[murrayh]

Initially this struck me as a counter-productive and elitist measure, but it didn't take me long to swing to a positive reaction.

Really, I want less crappy comments and more good ones. I've been skimming comments for months now, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I am simply not that interested anymore.

Hopefully people do hesitate and refrain from submitting a comment, because that is probably a comment I don't want to see. In the end, if someone really cares, they will post a comment anyway, and that should give the 1 point comments more perceived worth (maybe I will no longer treat them so harshly during my skimming?).

[sounddust]

The problem is that highly rated comments are not necessarily good ones. The comments that get the highest ratings are usually snappy one-liners or the guy who posted first on the thread. People can't be trusted to use voting correctly unless they know that their actions must stand up to some sort of scrutiny and that it's a privilege.

What I think we should have instead are

1) a clear set of rules for when to vote something up, and when to vote something down.

2) All comment up/down votes should be publicly visible.

3) There should be a group of people chosen by HN who are extremely well-versed in knowing what a good and bad comment is, according to the principles of the site. When these people vote a comment up/down, then it lowers the karma of those who voted the opposite way of this person. If someone's karma is low enough, they can no longer vote up/down on comments.

[mechanical_fish]

The comments that get the highest ratings are usually snappy one-liners or the guy who posted first on the thread.

Speaking as someone who, from the available evidence, can't clear his throat in print without a five-paragraph running start [1]: What exactly is wrong with one-liners? They are mercifully short!

Yes, it's possible for a social news site to be completely taken over by short-form snark. But HN has resisted that pretty well so far. I mean, I haven't given up yet. And, frankly, it's far better for half the posts to be one line long than for half of them to be four-page harangues.

I will also note that my tendency to leave multi-paragraph monoliths in the comments hasn't hurt my ratings any.

As for the tendency of people to get upmodded farther if they post sooner, or if they respond to things that they also upvote: Last month everyone was complaining that too many submissions fall off the /newest page without receiving any upvotes or comments. What's wrong with having an incentive that prompts people to analyze the new submissions as soon as they come through the door? That's valuable work!

---

[1] To quote Pascal: "I would not have made this so long except that I do not have the leisure to make it shorter."

[sounddust]

There's nothing wrong with snappy one-liners getting modded up. It's just that there are so many thoughtful, intelligent comments that get ignored and buried, or even worse, modded down because their viewpoint is against the common belief of the people participating in the thread.

There are so many arguments that would not get improperly modded down if votes were public and subject to scrutiny. It only happens now because people know that they can anonymously get away with it.

[olefoo]

> 2) All comment up/down votes should be publicly visible.

That would have a major effect on the dynamics of the site. It brings with it a metric buttload of baggage in terms of potential fuel for vendettas and bad feelings.

On the other hand it would be interesting to see the effect it had.But if you (pg) go this route, give it a full week and let people know beforehand; otherwise it's going to be more about 'OMG you changed the rules!' and less an investigation of the potential of different rulesets for provoking beneficial social dynamics.

[ObieJazz]

Before the orange names, I refrained from commenting if I thought it was likely my comment would end up being downvoted to 0 points or less. Now, I'm likely to refrain from commenting if I think my comment won't get upmodded to 5 points or more (4 upvotes), because anything less would be net-negative on my average karma target of 3.5.

I see this as having a similar effect as initializing each post to -3 points (or maybe -2.5). I'm afraid this may lead to fewer genuinely thoughtful comments that might lack a populist appeal because the poster thought twice about posting at all.

[murrayh]

Maybe we lose some awesome comments.

Maybe if people are thinking more about what they write, we might gain an awesome comment instead of a trivial one.

Maybe we might get far less comments, making it easier to notice awesome comments.

Maybe awesome people get more interested in a more interesting site and start making additional awesome comments.

----

The orange name system fundamentally rewards quality over quantity. That is a step in the right direction for a system that has always been stupidly simple. Well, the commenting system was so simple that this change is quite large in the scheme of things.

[alecco]

This new system validates group-think, IMHO. I used to come here for diversity of opinions.

Edit: As I don't care that much about conforming my votes tend to wildly swing positive and negative. But the most insightful ones tend to be in the lower numbers. It's lame.