[msbarnett]

I agree, I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold".

I went into the feature request thread to see if anyone had requested the ability to turn this off, but gave up on looking after rapid-fire clicking "More" 25+ times. Content more than a page or two back might as well not exist.

[jedsmith]

The Reddit community actually speaks of this phenomenon in threads addressed to new members ("things you should know about Reddit", etc). They say that once there's several long threads with a lot of upvotes, you're better off not commenting as your comment will most likely languish without any attention whatsoever.

I'd say that's partially due to scrolling, but you're correct - that More button is so non-obvious that I didn't even see it until I read this thread. Those comments below More might as well not even exist.

The most common retort to that viewpoint that I saw was "well, so you won't get karma. Bummer. Your opinion is out there anyway," which is missing the point, I think. It's not about the karma, it's about contributing to the conversation. Now, contributing to the conversation is a competition based on time and popularity.

This change will probably do two things: hide a lot of good comments below page flips, and cause people to quickly comment on stories to fill above the fold.

[flatline]

The more link has the rel="nofollow" attribute, so anything but the top comments will (in theory) not be indexed by search engines either. Given that some functions of the site are based on karma, I hope it's just a stopgap measure.

[nostrademons]

I believe rel=nofollow only means that the link carries no weight for PageRank and other signals that may affect the target URLs ranking, not that it won't be indexed. To block indexing, you need a <meta name=robots content=noindex> tag on the target page itself.

[nostrademons]

On the plus side - this encourages people to check out the New page and upvote stories they find interesting there, so that they can get in on the comment threads before they've become hot.

[silentbicycle]

It could be counterbalanced by some sort of notification (on the Threads page, especially) for replies. I don't care if it's fallen off the front page, if somebody is carrying an interesting discussion in a thread in which I've commented, I may still like to know. Even if there are several days between each comment.

The site's incentives to only comment on the hot threads are probably detrimental.

[JeremyBanks]

You can get reply notifications (email or mobile) using Notifo (YC W10)[1]. I think it's only for replies to your comments, not for all activity in a thread.

  [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720763

[riledhel]

Maybe we need something like twitter implemented... when you scroll below certain number of comments they load n comments more automagically.

[regularfry]

That kills the scrollbar. A better way to do it would be to show far fewer comments per page, so that you get approximately a screenful at a time, then make the "next" and "previous" links huge and blindingly obvious. I think you should scroll or navigate, not both.

[bendtheblock]

If performance is an issue, some sort of lazy load would be better, so just before you reach the bottom of the page more comments are loaded.

[drivebyacct2]

Funny, I find that I can reply to a comment, even when it's childrens' comments number in the hundreds, and it still gets attention.

[dauphin]

Naab it's because of shitty posts like yours than HN is slow! New users should not be able to post. Abusing the system is a problem.

[jedsmith]

[Edit: The comment I replied to here originally had very different content about threading and scoring. I don't know what it is now, so I've removed the reply.]

[zbanks]

I don't know how reddit works exactly, but I notice that they generally have a few "hidden" comments in the tree.

I assume this is to prevent this phenomenon. If your comment is significantly worse than the rest of an active thread, it shouldn't be prominently displayed.

[jedsmith]

The 'hidden' comments are based on a per-user threshold. My brief Reddit experience improved significantly when I raised said threshold.

[drivebyacct2]

Well, jed has removed it, but his original comment here implied that links|comments are ordered solely on the score via voting... While that is a larger driver in the "topics" that get posted, it certainly is NOT the algorithm used for determining comment ordering.

I noted more in my later comment responding to your (in my opinion) naive cheapshot on reddit, but the "best" algorithm, that is the default, does not simply rank by the number of votes. And even then, the nature of subreddits and people opting to subscribe to that which they're interested in goes a long way to putting their "upvotes" or "downvotes" into the context of the users in that subreddit.

[jedsmith]

Your summary of my comment is nowhere near what I wrote. I'm paraphrasing from memory, but I believe my comment was something like this:

> That's a problem with any site that threads comments and sorts by score.

The parent to my comment pointed out a corner case with scoring that he felt was specific to Reddit, if I recall, and I replied to indicate that such a problem is inherent to sorting/scoring at all and not Reddit itself. Since I made that reply (which actually gives Reddit credit as saying said assertion isn't specific to them), the parent edited to say something else, and I'm not sure how to grok it.

Rather than delete and look extra shady, I decided to leave that there. I'm glad I did, because your edit here in response to that speaks volumes as to why you chose to respond as you have.

First, I'm well aware of how sorting works on Reddit. I've deployed my own copy of Reddit's code and successfully brought it up, and I've manipulated the code and looked around in it (I'm a Python developer by trade).

Second, one of the problems inherent to text is that meaning can be lost, very easily. I wrote the comment to mean "that's inherent to the style of commenting Reddit chose, not Reddit per se". That's a comment regarding a concept far abstract from specifics of Reddit's voting constraints - it's a comment addressing the concepts of threading and scoring themselves.

You took my statement as "Reddit has that problem, and it sucks because". I apologize that I wasn't completely crystal clear about what I meant.

