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Want Hacker News Comment Scores Back? Check out HNPoints.com

234 points by HNPoints 15y ago

blhack 15y ago
I love this. A hacker approach to getting the points back :)
- HNPoints 15y ago
  Thanks for your support! Yep, just trying to make something people want. :)
  - blhack 15y ago
    This is definitely something people want. Thanks for building it :)
user24 15y ago
Yeah, having got past the initial "ooh, this is cool" phase, I do actually think HN was better off with the comment scores. For example, I was looking at a popular submission the other day and someone had said "Hey is there a PHP port of this?". Back in the day, I'd be able to see how many points it had as a rough indicator of how many other people would have found a PHP port useful. Now I can't tell if that was just one guy, or if 50 people thought the same. Please, PG, bring the points back? (and while you're at it, stop new users being shown in green?)
- ericb 15y ago
  Speaking of coloring, what if, instead of points, highly voted items showed orange-red or something to that effect. I lost information when comments went away. When someone suggested a payment processor and got 150 upvotes, I would know they sound respectable. Maybe bringing comment scores back isn't needed, just a rough sense of how the comment was received via coloration.
  - user24 15y ago
    Yeah that would solve it. (even better, make the shade of colour relative to the number of votes deployed on that page. So it's indicative of the percentage of votes on the page, rather than some absolute value)
- Silhouette 15y ago
  > Please, PG, bring the points back? (and while you're at it, stop new users being shown in green?) +1 (not least because then I could hit the up arrow instead of wasting space with this post).
  - KeithMajhor 15y ago
    I'm not following. Why does a lack of visible comment scores necessitate your post?
    - bsaunder 15y ago
      Perhaps because (s)he wants to share with the community that at least one person agrees with the comment: Previously: click up arrow, score of parent shows as 2. Now: click up arrow... no one knows. Post a comment to make it visible (ideally add some other relevant detail). Definitely suboptimal.
      - Locke1689 15y ago
        Isn't that what we're trying to avoid? Having some symbol of agreement?
        Silhouette 15y ago
        I'm not really sure what people wanted to avoid by getting rid of the voting numbers. Posts still appear to be ranked based partly on score, and posts near the top of a discussion are still going to get more upvotes and replies. Meanwhile, if someone posts about the project they are setting up and 50 people reply to the discussion with an assortment of feedback, it is probably useful/interesting to know that 5 of those ideas were also supported by many other people. Personally, I would rather see that from a simple, discreet number than a million "me, too" posts. The latter is the most obvious negative change I have observed since the scores disappeared, though as it happens I do agree with many of the other points people have made in this discussion as well. If you're worried about too much groupthink and people trying to score every last point they can for some reason, surely there are other approaches that could be implemented quite simply: you could use some sort of grouping with a logarithmic scale, for example, or cap the maximum points any post can receive and let it decay accordingly in the priorities relative to newer posts no matter how many upvotes it got at the start of the discussion.
- r00fus 15y ago
  I present sorting as a possible solution. Have a sort (optional setting) that puts the highest rated comments at the top of each thread branch. This combined with graying of zero/neg rated comments should be adequate to see what the community prefers. That way, skimmers can see and read comments that are rated higher first, but there's much less gaming for higher scores (just implicit ranking within the specific blog-post context). Also an indicator of a comment that's much higher rated than others in the comment thread or post could also be indicated. There are many ways to see quality without revealing the scores. Look at say, online stores like Amazon for "bestselling" sorts... you don't see overall sales, but a sales rank and even that's hidden at the search results level.
blhack 15y ago
If we're going to open a new dialog on this: Has anybody noticed the drastic decline in quality of links and comments in the last month or so? I think one of the problems is that, without comment scores, new users don't have feedback from the community on how they're supposed to act. There's no way for them to learn the culture. So it's September, but with no way to tell the new students to mind their manners.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Bad comments are still grey. People can see their own comment scores. HN is still in decline, but I don't think it's worse than when it had public scores. Meanwhile, not having up-to-the-minute scores makes the site more pleasant to participate in; one isn't prodded to make statements in reaction to ludicrous (and likely ephemeral) voting swings.
