[oltdaniel]

I wouldn't see a good point for this. HN is focused on these counts, because only they allow you to identify the "importance" and "discussion size". Would be like twitter without a like and retweet counter. How do I know its important? Is it something I support and give a like, to boost its rank?

Something like [1] is more useful than hiding information.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23804469

[holler]

> how do I know it’s important?

This is an interesting topic. I’m working on a new discussion site (sqwok.im) and I explicitly opted to exclude voting. Instead to determine importance I’m using a combination of signals like live activity, publish date, etc, with plans to include further ones at a later time. I echo the sentiments from other commenters and even pg himself in regards to groupthink, and I feel that there’s room for exploration on other alternatives.

[brianyu8]

That's a really interesting premise! I'm going to keep an eye on sqwok.

[holler]

Thanks I appreciate it, and hope to chat with you on sqwok! It's amazing how much the state of online discussion is being surfaced on HN and elsewhere lately... I don't have all the answers, but I believe we need more options and different perspectives to hopefully open the door to a better state of discussion online. cheers!

[brianyu8]

It's true that upvote count and comment counts are the best way we have to quantify the quality of a submission. That's why I still browse the top posts page and will still upvote a post that I think is high quality.

But for me, upvote and comment counts bias my perception of a post. I'm choosing to hide these counts so I can read articles uninfluenced by the number of points they have relative to other posts on the front page.

[oltdaniel]

Thats why I read the title first, decide whether it is important or relevant to me, if so I check it out. If I like it, I upvote it and if I have something to throw into the discussion I add a comment. Personally, I use the numbers to indentify "quality" and "valid facts". Invalid posts have a large number of comments and less upvotes.

[2038AD]

> How do I know its important?

How do you choose books to read or topics to study? Sincere question

[oltdaniel]

Because they are recommended or have been explored by a lot of people. Would you buy a product off Amazon without seeing the number of reviews? How do you know it is "quality content".

More votes than comments = something worth reading and seems to be valid content. Less votes than comments = seems to have invalid points with a big dicussion.

HNs "quality index" for each post can be "calculated" by everyone. Without these numbers you don't know these kind of informations. The title of a post should always be in the focus, thats for sure. But thats why it has a larger font.

[2038AD]

With posts, I mostly skim the titles for what looks interesting. I take fewer comments as a bonus but I can't say exactly why (less noise?). I don't look at the votes (though it obviously contributes to what I see).

With books, I mostly read based on individual recommendations (or references). It's more natural to me than going with what's popular though it doesn't exclude it. It has the bonus of being an imperfect quality filter which mixes the good (as determined by people I trust) with the unusual.

To be honest, when I have read books based specifically on popularity I've been thoroughly disappointed. Reading Thinking Fast and Slow was mostly challenging with a mixture of bad examples and bad terminology ("systems 1 and 2"). I enjoyed the book a whole lot more near the end when it was discussing the incompleteness of/problems with economics. Some of my distaste for the earlier parts possibly comes from exposure to critics beforehand (e.g. Gerd Gigerenzer) and to the optical illusions. Similarly Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! can be amusing but a lot of the stories boil down to "aren't I clever?".