5.

Yes, I am an unbelievably huge dork for knowing that.

jmtame• 17 years ago

i was just wondering today, "would it be possible to see a user's karma without actually opening up their profile?" this sort of addresses that. i like it.

diN0bot12• 17 years ago

just curious given the recent scrutiny on karma: what goes through your mind when you want to know a user's karma?

unalone18• 17 years ago

For me the process goes something like, "Hey! That's a really good point. Does this person have a high karma? If so, perhaps I've seen them before but haven't seen the name around." Other times it's, "Wow, this person sounds snotty and wretched. I hope they've got a low karma score to compensate. Perhaps even a negative. Oh, damn, they've got 24,000, I'm arguing with nickb again." Once every few months, it's "Look, this person's disagreeing with this 'unalone' bloke, they click the name, and - look! - he can't possibly be wrong with that karma score." I like to delude myself.

davi• 17 years ago

I often click on the username of someone whose comment I'm replying to, and glance at the age of their account, their karma, and sometimes click through for a look at their comments.

I don't know exactly why I do this -- just want to know a little bit about who I'm talking to.

mighty3• 17 years ago

My concern is that this doesn't negate or discourage a lot of the behaviors that get amply rewarded (e.g. one-line zingers), but which a lot of us recognize as harmful to the community in the long run. In fact, I suspect it will actually exacerbate the problem.

TrevorJ7• 17 years ago

See, I think the one-liner blight could be headed off by auto-collapsing threads that are long and mostly really short replies unless the karma of the parent comment is above a certain threshold.

diN0bot12• 17 years ago

collapsible comment threads would be very much appreciated.

mighty3• 17 years ago

Collapsable threads might be a good idea, but I'd prefer having the system make its values explicit via descriptors for comments (think Slashdot or Plastic). My top two would be "insightful" and "uncharitable". The former encourages what's best about this community, the latter strongly discourages what's worst. A lot of deep and pointless threads are caused by commenters reacting to their own hasty interpretations of what someone said rather than even-handedly responding to them.

Also, no "Funny".

pg19• 17 years ago

Most high-scoring comments are long, not short. Of the top 30 recent comments, only 3 are one sentence or less.

andreyf3• 17 years ago

Long comments take a much larger investment. If you consider karma/word, short comments are the way to go.

tsally• 17 years ago

10% is a fairly significant number, when all is said and done. Meaning, 10% of all highlighted users could essentially just be good at making witty one line comments.

That being said, 90%/10% is a fantastic signal to noise ratio when compared to the rest of the internet. :-)

mighty3• 17 years ago

Right, but it shouldn't matter what the makeup of the top 30 comments are. In this case, it only matters that someone can net a 3.5 average over their last 50. Which maybe isn't statistically probable for users who happen to write the occasional popular but low-value comment.

Either way, I would argue that while the upper bound on exacerbation isn't high, the same is true of any potential mitigation. At the end of the day, I don't see the major problems subsiding much, and it's not just one-line zingers, but, say, uncharitable comments that piss people off and provoke deep threads of people talking past each other. There's nothing more unpleasant in online communities than being the recipient of an uncharitable reply, and feeling compelled to defend oneself. (I say this being guilty of uncharitable replies myself.)

azanar3• 17 years ago

This has me thinking, comment score appears to be tied to two independent things:

1. The quality of the post.

2. The time since the article was posted, it's arrival to the front page, etc.

Not all insightful comments are modded up the same, for this reason amongst a number of others. If someone says something smart, but says it late, the net effect will be to drag their karma/comment ratio down. I'd be concerned that this would prevent people from making good points when they run the risk of insufficient eyeballs.

jfarmer• 17 years ago

Hopefully this doesn't go the way of The Sneetches.

andreyf3• 17 years ago

No, but maybe the way of tsarist Russia or Rwanda?

Vive la Révolution! Down with the dark orange ones!

smanek2• 17 years ago

It might be useful to be able to see the average score for my last 50 comments on my user page. In principle, I could of course compute it myself - but might as well have the computer do the tallying for me ;-)

smanek2• 17 years ago

I don't know if this is a bug or a feature ... but, the edit button is no longer present on the main page. I have to click 'link', and then 'edit' is available.

I was just going to edit my comment with a link to searchyc.com. It tells me, for example, that my average comment score is ~4, but that my last few comments have been unusually unpopular (or at least unnoticed), which I assume drove me below the threshold. Maybe it would be nice to take the maximum of a user's all time average and average of the last 50 comments - that way users who have historically made positive contributions are given a little leeway to voice unpopular/controversial opinions.

