I didn't realize how integral the numbers were to how I read HN until now. It's taken me a while to stop feeling lost without them, but with the orange dot present, I at least feel like I'm getting the insightful comments after a quick scan of the page.
Well, no. With the numbers I can get a sense of how quickly a comment is being upvoted by looking at the time it was posted. I can also compare a comment's total points to the those of surrounding comments for an indication of its relative worth.
These things aren't perfect measures, but I find them useful.
It's just a filter. By reading only high scoring comments you will get a combination of insightful posts and annoying witticisms. Only rarely do you get a false positive: a post that with a high score that is inane or simply wrong.
By reading every post you'll certainly find the "diamond in the rough", posts that don't get the recognition they deserve. But you'll also have to trudge through loads of posts of little merit. Given that there is an infinite amount of information on the internet, those 2 minutes can probably be better spent on wikipedia or reading the top post in a different HN thread.
Additionally: HN isn't just about opinion, it is also for a large part about fact. And insightful facts almost always rise to the top. On the bottom of threads you often find things that are wrong or subtly wrong.
Judging by the numbers may very well be the most efficient and reliable way to get to insightful content.
If it's a post with a lot of discussion, it'd help with one or two more levels of "good post" indicators.
Maybe making the default text color slightly more grayish and the "a bit better than orange dot" have #000 text, and for the exceptionally upvoted posts also make the "pg 26 minutes ago | link | parent | flag" header bold.
Goes to show that removing scores was a good thing. You are saying that you are more interested in following the herd than in evaluating the text, which is where the real information is, for yourself.
BillSwift your comment has all of the sniping dogma that you attribute to Herd Followers.
Have you tried to think of a more generous reason that people might look at the scores? perhaps people (like me) do a first pass to understand the herd reaction, and then do a second pass to delve into the specifics.
Simply saying score readers are herd following cretins is insulting and wrong.
I said nothing at all about anyone being cretins; sounds like you are being a bit defensive. The post I was responding to said specifically that he used scores as "which comments to keep an eye on" and to avoid "getting lost in the text". But actually reading the text is the only way to absorb the information. The biggest problem I have is with following a comment back to its reference when there are a lot of intermediate comments - allowing comment levels to collapse, like emacs outline mode, would help.
Don't higher rated comments get pushed to the top?
And of course these dots will help you locate higher rated comments that get pushed to the bottom (perhaps because they replied to a low rated comment).
