10
votes
Can we show number of not-label-collapsed comments instead of plain number of comments?
Right now, there is number of comments visible when on main/group page. What would you think about excluding comments that are collapsed by default, such as those labeled as noise? I'm disappointed when I see 7 comments at an article, but there is none actually relevant to the article itself. The disadvantage of this is that the site could feel more dead, especially in low-activity groups.
What about showing both like "3 relevant comments (7 total)" or something?
This is a good addition to @Soptik's good suggestion.
Added suggestion to Gitlab:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/536
p.s. I'm a bit busy ATM, so can't really spend too much time thinking about this or responding in detail. But my initial gut reaction says that this should only be an option, and perhaps not the default setting, since moderators and admins will definitely want to have a totally accurate comment count, even including noise comments.
If there were a setting like "Expand all comments regardless of noise" (like HN's showdead setting), then the comment count displayed could inherit from that setting. Just to reduce settings page bloat.
This is tangential, but hopefully relevant: I feel like I'm seeing more comments collapsed than I would reasonably expect to.
It seems as though people are using the labels as disagreement signifiers or pseudo-downvotes. I can't even entirely claim the high ground here - I've definitely used the exemplary label as a "super agree" once or twice - but I do think it's worth discussing. My personal bar for collapsing a comment would be fairly high, pretty much just something that's actively detracting from the conversation; is that reasonable? How is the label usage as observed looking compared to the expectations/goals of the system?
My bar is not that high. I use noise on anything which doesn't add to the discussion, which is what the description of the label says it supposed to be for. Comments like "LOL" are obviously noise, but even ones like "I agree/disagree with this" don't add anything to the discussion either IMO, and so I also label those sorts noise as well. If the person actually explains why they agree/disagree then I won't label it noise though.
Honestly, I have only seen a handful of cases where I think noise was misused, more often than not on joke comments, which should have had the joke label applied instead of noise. However in a number of those cases, I simply voted on the comment and it actually undid the collapse effect on refresh, so chances are it was just a couple humorless people misusing the label.
edit: All the other labels are harder to tell if they are being misused though simply because their effect is not so noticeable. Even exemplary is hard to tell if it's being misused too, since we can't see people's messages, and even I have used it as a means of simply communicating "thanks", rather than as a "this comment is superb and everyone should read it!" kinda thing. Back when exemplary was way more prominent (the big
Exemplary x4
at the top of a comment) I think there was more misuse of it for "I agree, fuck that person you responded to!" and "here's an exemplary because I don't think the person above you deserved one!" kinda one-upmanship, but that seems to have died down now that it's just the blue ribbon again.I mostly agree with @cfabbro.
Like him, I have a low bar for labelling something as "noise" or "offtopic" or "joke". However, unlike him, I think a joke is also noise, so a joke comment will usually get both those labels from me. I also use "noise" for comments which are just article summaries or block quotes from the article, because they're not adding anything that I can't get from reading the article itself.
And I do not use the label feature as a disagreement signifier. I'm fastidious about that.
Like him, I don't see many collapsed comments which should not be collapsed for some reason. In these cases, I will message Deimos directly to let him know someone is misusing the label feature. I think I've messaged him only two or three times about this in the past six months.
Do you have examples of comments which have been collapsed that you think should not have been collapsed? That might help guide this discussion, seeing as people like me & @cfabbro (who both spend way too much time on Tildes!) haven't seen what you're referring to.
Given that both you and @cfabbro take a similar view on when to use the labels, that does suggest that this was at least partially just a mismatch of expectations. For context, while I'm obviously a much more casual user, I don't think I've ever actually used (i.e. felt the need to use) one of the negative labels - which in turn definitely suggests that my interpretation was a fairly strict one!
The idea that @cfabbro mentioned of a negative angle on the exemplary tags back when they were more prominent is particularly interesting, and it's not one I would have thought of otherwise. I can see how small changes in prominence can change people's behaviour in general, though, and that's mainly why I thought this warranted a quick check.
As a fairly unscientific survey, I've just taken a quick run through all commented posts on my own front page and found a total of five collapsed comments across all the posts - that's definitely fewer than I would have guesstimated, so if that's representative then I'm overestimating the numbers in general.
Of those, this is the breakdown:
Only one of those examples strike me as an inappropriate use of the noise label, and here's my rationale for why.
Imagine if 10 more people responded similarly in the same thread. Now imagine 100, 1000, 10000. That would significantly decrease the signal and increases the noise, drowning out the actually valuable contributions to the discussion. It's noise and shouldn't be encouraged. Not only that but if people want to simply express agreement, they can vote on the comment. There is no need to reply "Yep" to express that.
That to me seems like it was intended as a joke, which has its own label, and so therefor has been mislabeled as noise.
Similar to the "Yep"... imagine 100 of those exact same comments.
See, this is a case where I think there is actually some crossover between joke and noise. While it's undeniably a joke, it's a tired cliche one that doesn't add anything of value to the discussion. It's nothing but a low effort callback.
This one may be borderline, however since the OP couldn't even be bothered to explain their rationale and stated it as if there is no room for debate, I think the noise label is perfectly justified. This case goes back to my "If the person actually explains why... then I won't label it noise" rationale in my previous comment.
My own take is still a little softer, but I can see the merit all of those arguments, and as I mentioned I did find fewer than I'd expected from the current front page. I'm quite willing to believe that the difference in thinking means that I was perceiving it as more of an issue than was warranted - now it's directly on my mind I'll probably end up keeping a closer eye out anyway, but it seems like you guys have it in hand.
IMO there is nothing wrong with having a softer view... and there is definitely some merit in your way of looking at it too, so thanks for expressing your concerns/opinions on the matter. Knowing what others think regarding the labels and their use tempers my own, and yours helped remind me that being too extreme in my interpretation isn't super helpful either. ;)
I mostly agree with @cfabbro's reply to this.
P.S. I just stumbled across a comment which should not be collapsed. There's one! But they really don't happen very often, in my observation.