EDIT: Odd, now the edit link is back. Maybe a weird effect of caching or something.

TrevorJ7• 17 years ago

I actually didn't know about search YC, thanks for mentioning it again, seems like a great utility.

iigs• 17 years ago

Mine was 2.98 before this comment, and assuming it stays at 1 will be 2.94. (edit: learned more about it, actually 2.6, see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467290 )

I know what I have to do to game it (reload /newest and look for stuff that is generally interesting and I understand, contribute a neutrally toned slightly technical comment and not follow up or reply to questions), but I will not be doing it (much) because it it goes against two things that I value about comments here:

1) It's a friendly place to converse and ask legitimate questions without getting RTFM or LMGTFY (unless your question is reeeealllly dumb)

2) I value contributions that are presented later, even if they're not as highly scored (this, of course, the reason that comments aren't sorted by raw score), and I don't mind tagging something onto an article, even if I'm joining in late, provided I think it's a net contribution to the site.

rms2• 17 years ago

So close... I'm at <s>3.2 3.26</s> 3.06 with the highest comment crossed off. I'll probably never get there. For what it's worth, I like the feature.

jmackinn4• 17 years ago

Is this really the direction that YC News should be headed? I don't think that this is a good idea and could easily lead to many problems. As some people here have pointed out, comments on new stories will be discouraged, deep and long threads will be curtailed, and comments are likely to get longer. It also creates a sort of class system within the community. Now a person's karma level is visually seen all the time.

unalone18• 17 years ago

It's not quite a class system if it's based on your 50 most recent comments. 3.5 karma points a comment is a pretty low barrier of entry, after all, which means that a, it's easier to get the highlight, and b, it's not worth as much because it's easier to get, meaning people won't jump to try and achieve the highlighted title.

jmackinn4• 17 years ago

A class system may be extreme, but there is now a visual distinction between users and comments will likely be skewed by that.

froo3• 17 years ago

Except that getting karma points is more difficult for people who comment/post in offpeak times (like on the other side of the world), so this system can essentially penalise them.

diN0bot12• 17 years ago

i'd rather not see any karma or any points when i vote, thereby providing for content-based decisions. ideally, a comment would have three possible votes: up arrow, circle, down arrow. only after voting would a comment's score and user become visible.

unalone18• 17 years ago

Really anal suggestion for a nonexistent feature: square instead of circle. That maintains the compact feel, while giving the visual metaphor of putting a hold on your vote.

Somewhat related, I would really like an abstain feature not just because I like the idea of hiding votes, but because if I see an arrow I feel the need to click it until all the arrows disappear. An abstain button would help when I don't want to upvote and don't have a downvote.

pg19• 17 years ago

BTW, average comment scores are only calculated very intermittently (because they wreak havoc with lazy loading) so it could take up to an hour before everyone's name displays in the right color.

ktom• 17 years ago

Regarding the link to the welcome page,

I can see the reasoning to limit it to the first day, however I would argue that the link isn't that intrusive and should probably stick around until the first comment or some karma threshold.

I certainly did not post within the first few days (if not months) and a quick reference to the guidelines would be handy. (actually i post so infrequently that having it always there would be handy)

huhtenberg• 17 years ago

pg, is it just a plain average as in "karma / count_of_comments" ?

Consider using an average over a median range, i.e. sort comments by the score, trim top 10% and bottom 10% and then compute the average. This basically ignores occasional flukes, both positive and negative. Specifically, it rewards for consistently scoring well (and not just once) and doesn't punish for an occasional negative score.

pg19• 17 years ago

I do a minimal version of what you suggest: I discard the highest score, which amounts to discarding the highest 2%.

timcederman• 17 years ago

Is it just me, or is this not active on older threads?

sgibat• 17 years ago

Given your comment, this comment is simply a test.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

You should not be using average: you should be using median (or perhaps average, using comment scores capped at 8 or 10) as the strategy you're using now will overly reward comments which hit a community sweet spot and garner 100 or so points, and discourage comments on stories which have been unwisely ignored [both of which tendencies are somewhat too pronounced on the site already]).

pg19• 17 years ago

I tried both median and average, but ultimately went with average on the "judge talent at its best" principle. I do throw out the highest score though.

unalone18• 17 years ago

You say that there are several features, and that the orange username is only the most conspicuous. Which other hard-to-find features have appeared?

diN0bot12• 17 years ago

the default 1 point you get from commenting no longer adds to your karma. that is, the comment is 'worth' 1 point, but your karma doesn't change. i think it used to...though now im not so sure...