  - user24 15y ago
    >one isn't prodded to make statements in reaction to ludicrous (and likely ephemeral) voting swings. You can see your own score, so I'm not sure why you think that's true? It does mean that hivemind voting is negated, but I've not really seen that as a problem on HN. Some analysis of voting patterns etc before and after the change would be great to see from PG.
    - elliottcarlson 15y ago
      I think hivemind voting is pretty evident at times. You will see certain users with a much higher upvote (based on placement) than someone who had a far more insightful, far more thought and discussion provoking comment that was posted much earlier - and those certain users are people with names the community knows and respects (often rightfully so). This doesn't mean that those users should be upvoted just because of who they are. Granted I have no facts to back this claim up - but I have seen it happen again and again - just the way certain popular blogs always reach #1 regardless of their content.
  - blhack 15y ago
user24 15y ago
How about throwing the code[1] up on github? [1] The XPI is a slim greasmonkey-compiled script which just loads http://hnpoints.com/hnpoints.js http://hnpoints.com/hnpoints.js into the page
- HNPoints 15y ago
  I'm planning on doing that, but wanted to fix up any bugs that crop up first. In the meantime, as you noted, the un-obfuscated JS file is up on the server for all to see. It's used in the bookmarklet and Firefox plugin directly, and the Chrome, Opera, and Safari extensions use the same file bundled up with minor or no changes.
  - user24 15y ago
    By the way, I don't think you'll get past the mozilla review process with this extension structure. When I wrote one for my job, I seem to remember them being nervous about loading and executing JS from 3rd parties (the thinking being: if you're hacked, suddenly everyone who installed your extension is also hacked, especially as the JS is executed with raised privs.) Not that you're at that stage yet, but I just thought I'd give you a heads-up :) Nice idea, well executed. PS: You aren't using the extension yourself? edit: ah you are now :)
    - HNPoints 15y ago
      Thanks for the tip! Given how technically savvy most of HN is, I was thinking the XPI download would be sufficient at least for now, but when I do go to submit it to the addons repository, I will be sure to put the actual JS in there. I am indeed using the Chrome extension, but it only updates comment scores every 10 minutes while on HN as not to slow down the HN reading experience. :)
ignifero 15y ago
I liked it for 2 weeks, but, as a data driven person, i would like to be able to see the scores . What was the incentive to hide them again?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
brandall10 15y ago
Thank you so much for doing this.
mtogo 15y ago
Thanks for this! I was hoping pg would fix his own site, but since he won't i guess the community will have to.
- KeithMajhor 15y ago
  You can't "fix" it. It's deliberate.
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    Broken is broken, deliberate or not.
    - KeithMajhor 15y ago
      Honestly, I think you're being less than objective. If PG wants comment scores off and comment scores are off then I'd say its correct... Calling it broken is like calling piracy "theft". It's flamebait and it obscures the issue.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
  - mtogo 15y ago
    It was deliberate, but it's still horribly, horribly broken.
    - KeithMajhor 15y ago
      If you define broken as "I don't like it". The person you're trying to persuade is PG. His metric for "broken" is the quality of HN. Make an argument don't just say things.
      - mtogo 15y ago
        If the quality of HN is a metric, HN is horribly, horribly broken. The quality has been steadily declining until a few months ago when it bottomed out somewhere around the quality of r/atheism. Take the top voted item from any time maybe 6-8 months ago, and another from 1 month ago to today, and compare the quality. HN used to be full of good stuff, now it's "How i made 200M in 15 minutes by writing Github for Mint in the Cloud (YC S12)" and "How Ruby is better than Python because i wear a fedora and skinny jeans". I'm just here for the 1 or 2 good submissions per day, and hoping it will get better. Sir His Grand Amazing Great Majestic Greatitude of Fancy Amazingness doesn't seem to want to fix anything, though.
gnosis 15y ago
I much prefer the new HN, without visible comment scores. When comment scores were visible, it was obvious that many people would just vote with the herd, downvoting comments with lots of downvotes, and upvoting comments with lots of upvotes. This is still a problem, since HN still tends to put highly rated comments near the top, and low rated comments near the bottom. But it's not nearly as much of a problem as it was when comment scores were visible. I think the quality of comments has increased with the new system, and I find myself reading more of the comments now that the scores aren't visible. I also find myself voting less, and voting only on comments I personally feel are exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. One change I would like to see HN experiment with is making the score of a given comment visible only after you've voted on that comment. This will both encourage voting and also satisfy people's curiosity, while still discouraging voting with the herd.