Even after rereading what I wrote, I cannot see how the way you've taken it could be considered what I intended -- you're really reading a meaning that you want to read, because you want to pick a fight over someone disparaging Reddit. I was a regular contributor to Reddit for several months and realize its value. I think it's a great community. You're not being a great representative of it at the moment, but that's your choice, not theirs.

Since you edited out 'slander', I'll put it back:

> naive cheapshot slander on Reddit

Even with the aforementioned misunderstanding, which is somewhat forgiveable, jumping to slander is a bit much. You know this because you edited it out. I'd ask the courtesy in the future of assuming the best in people, and not accusing them of torts when there's any ambiguity to meaning that you might have missed.

[drivebyacct2]

Well, as you have removed it, I can only speak to my interpretation, which as you imply, may have been off-base, and if so, I do apologize.

Please don't take me as some white knight of reddit, I think that we may agree more than I originally understood. I took your comment as a dismissal of reddit purely on the basis of voting. I apologize as it seems that may not have been your intention. I merely sought to explain the other mechanisms that reddit uses, in addition to the automatic (imo) value of subreddits, to determine the value of content.

>I'd ask the courtesy in the future of assuming the best in people, and not accusing them of torts when there's any ambiguity to meaning that you might have missed.

You're of course correct. As you noted, I editted my comment as I tried to take a more understanding ground. I'm not used to people reading so quickly. I have a tendency to rephrase and uh, un-embelish, after a second or third evaluation of the thread. I do apologize.

Though, I suppose in the end, I still simply don't understand the alternative to voting on content and I feel like the directed subreddits are add relevancy to those votes. The alternative is all moderated or selected content? A community where comments can be killed (ahem)? I guess I like the anarchist communal democracy, even if it ends up that a bunch of Internet kiddies want revenge for a tortured cat. In my mind, at the very least ideologically, it's always superior to the alternative.

[drivebyacct2]

I'd love another shot at this conversation. If you grant that there are other factors at play for determining comment ordering, and you still insist that a site is "broken" because it utilizes voting... what is the alternative? Or are you suggesting that all sites are in some fashion "broken" and that it's a common problem with any site powered by user content?

[Joakal]

Reddit solves this by hiding poorly ranked comments.

[jedsmith]

Not quite. That filters out the bad ones, but the underlying problem still remains: people reply to highly-ranked comments with something only tangentially related, or not related at all, in order to put it in front of a wider audience.

People then upvote it even though it isn't related because it might be insightful.

[rflrob]

> People then upvote it even though it isn't related because it might be insightful.

What if we, as a community, decided that deliberately trying to float with highly rated comments by posting completely unrelated "responses" is not something we'll tolerate, and downvoted violators, regardless of the insightfulness of the comment? Tangential responses are something more of a gray area, but I'm willing to let them be voted upon on their own merits.

[drivebyacct2]

Please don't just kill this again -- I cleaned this post up as my wording the first go around was unnecessary, but I think there is a valuable point here.

I don't find this to be the case at all... though I do find it to be the assumption made by many who don't actually use reddit. I just checked the top few threads to ensure I don't have confirmation bias (heh, though I understand the futility of such an exercise). Reddit is VERY good about not letting people piggy back on top posts and their "best" algorithm does not sort according to score. It sorts according to how those who voted generally vote, and based on how the majority has voted, both up and down, regardless of overall positive or negative score for the post.

The notion that replies are contextual relevant to their parent comment on reddit is a TESTAMENT to my original claim:: That reddit does a good job of exposing, even new posts, in inundated threads.

(As usual, it surprises me how much if the "our community is better that there" rhetoric goes on here, while simultaneously, we seem to mock that idea of communities making that judgemental statement.)

edit: And even so, is it a bad thing if non-relevant intriguing content is upvoted? Just click the [-] if you don't want to see it... but that's the very nature of discussion. Things go off topic and humanity learns as a result.

[drivebyacct2]

I meant on reddit. Is your reply satire or am I missing something?

I'm not a new user and my comments generally fair well here.

I (was, but am not now) downvoted on HN for saying that my posts on reddit get well received attention even with lots of noise... Seems ironic...

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Ironic that PG's definitive reply is now below the fold:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118936

[ghurlman]

Double ironic that his post is below the fold - but this one isn't.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

That's deliberate gaming of the system by me, as discussed here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119549

[thecoffman]

I feel like it would be more tolerable if it loaded the new comments inline a la reddit: at least you wouldn't lose the context/continuity of the conversation that way. Unfortunately it appears that its actually spreading the comments across multiple pages so that when you click "more" you lose everything you were just looking at.

[blahedo]

Perhaps more importantly, it seriously skews the karma that accrues to responses---those that are above the fold will continue to get upvotes while those below the fold get none, so the disparity grows.

I've seen this effect on other sites; one gaming site[0] shows two views of the comment list, "recent" and "top-voted" (both with a "more" button that few people seem to click)---the "recent" comments rarely get more than two or three votes before scrolling off, while the difference between the lowest upvote count in the "top-voted" count and the next-highest comment can be in the hundreds or thousands once a game has been up for more than a day or two.

[0]Kongregate.com, if anyone's curious.

[Flenser]

I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold".

And incentivises replying to comments above the fold.