unalone18• 17 years ago

No, 1 is considered the base value. Your karma gets modified based on upvoting/downvoting. (So if you get voted down to a zero, you've lost a karma point.)

pg19• 17 years ago

There aren't any other ones besides the ones I describe in that post: orange usernames, welcome links for new users, and limiting downvotes. Maybe it would have been more accurate to call them changes rather than features.

nx• 17 years ago

So that's why I couldn't downvote even though I have 69 karma!

acangiano• 17 years ago

As a reminder, downvoting should not occur to express disagreement with a commenter. It's a collective form of moderation for inappropriate comments.

gravitycop3• 17 years ago

As a reminder, downvoting should not occur to express disagreement with a commenter.

Source? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347

3 points by pg 57 days ago | link

Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392267

1 point by palish 57 days ago | link

There's nothing wrong with using the arrows to express agreement or disagreement.

jacquesm3• 17 years ago

I've yet to see it being used in any other way.

psyklic• 17 years ago

Just out of curiosity, how many users (currently) receive the grayish-orange distinction?

pg19• 17 years ago

234, which turns out to be almost exactly 1% of the number of unique visitors the site gets on a weekday.

froo3• 17 years ago

Hmm, I'm not entirely sure if colouring someone's name is the best of ideas since you have now created an artificial class system within HN.

While people will argue that it's only a colour, it is still a line in the sand that has been drawn and it will (if even slightly) penalise people that access the site primarily in offpeak times as their comments may go unnoticed when people scan threads for orange names.

pbrown5• 17 years ago

I agree. I'm in Alaska, so I'm pretty much behind everybody. I'm usually posting while you all are asleep. I'm screwed.

chris11• 17 years ago

Here's the screen for new accounts: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/6818/hackernewswelcomevl8.jpg

I think it's a great idea over all. I think it would be better though if all new account were automatically redirected to the welcome screen upon registration. That would make sure it's read. Right now it seems to be a little too easy to miss.

ananthrk• 17 years ago

It would be cool to have this feature on a per-submission basis. Like someone consistently making good arguments in a submission vs someone trying to de-rail the thread.

uberc• 17 years ago

FWIW, here's a data point on how a new member of the community (i.e. me) is reacting to these changes.

I've been an avid reader of HN headlines for some time, but only started joining the comment conversations in the last week or so.

Discarding the top-karma comment, I've made 13 comments with an average karma of 3.08, ranging from 1 to 7.

Here's what I am observing about my instinctive, not particularly thought through reaction to the change in terms of future commenting behavior:

- I'll likely avoid what I think are low-value though not offensive comments, the throw-away chit-chat that is likely to just stay at 1, and which could be considered either acceptable pleasantries or distracting noise.

- I'll also be more likely to avoid commenting on threads with many comments already, for fear that even a high-value comment late to the conversation will get overlooked and drag down my average.

- I'll think twice about commenting on new submission, which I've found to be a good way to get in early on a conversation, but which will be more risky in future given that the submission may never get noticed, leaving me with an unnoticed 1-karma comment that brings down my average.

- As I scan comments, I will instinctively skip through to the orange users. As a new user, I provisionally assume these are the users who (1) have, on average, higher-value comments and (2) which collectively define the personality and social norms of the community which I'm seeking to be part of.

- I think I'll learn from the orange users in terms of community norms, but I don't think I'll actively conform my opinion to theirs. In fact, my assumption so far is that this is a community that values merit-based argument and substantive discussions, not just "I agree" or "I disgree" type discussions. I suspect I'll conform more to the style and approach of the orange users in making arguments, not to their opinions and views as such.

Are the behaviors above good or bad? Intended by the community or not? If they encourage me to seek out fresh, likely to be popular conversations and add to them in a way that meets the approval of the community old-timers without groupthink in terms of substance (which I'd like to think would not be particularly appreciated around here), I suspect that's a good thing. But I do have a concern about my hesitance to comment on older threads (a hesitance which may be acceptable, since perhaps those conversations are effectively over) and new submissions (a hesitance which may be detrimental).

akirk• 17 years ago

I think it punishes commenting on niche hacker news postings that don't make it to the front page (i.e. far enough up on the list).

If only few people read a posting, only few people will upvote it. So even if the comment would be valuable for a high traffic posting, it doesn't really get any points.

Something that I really like about Hacker News, is that you can find lots of stuff on the second or third page that doesn't appeal to too many people, but is still interesting. Now, if you comment there a lot, it will decrease your karma.

