It's true that comment-score information is interesting, but is it interesting for the right reasons? People are hardwired to have a morbid interest in the thinking of the tribe. Even if hackers consciously try to avoid paying undue attention to the opinions of the tribe, the subconscious instinct is still there.
I think that the dangers of majority-conformist thinking and other groupthink behaviors are very real and should be discouraged. I don't think hiding comment scores will have that effect, though it might make it more difficult to recognize when it happens.
The one thing in this experiment that might (I intuit) help discourage groupthink related behaviors is hiding one's own score from oneself, because people will then be less emboldened when they're being idiots just for expressing popular opinions. Unfortunately, this will also (I intuit) discourage people when they're being smart from as readily taking another look at whether what they've said is idiotic when others recognize the idiocy.
This strikes me as something of a parallel to when people sometimes claim that programming languages should be made "safer" at the expense of power provided for the programmer, and does not seem like a good direction to take the site.
>I don't think hiding comment scores will have that effect, though it might make it more difficult to recognize when it happens.
Comment scores make group beliefs far more obvious. Common knowledge of group beliefs is a necessary condition for groupthink.
>The one thing in this experiment that might (I intuit) help discourage groupthink related behaviors is hiding one's own score from oneself, because people will then be less emboldened when they're being idiots just for expressing popular opinions.
The thing we need to be afraid of is public praise or shame for writing a well-received or poorly-received comment.
>Unfortunately, this will also (I intuit) discourage people when they're being smart from as readily taking another look at whether what they've said is idiotic when others recognize the idiocy.
I disagree. When people are called out publicly for unpopular beliefs, they tend to commit to them even stronger.
Consider the following two stories. In Story A, Joe is downmodded on a comment with no replies and his low score is public knowledge. Joe becomes unhappy and stubborn. In Story B, Joe is downmodded on a comment with no replies and his low score is private knowledge. Joe wonders what might have caused so many to individually downmod his comment. He replies to his comment and says "Just curious, I noticed that a lot of people seem to be downmodding my comment. Is there some sort of flaw in my argument that I'm not seeing?"
> Comment scores make group beliefs far more obvious. Common knowledge of group beliefs is a necessary condition for groupthink.
True -- but obviousness is not a prerequisite of common knowledge in a knowledge-oriented community like this. Maybe if it was Digg the scores themselves would be a lot more necessary for groupthink.
> The thing we need to be afraid of is public praise or shame for writing a well-received or poorly-received comment.
I think you're underestimating the power of a pat on the back.
> I disagree. When people are called out publicly for unpopular beliefs, they tend to commit to them even stronger.
See above, re: "being smart". Were you not reading what I said?
