Maybe it's a self esteem issue (I blame my mother) but I suspect that some people will skip the "gray name" comments and only read the "orange name" comments. I know because I did, and I didn't even know what the orange was for until I dug. If I make a comment in the forest, and no one is there to hear me....

I understand what the goal was but, ultimately, I find myself longing for the old days.

By the way, I upvoted the OP, and I tried to post above the fold, but the OP was too darn long. <== Sarcasm there. How'd I do?

slashdot got this particular issue right (at least in the early 2000s, before their digg-envy took hold) by not awarding karma for anything modded up "Funny". while these "funny" comments -- usually brief and snarky or perverted -- would still appear +5, there was otherwise no long-term incentive. unfortunately there's no analogous control mechanism here (and copping slashdot's mod system altogether seems too heavyweight.)

there was also a karma cap (+50?) above which your comments would start out at 2 points instead of 1; otherwise there's little point in accumulating more karma than that.

their moderation faq is worth a read (skip about a third of the way down to "will you delete my comment?"): http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml

also, some winding threads are really interesting (and vacuous ones are easy to skip) -- i don't know if it's worth the tradeoff to cull them.

(yes, i'm replying to the top-modded post so my comment goes above the fold.)

I also like to think that /. and HN appeal to a completely different audience, and the whole 'points' thing may be detrimental to that. As far as I'm concerned it could be completely under water (as in invisible to users of the site) and just used as a way to give/remove functionality and to influence sort orders and things like that.

pg doesn't mention the implications of gaming (in this context, flaws in the mechanism) in the newsnews announcement. I haven't had time to read the entire primary thread, but if anyone has pointers, send them my way.

Also, if any game theory type people are around know more about mechanism, would be interested in what you think of the new commenting features.

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?).

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As for the orange name stuff, who cares. Karma is not an objective, it's a side-effect. If you do care about having an orange name, though, I agree that the algorithm is a bit dubious...

You can have your name in pink, purple or green for all I care it will not matter one little bit, the only thing that matters is what you have to say.

But there is way too much drama about this stuff now, so the thing to do is probably to let it go and see how it plays out over a few months.

That said, karma alone cannot preserve whatever culture and social norms exist here. I like the orange names because they highlight (for better or for worse) the people that shape the discussions the most. Since it seems to be generally agreed upon that the current discussions are good, it makes sense to point out those people that have the most influence. As a way to shape social norms, it seems pretty effective.

Sadly, I'm betting on "no measurable change."

So if enough people are like me, it won't be the one-liners that benefit.

2, 3, 5 and 7 are all fairly minor, I think.

But 1 and 4 are all about popularity, and number 8 leads to shallow discussion. It seems wrong to me, to assume that anything valuable must be stated within the first two or three exchanges.

Bring forth the karma!

Eventually you might also find that you can determine the average # of views of your comment purely based on the location of it on the page, in which case the javascript tracking would no longer be necessary. Although it's also possible that the characteristics of comment viewing are too complex to be able to simplify it to that.

Also, maybe instead of a fixed score required to be orange, take a distribution of all users and only make the top X percent qualify.

Unfortunately, #7 is also true. I've noticed too many comments downvoted where the sarcasm was just too heavy for people to pick up on, apparently. Maybe it's just my personality and background, but I think HN veers too much on the side of serious.

I half expect to see a facebook group: "One Million Strong Against The New HN!"

1-3: Comments that few people ever read are inherently less valuable to the vitality of the site than comments that many people read.

4: If people are encouraged to pick their battles rather than voicing their opinion any time they have a comment box in front of them, so much the better. It means less time wasted with the same stale arguments, and perhaps fewer one-sided submissions.

I concede that this relies on the fragile notion that people will be willing to acknowledge (by voting) when a comment they disagree with has merit, but I suspect this would be easier if people had more experience with higher-quality disagreement--say a 4, 5, or 6 on pg's hierarchy.

5: If a submission and thread was worth commenting in at all, it is presumably interesting enough to deserve the up voting. Not a problem.

If people are discouraged from commenting on threads that they themselves do not find worth voting up, that's a good thing.

If a significant number of people start commenting on and voting up stories that they themselves don't find interesting--well, at that point I'd start fearing for the survival of the human race.

6-7: Well, duh.

8: See 1-3. Long 1-on-1 discussions can be valuable to the individuals involved, but they don't provide much benefit to the site as a whole.

Think about it this way: all you need to do to maintain a 3 point average is to write comments that at least two people find interesting. Just two people. All that the orange name signifies is that on average your comments are interesting to more than one other person on the site. I think that's worth rewarding.

None of this is rocket science, so I don't fault tptaceck but I hope most of this advice is not taken (except for 6+7).

I always thought Digg needed a new category called "Stories that get no respect" which are picked by editors or highly rated members as quality stories and put on a special page to promote going deep on HN.

It's an inherent risk in any situation where a number is brought in to play, there will be people that are going to focus on maximizing that number, not on the original goal the number was supposed to help achieve.

2. Don’t post on a front page post that already has more than a full page of text.... You’re just yelling into the void. --> I actually think this is GREAT. People won't post into an already largely full thread unless they have real insight that's bursting to get out, instead of rehashing some obvious observation.

3. When possible, reply to a highly rated comment that doesn’t already have replies. Particularly focus on getting your comment to appear "above the fold" when it is posted. This will ensure that your comment is read and enjoyed. --> If it gets abused for gamesmanship, that's ugly. However, an insightful follow-on or dissent from the top comment IS more read, and thus does create more value, and thus, more karma. But we should be vigilant as a community to these karma-jackers.

4. Don't post against the prevailing mood of a post. If the mood of that article is pro-libertarian, beware critiquing that philosophy! On the other hand, when the population is more balanced in that individual thread, feel free. In general someone who agrees is more likely to upvote than someone who disagrees, so you should get be ahead on balance. --> At first, this really upset me. I've seen a lot of warm'n'happy comments get upvoted more than an insightful point I made that I assume took heat from people with a different opinion based on the voting patterns around it. Then I realized - if you're on something controversial, it's got to either be balanced, or really good to get community respect. If people reflect for a minute before spouting talking points, that could be a good thing.

5. As soon as you make a comment, upvote the article and all of the parents to your comment. This will put your article closer to the public eye. If you want to truly join the dark side, vote down the other comments on the thread or other replies. I’ve never done this, but it’s an option. --> Yeah, could be a big problem - will be interesting to see how it plays out.

6. Say something interesting. Without this, you’ve got nothing! --> This is awesome.

7. If you’re trying to be funny or sarcastic, make it incredibly obvious. If it’s not incredibly obvious what you’re trying to say, don’t bother posting. --> I'm not everyone, but I HATE online sarcasm. It's cheap and easy to get that ANYWHERE. The internet is overflowing with sarcasm. I like that Hacker News is really an intelligent discussion place, and humor is used less frequently and more judiciously than elsewhere.

8. Don't get involved in a long discussion! This will only end with a bunch of 1 point posts that drag your average down. --> Finally, I just realized something. I try to check my comments later and see if anyone replied to me. I'm going to make more of an effort to upvote 1-karma posts that were late to the party if they offer even a bit of insight, as a way of saying thanks for keeping the discussion going.

Cheers Gavin!