IMO these comments can be more valuable to those interested than it can be appreciated using points (esp. for Ask HN/YC posts).

andrewljohnson2• 17 years ago

The feature helps me find better comments, faster - therefore it is good.

It intuitively highlights for me low-scoring comments that I may want to read.

icey• 17 years ago

I'm not too sure about that. My name is in orange, and I've had my share of terrible comments.

I'm honestly not too sure what the orange adds to the mix. Personally, I think it would be more useful to have the score displayed in the user's profile. I tend to check a person's profile if I think they're new and here to troll; that would help verify or disprove that (for me at least).

Angostura• 17 years ago

Would it be possible to have an indication of your comments-points average within your profile.

The new orange badge-of honour has motivated me to become more insightful, witty, helpful and technically adept... but I want to know how much more ISWHTA I need to become to hit the threshold.

There's actually a serious point to this, some people will be quite serious about wanting to "go orange" and I think that's a fine aspiration. Unfortunately, the system as devised is likely to penalises two types of comment:

1. Commenting on slightly older stories - the comment is less likely to be voted up (or down) and will therefore harm the commentor's points average.

2. The "Thanks" comment. I have on occasion posted a quick 'thank you' to someone for answering a question. I wouldn't expect that to be voted up - it is not interesting or insightful, it's just an (almost private) message of appreciation for some help. Saying "thanks" reduces your average.

If you want less of that type of behaviour then, fine - but I suspect that these are unintended consequences.

jacquesm3• 17 years ago

Visible distinction between users creates an upperclass and an underclass, if there is no very good reason for doing so I am very much against it.

Use the 'karma' counters as an internal mechanism to reward users with extra features or to remove those features if their karma drops below the thresholds again because of misbehviour. Use it to sort the submissions and the comments possibly using some kind of weighting system so that the 'good' content (content by long established users) bubbles to the top, it gives newcomers something to strive for.

But don't make it visible, remove the points from the header of the site, keep it under water. Why?

This is why:

- good 'karma' need not be shown, it comes across in every posting you make, because you are supposedly showing good judgement in your writing, not in the 'colour of your name'

- there will be no timidity for rookies to speak out against 'old timers', similar bs happens on ./ where your UID number seems to be the arbitrator of the discussion

- karma has some meaning outside of HN, and if I take that meaning correctly then you're not going to get any for showing it

- karma tends to self-reinforce enough when used as an underwater feature, it will self-reinforce out of control as soon as you make it into a distinct mark

- this feature to create a distinction between the 'top group', the 'incrowd' of those who are 'better' and 'the rest' (the unwashed masses or whatever you wish to call them) will be an incentive to game the system, if it is underwater such an incentive is not present.

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

New rule: screw the comments where you're trying to help one person understand anything. It'll just lower your comment average. Better to post generally agreeable and interesting but mostly forgettable nuggets that impact a larger group.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

New rule: screw the comments where you're trying to help one person understand anything. It'll just lower your comment average.

I'll observe empirically if that's what happens under the new system. It looks like it could be a risk (as with this comment).

danw• 17 years ago

I liked it until I realised my username is not orange!

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

So let's summarise what's not welcome here:

* Having longer debates involving fewer people.

* Commenting on new posts that may never make it to the front page.

* Commenting at the "wrong" time of day.

* Commenting on fringe issues unloved by the crowd.

* Adding a comment to an already long comment thread.

[Edit] I don't mind scoring low at all (I do mind negative scores). That doesn't keep me from doing all of the above. But being visually set apart from people who, for whatever reason, do not do these things as frequently as I do makes me think I'm in the wrong place.

Harkins• 17 years ago

I think a problem with this is that it doesn't just highlight consistently good commenters, it does so at the time of moderation. When I'm deciding whether to upvote a comment, there's an indicator that appears to say everyone else thinks I should.

brk• 17 years ago

I would have thought about going the complete opposite direction... Hide the username until AFTER you've voted.

I think that in any society you tend to find people you agree with and disagree with, and then become biased in your opinion of anything they say/suggest.

Does it really matter who posted a comment? You either agree with it, or you don't.

altano• 17 years ago

I don't know of any Internet community that was kept sane by coloring "good" commenters orange, but it sounds like a start. Is stricter moderation out of the question or just not in the cards yet?

ejs• 17 years ago

The funny thing is just the other day I was thinking that one of the best parts of HN is that comments and submissions are evaluated on their merit. Since a users name is relatively obscure and not as identifiable as forums with avatars I never really remember names or associate them with good or bad submissions.

To me this seems to be contradictory to the way HN is supposed to work.

