<story><title>Poll: Display points on comments?</title><text>My goal in not showing points on comments was to prevent the sort of contentious exchanges where people (in this case literally) try to score points off one another.  I feel like it has done that to some extent, but at a cost in other areas.  So which do you prefer?&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s the earlier thread about it: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=2403716&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=2403716&lt;/a&gt;</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>jerf</author><text>I think it&apos;s too soon to actually judge, as we&apos;re still in the &quot;ick! change!&quot; phase. Ask again in another week or two. Same for any other experiment you run in the future; unless it obviously and immediately fails, give it some simmer time. (IMHO, of course.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mechanical_fish</author><text>It is going to take time for the second-order effects to develop.&lt;p&gt;The optimum writing style may change. When threads require more skimming it pays to write more skimmable content. The reading style will also change. None of these changes will happen overnight; it takes time, the way that learning emacs takes time.&lt;p&gt;So I agree: Let the experiment run longer. What is the worst that can happen? HN becomes an order of magnitude less popular? I &lt;i&gt;liked&lt;/i&gt; HN when it was an order of magnitude less popular. ;)</text></comment>
<story><title>Poll: Display points on comments?</title><text>My goal in not showing points on comments was to prevent the sort of contentious exchanges where people (in this case literally) try to score points off one another.  I feel like it has done that to some extent, but at a cost in other areas.  So which do you prefer?&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s the earlier thread about it: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=2403716&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=2403716&lt;/a&gt;</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>jerf</author><text>I think it&apos;s too soon to actually judge, as we&apos;re still in the &quot;ick! change!&quot; phase. Ask again in another week or two. Same for any other experiment you run in the future; unless it obviously and immediately fails, give it some simmer time. (IMHO, of course.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nkurz</author><text>I&apos;m in this camp as well:  keep it for a while and see how we adjust.&lt;p&gt;My initial reaction was negative.  I found it harder to scan a long page of comments quickly.  And I&apos;m not sure why, but I also found that I&apos;m more resistant to vote, either positively or negatively.  Maybe because the site feels more static.&lt;p&gt;The one fix I would suggest is that having the arrows disappear after voting does not feel fulfilling.  It feels like my vote has been lost.  Switching to displaying the darkened arrow that I chose would feel better.&lt;p&gt;Or, if more voting was thought to be a good thing, you could display the vote count only afterward.  I think I&apos;d be more inclined to vote if there was some sort of &apos;reward&apos; for the action.  The previous reward was seeing the number change in whatever direction I wanted to move it, but receiving information about others would probably work too.</text></comment>