Re:A steep rise of Hacker News in Google rankings
by freedomben on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @09:11AM
(#39454002)
Indeed, the sad reality I've discovered is that vote count != quality. In fact some of the highest quality comments of mine tend to languish in obscurity. I don't care about karma and invisible internet points so this doesn't bother me at all, but it does seem like a reflection of a sub-optimal system, though I of course don't have answers for how to make it better.
Sometimes moderators actively bump down top comments.
It’s probably related to what dang wrote above about the “unholy dynamic” of low-content comments that trigger easy upvotes. I remember myself having written some (frankly) lightweight low-effort snark, see it end up at the top of the comments for a few hours, and then it went mysteriously halfway down the list even though the upvotes didn’t stop.
To be clear, I think it’s a good thing the moderators do this kind of weighting, and the invisibility of comment upvote counts to non-authors is an important feature because it enables this.