Maybe (probably) I am reading too much into this but it just seems to be reinforcing a kind of Ad Hominem discrediting of submissions.

In fact I think it would probably be more interesting if it went the other way, don't show names at all on submissions. Maybe revel the name only after say 30 minutes from submission time.

If HN's goal is to avoid becoming redit/digg... why implement the same ideas as they have?

jballanc• 17 years ago

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue with the commenting system is that it's too easy to get lost. For example, this post now has 181 comments, and I barely have time to read 20. Maybe comment 84 has a really good point to be made? Don't know...I'll never see it. Not that this is unique to HN. Any community that gets above a certain size is going to have an issue where only those dedicated enough to read through entire 181 comment threads can really participate fully. Anyone who is pressed for time, or only interested in being a casual community member gets punished by the legions of 12 hours-a-day staring at comment threads dedicated fanatics.

Anyway, this is not a rant, but a suggestion. What about not showing some comments? I mean, I sort of already do this on my own, but why not choose a random subset of comments (and their corresponding threads) to display. Make the frequency dependent on the score. At the very least, would it be too much to ask for disclosure arrows? For example, the first thread on this page was entertaining for the first 4-5 comments. After that, I just wished it would go away, but instead it continued for another 3-4 pages.

Anyhow, for the time being I'm kind of curious how a community run by self professed geeks, with the express intention of remaining a community for said self professed geeks, fares in the long run...

...should be a fun ride

ratsbane• 17 years ago

Can you add something to the user-stats page (http://news.ycombinator.com/user? ) to show the ratio? Now it shows the numerator (karma) but not the denominator (comment quantity). I'd like to know how close I am to being orange.

lst2• 17 years ago

Another really important feature is missing:

For people like me, who every now and then make completely unpopular comments (with some negative consequences, at least mathematically speaking), it would be nice if we could get more and more invisible (I mean the user name), because unpopular folks really deserve absolute invisibility! (Take that, lst!!)

Please down vote if you agree!

ralph2• 17 years ago

pg, How about doing something about this complaint? At 31 votes, it's my highest scoring comment. :-) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460859

lgriffith• 17 years ago

Every system can be gamed. Including this one.

What I find interesting is the + and - votes often appear to be attempts to deny or affirm the truth of the post in opposition to its actual truth content. Its as if mere expression of an opinion contains the expectation of being able to coerce reality to agree and that a counter opinion can cancel that effect. Its Postmodern philosophy in full flower. Kant would be proud of his intellectual children.

Thankfully, there does seem to be much less adherence to Postmodern philosophy on this list compared to others which is why I bother with this list. However, the philosophy lives deeply inside the Karma feature.

The fact remains, that throughout history, what most people believe to be true has little to do with what is actually true. Any new truth that is discovered, is discovered first by a single individual. If that truth is fundamental, it will be rejected by "common sense" and "consensus" until at least one generation has passed - likely several. So also a crackpot notion of a crank will take at least a generation to pass or at least the death of the crank. The age of a "truth" has a poor correspondence to what is actually true.

The net of this is each is responsible for filtering the noise coming at him and finding the few gems of truth it contains. There is always the possibility of being wrong. Karma scores are simply irrelevant accumulations of noise signals. Sorry, that is the nature of the beast.

lisper2• 17 years ago

I'm posting this comment only to find out what color I am.

lisper2• 17 years ago

Black. Bummer.

pg19• 17 years ago

BTW, I just turned off orange usernames for now. It's not a policy decision; computing it was killing the server.

(It's not the computation itself that's the problem. The problem is that it causes a lot of stuff to get loaded from disk that would otherwise not be.)

jaxn• 17 years ago

Bummer. I was looking forward to that feature.

I just went through and (roughly) calculated my average. I am just over the threshold. Which creates an interesting scenario: A couple of stupid comments from me and I will fall below the threshold.

That creates a really great motivation.

So, if you add this feature back, it might be worth it to run some reports to see if there is a "sweet spot". Not to mention it would be really neat to see the distribution of average comment scores.

BinaryPie• 17 years ago

The future is Orange. /sigh

msie• 17 years ago

I must be colour blind. I can't see any usernames in orange. :(

lst2• 17 years ago

BTW:

I really love the "0 karma" feature from sites like this one: It helps very, very much not to waste too much time here, given that I never learned anything substantial on places like this one. May I cite some better teachers:

    - books
    - real persons
    - live discussions
    - pubs
    - restaurants
    - (last not least) my family(!!)

or simply: anything that escapes virtuality...

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