- user24 15y ago
  > making the score of a given comment visible only after you've voted on that comment That would be an acceptable compromise to me. It fulfills my own use-cases for having scores, but retains the benefits of not having scores.
- user24 15y ago
  > When comment scores were visible, it was obvious that many people would just vote with the herd, downvoting comments with lots of downvotes, and upvoting comments with lots of upvotes. Hmm. First of all you had no way of knowing that people were voting because of the high (or low) scores. Your theory seems to be "Hmm, the score on this comment is un-naturally high, therefore people must have just been voting on it because it was high". Secondly, now that we can't see the scores, you've no way of knowing whether the points awarded are just as 'un-naturally' high as they were before scores were shown. For example, one of my comments in this thread has got 11 points in the last ten minutes or so - that's without scores being shown. In the past, you may have attributed that score to herd-voting. But clearly that can't be the case, as no-one can see the score. ( except the few who've installed the points plugin!)
  - gnosis 15y ago
wccrawford 15y ago
I'm onboard, but I think it's funny that this is the only thread I've seen numbers in so far.
- user24 15y ago
  Yeah, it's a nice idea, and without an API it's the best we can get, but really it requires the participation of the majority of the userbase in order to work.
- HNPoints 15y ago
  Yeah, in its infancy, it's natural for all of the participants to be congregated on the inaugural thread. :) Comment scores for people who have the extension should show up for any comment they've made in the past two weeks, though, and it should start filling in around HN as more people start using it.
larryfreeman 15y ago
In my view, the comment scores made the site more fun and more social. One thought is that maybe the score gets hidden if it is 1 or less. I think that scores are especially interesting when it highlights a great comment or provides feedback to the person making the comment. The ordering of comments without a score is a good example of why a visible score is needed. You assume that the best comments are on top but it is not clear how good are the comments below the top one. Since the scores were removed, I have been commenting less often and often ignoring many of the comments below the top ones.
michael_nielsen 15y ago
On the issue of scores vs no-scores, it'd be possible to A/B test this, so half of HN users see scores, and half don't. Metrics to track might include the number of comments made, number of hits on the site, number of upvotes / downvotes, and probably many more. Some people obviously feel strongly about this issue, and it might be necessary to take steps to prevent gaming of the outcome. Keeping the metrics secret until after the test would help with this. So would publicly announcing that only a small (say 10%) but undisclosed subset of users will be used to determine the outcomes of the testing. So any individual user wouldn't know if their behaviour would affect the results, and so would have little incentive to waste their time trying to affect the outcome. It'd be nice to take a data-driven approach to resolving this question.
- gnosis 15y ago
  An interesting idea. But what would stop someone from continuously creating new accounts until they got an account which could see the scores?
  - michael_nielsen 15y ago
    You could exclude recently created or low-karma accounts, or at least track them separately. Indeed, there are many subgroups of HN users it might be interesting to track. E.g., new users, or users who've had accounts for a long time, or users with particularly high average comment scores, etc.
KeithMajhor 15y ago
How do you infer comment scores. The order of comments appears to be determined by both score and elapsed time. You'd have to have pretty exact knowledge of how it worked. Is that information available?
- HNPoints 15y ago
  The source code for Hacker News is available with the Arc download. pg has said that the actual ranking algorithm differs slightly from the code listed in order to thwart abuse, but for the purposes of ranges I thought it'd be close enough. Knowing the time, relative ranking, and the known scores of participants, the ranges are basically "how many points would this comment need to be one rank higher/lower".
