Comment by pg

I'm not commenting on this article specifically (not least because I haven't read it), but there are plenty of articles that deserve little more than "middlebrow dismissal".

Very likely one could find plenty of more interesting things to say about those articles. One can find interesting things to say about anything. But if an article is about an attention-grabbing subject, is superficially plausible, but is just plain unsound in the sort of way the grandparent of this comment is alleging, the "middlebrow dismissal" -- predictable as it is for the cognoscenti -- may still be the most useful thing there is to say about it, and a comment thread that didn't have "please note, this is probably wrong in the usual way" near the top of it would be a bad and misleading one.

If HN is worse off for being full of middlebrow dismissals, the real problem may not be the middlebrow dismissals but the articles that provoke them.

It's been a while since I've coined a new term on HN, but I think now is as appropriate a time as ever:

cargo cult skepticism.

edit: ~10 previous results on Google. :-/

I've noticed this too. It's a vicious hit-and-run attack on a thread's discussion that presumes only the empirical viewpoint is worth considering. It often trainwrecks the thread into intellectual pissing contests, rather than discussing subjects with fellow human beings.

Removing karma entirely might help. Too many people treat it as a vanity metric, and game it.

In all honesty, if this is what bugs you the most about HN comments, then that mostly means that HN is doing remarkably well, given its population increase.

2 years ago, many HNers were predicting that HN's growth would inevitably turn it into yet another Reddit or 4chan. Instead, the consistent top comment is what you call the "middlebrow dismissal". Really, that's not so bad, compared to the top comment on $ANY_OTHER_SITE,_REALLY. Just scroll down to the next!

(that said, I found your complaint insightful: in fact, I realise now that I've been guilty of the odd middlebrow dismissal myself)

> "If there is one thing I wish I could do to improve HN it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically."

Do you have some data that we could use to play with? That sounds like a nice problem to solve.

Could anyone with access to HN comments voting data execute something similar to the SQL query below and evaluate the results?

The idea is to use past voting correlation with other users to sort the comments.

  declare @userId int;
  select @userId = UserId
  from users
  where Username = 'pg';

  /* Let's calculate expert table first. We will use it to rate comments later. */
  select
	v2.UserId,
	sum(v1.Score * v2.Score) as VotingCorrelation
  into #expert
  from CommentVotingLog v1
  inner join CommentVotingLog v2
	on v2.CommentId = v1.CommentId
  where v1.UserId = @userId
  group by v2.UserId;

  /* Now we can rate comments against #expert table: */
  select
	c.CommentText,
	(select sum(v.Score * e.VotingCorrelation)
	from CommentVotingLog v
	inner join #expert e
		on e.UserId = v.UserId
	where v.CommentId = c.CommentId
	) as Rating
  from Comment c
  where c.ArticleId = 4692598 -- or another article that's discussed
  order by Rating desc;

I assume CommentVotingLog table has CommentId, UserId of the voter, and Score that voter gave to the comment: +1 for upvote or -1 for downvote)

I also assume that CommentVotingLog table has at least one record for every comment -- the author of that comment gives Score = +1 to that comment.

These queries don't have "freshness" adjustment (older comments had higher change to get upvoted, so their rating should be somewhat downgraded).

I'm always conflicted about interesting comments which link to something I read and learn from, but which are needlessly insulting. The grandparent linked to FightingAging.com and I read the article and clicked on some of the links and found it informative, though not convincing. But I cringe when he says, "Nonsense about antioxidants in the diet is exactly that: nonsense."

So do I upvote because I learned something from his comment, or downvote because his tone degrades the quality of discourse on Hacker News? Clearly pg says "downvote", and I often do, but I'm always on the fence about it.

Solution: Get rid of voting. Order the comments randomly.

I've never understood the point behind anonymous voting.^1 What value does it add?

1. But some people, think of them what you will, have tried to use voting as a way to be more convincing when pandering to advertisers, e.g., Facebook "Likes".

Assuming we were the intelligent, high brow readers you would hope would be reading your forum, then wouldn't we be smart enough to see that voting adds nothing, except a source of amusement (as the silliest comments or those from random members with "high karma" rise to the top)? Intelligent people do not need a "karma system". They can take in all available information and separate the wheat from the chaf on their own. (No need for someone else, someone else's algorithm, to manipulate the order of comments.)

How about a "middlebrow dismissal" link to complement the flag link?

Of course, it doesn't need to be called "middlebrow dismissal" but there is nothing better for determining if something is or isn't middlebrow dismissal than users.

TBH, the flag link could be more powerful/useful by asking people to explain why they are flagging something. Later on you can release the categorized flagged post dataset for others to train an algorithm against. If someone is willing to spend the time to click on flag, they are demonstrating that they care about post/comment quality and that is itself a good indicator that they'd be willing to spend the time to tell you exactly why they are flagging something.

"If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically."

3 years ago, HN was great. Amazing in fact. What's changed in 3 years? Certainly not the system. The user base has changed, grown, degenerated into stereotypes and punch lines. There is an old saying that I believe succinctly explains what has happened: Garbage in, garbage out.

I keep seeing people writing about wanting to "improve HN." Every time I see this I think, are these people mad? It's dead Jim. He's been dead. We can all sit here and prod his body and make recommendations for how best to make his arm into a grappling hook or some such nonsense, but at the end of the day, the patient is STILL dead.

If there is one thing I would do to improve HN, it would be to write the death certificate and move on to finding or creating the next HN.

Also, I thought the article was excellent, albeit long.