>Social proofs are bad. You should be reading the comments and then deciding what is interesting and noteworthy [...]
Respectfully, I disagree.
Its a core idea of this site, that the community does a good job of surfacing interesting interesting content; what appears on the front page is what has been upvoted sufficiently. I presume you wouldn't argue that HN users should read all submissions, and decide what is interesting and noteworthy for themselves.
You have a point, in that there may be feedback effect with comments.
Personally, I don't think that a comment being highly rated seriously effects my judgement of its content. It does, however, draw my attention to that comment.
I would argue that comment scores should not be optimised to give the most accurate rating to comments, so much as to filter comments - e.g. draw attention to comments that are interesting, and might otherwise be overlooked.
As such, if there is positive feedback in good comments being 'overvoted' I don't see a problem.
I accept that this is a subjective perspective, determined by what I want from HN. I want to use the smart community here to quickly learn important information, and gain insight; as such, I don't really care whether comment scores are 'correct', so much as whether they are useful.
As others have said, the ability to see the wider community's aggregated opinion on a particular set of conflicting comments, is also useful, where I lack the expertise to evaluate them myself - but I wouldn't be casting any votes, in such a situation.
> It does, however, draw my attention to that comment.
There is a subtle feedback loop in there. After all, a comment that draws your attention will then be more likely to be upvoted by you and people acting like you.
Respectfully, I disagree.
Its a core idea of this site, that the community does a good job of surfacing interesting interesting content; what appears on the front page is what has been upvoted sufficiently. I presume you wouldn't argue that HN users should read all submissions, and decide what is interesting and noteworthy for themselves.
You have a point, in that there may be feedback effect with comments.
Personally, I don't think that a comment being highly rated seriously effects my judgement of its content. It does, however, draw my attention to that comment.
I would argue that comment scores should not be optimised to give the most accurate rating to comments, so much as to filter comments - e.g. draw attention to comments that are interesting, and might otherwise be overlooked.
As such, if there is positive feedback in good comments being 'overvoted' I don't see a problem.
I accept that this is a subjective perspective, determined by what I want from HN. I want to use the smart community here to quickly learn important information, and gain insight; as such, I don't really care whether comment scores are 'correct', so much as whether they are useful.
As others have said, the ability to see the wider community's aggregated opinion on a particular set of conflicting comments, is also useful, where I lack the expertise to evaluate them myself - but I wouldn't be casting any votes, in such a situation.