  - brianpan 15y ago
    Thanks for this extension. A suggestion- I understand what you're trying to convey with the point range, but for usability I'd prefer always seeing one number there. I don't mind a best guess and marking the score as an approximate number. Having to mentally parse ranges and less than symbols adds a slight speed bump.
ryanto 15y ago
I guess I don't really get the point of this. The whole idea of ditching points was to see if it could generate better discussion. By using this extension you are re-enabling points (even if only for a few select users). That re-enabling is going to encourage those users to go back to their bad posting habits... or so we would assume if the original theory that points cause bad posts is correct. I know a lot of you love your points, but maybe we should see if no points really does generate better discussion rather than trying to find a way to create a point system. PS: I think points is really tricky, it rewards people for great comments, but it also rewards those stupid-one-line-no-thinking comments. Maybe only show points for comments with more text... whatever, thats a whole other subject.
- bradleyland 15y ago
  The point of this is that users' wants & desires are really hard to dictate. The desired outcome of ditching points was to see if it could generate better discussion. The thing is, there are a certain sub-set of users (personally, I'm ambivalent) who really, really want the point system back, and don't necessarily agree with the assertion that HN was on the decline to begin with. I have a tendency to use HN in a few ways: * As a tech industry firehose: I review headlines in RSS (Reeder) and only 'v' through to headlines that really pique my interests. * As a means to directly interact with smart people whom I would not otherwise meet (I'm in a small town in Florida). * As a means to understand how people feel about the ideas I'm reading. That last use case has been more or less squashed by the removal of visible points. I can only know how much the community agrees or disagrees with what I say, not those in disagreement with me. What's ironic is that agreement/disagreement wasn't the purpose of the karma system at HN to begin with. That's just how it was frequently used. You can blame this on the fact that the attribution of karma points on HN was supposed to be driven by causes that many people simply don't think about. Put another way, voting the way we're intended to isn't intuitive to most people. This situation is made worse by the fact that virtually every other site with a similar voting system uses it to express agreement/disagreement, rather than conversational contribution/detraction. The benefit of transparency is offset by the many well argued counter-points. The perception of this issue has a lot to do with one's personal use case. I'm happy to keep two out of three, but for someone who plays more of a spectator role, I'm sure the loss of the point system is a big hit to the utility of the site.
togasystems 15y ago
Quick question that is off topic, but did you do the design for that page yourself or did you purchase it off some sort of theme site? Just wondering cause I love it.
- HNPoints 15y ago
  The design is from themeforest.net, with some minor adjustments. :)
CWuestefeld 15y ago
It really bothers me that so many people here seem to be saying "I am capable of scoring articles fairly, but the rest of the community seems not to be able to think for themselves, falling victim to group think and a herd mentality." This seems like a lot of fundamental attribution error [1] going on here. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
- mixmax 15y ago
  I don't think that's accurate - I want points back because it allows me to see what other people have voted. Because I trust this community I'll be fairly certain these ar ethe comments that will hold the most value for me.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    I agree with you. It seems to me that those opposed to visible points are saying that "other people don't vote properly".
    - smosher 15y ago
      I trust my judgment better with the lack of quantified information on how the group as a whole has behaved. Perhaps I'm just projecting but I trust the judgment of others better under the same circumstances.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      I don't think I voted well either. I think you may have set up a false dilemma here.
      - scott_s 15y ago
        Agreed.
  - brianpan 15y ago
    I agree with this too. HN community has value. Points = harnessing that value.
noneTheHacker 15y ago
Apparently Websense filters the site as "Potentially Damaging Content Sites." I am not saying this thinking that the site is potentially damaging. Websense is pretty dumb about most of the things it chooses. I just wanted to let HNPoints know that because it blocks people from seeing it from behind a Websense filter.
- HNPoints 15y ago
  Thanks for the heads up; I will see what I can do. :)
DTrejo 15y ago
I would love to see information from PG on the following in relation to the recent changes in HN: - increase/decrease in activity of users with highest karma - increase/decrease average in comment score, normalized by time after post of OP - amount of time the highest rated posts stayed on the front page - trends for # of flags Also, it would be great if he put the guidelines on the submission page. I've posted this before, but haven't heard anything.
tristanperry 15y ago
Thanks for this; I've installed it. I don't really think that disabling the public points has lead to better discussions.
- J3L2404 15y ago
  +1
jcr 15y ago
Typing is kinda difficult for me on most days, so I don't comment much. I vote a little bit on comments, when I bother to read them, but I tend to vote-up more on submissions. I've also have been known to do a lot of flagging on the /newest queue (and even triggering the "excessive flagger" threshold). I do try to remember to make new submissions for all to enjoy, but the irony is, this means I'm off somewhere else looking for interesting stuff rather than finding it here. The stuff that I find interesting is new tech, engineering, security and science developments (i.e. hacking up new solutions and analysis) along with a small splattering of business. The speed of churn on the /newest queue means some of my submissions are not even seen. On average, there's maybe two or three other people here with similar interests to mine, or better said, they appreciated the submission enough to up-vote. But that is on average, so plenty of my submissions vanish into obscurity with no notice. --This is not a complaint. Other people have other interests, and the fast queue progression should be expected when there is no barrier to entry. The trouble is, the fast queue means submitters get very little USEFUL feedback. If you post some link-baited controversy, getting 1000+ points on the submission is not too unusual, but it probably isn't noteworthy new hacking. The good hacking stuff on HN seldom hits the main /news page, instead it's buried deeply in the /newest queue. --It has always been like this. Blame human nature. If you look at /classic or do some HN spelunking by item?id= or hit archive.org for old snapshots, you'll find the main /news page has neither improved nor declined. I think gaining points for submissions is unfair. In my opinion, I think a submission just says, "Hey, I thought this was interesting, and you might too." When a submission is sincere, it's just a friendly gesture with good intentions. But we all know how good intentions work. Whether or not the submissions is ever seen by others here, or more importantly, is interesting hacking to them is generally unknown, even to the submitter. The displayed up-votes on submissions are really just a popularity contest feeding on link-baited controversy. Another reason why gaining points for submissions is unfair is a submission has vastly superior visibility compared to a comment. I believe PG has some secret sauce running to address the visibility discrepancy. As far as I've been able to divine through observation, points from submissions don't count towards the "average" listed in your profile. Well, it seems that way on my account, but I think even older and more active commenting members (grellas) may have their average calculated with both submissions and comments. (Don't get me wrong, when grellas posts, I read it, and usually up-vote. I doubt I'm alone on that so his exceedingly high average might be warranted from comments alone). So the display of points on submissions fails to be particularly valuable metric. Similar could be said for the display of points on comments. I refuse to care what other people think of you or your statements, and I would prefer avoid being biased by displayed points so I make up my own mind on whether or not I find your comment interesting. For notes, it was tptacek that made the suggestion to remove the display of comment points in the "Stave Off The Decline of HN" thread from PG. I thought his idea was brilliant, possibly because I had the same idea, but as usual, tptacek thought of and posted it first. If you want a discussion to be useful, turning it into a game is entirely counter-productive. Worse yet, the display of points creates an unfair game due to manipulations of visibility, cognitive bias and other factors. Since the removal of comment points being displayed, there has been far less one-up-manship in the discussions, and people are more polite because they are not competing for points in a game. You are now more free to just state your opinion without worrying about whether or not others will agree or disagree with you. As long as you're not being an ass about it, you can generally post uncommon or even controversial opinions without repercussions. Some have (repeatedly) argued that the lack of displayed comment points results in a loss of context or loss of a valuable metric for deciding what is worth reading. I'd argue the opposite (and slightly less popular view) that displayed comment points fail to offer any real usefulness and are mostly harmful. --Just like whether or not my submissions are interesting, the usefulness of displayed comment points is a very subjective matter of opinion. Some find it helpful, but others consider it harmful. To you, my opinion about comment points does not matter. You already have your own opinion. And there is the very reason why displaying comment points doesn't really matter.
ignifero 15y ago
Science says that blind crowdsourcing is generally better: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/17/wisdom-of-crowds-decline http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/17/wisdom-of-cro... One could find arguments for both sides, though: - HN is not a crowd, it's a niche community - Voting is not blind even now. - The number actually encourages voting, since it serves to remind that your vote will change than number - It's good to know whether your vote will have little impact or will move the comment upwards - The site should encourage more people to vote, the more people vote the better.
spottiness 15y ago
There is a huge asymmetry in the power of HN users between those that can down-vote and the rest. The problem is that many of the "powerfuls" use their privilege to punish other users based on disagreements, whims, or simply to silence opposite opinions. It is OK to indicate the popularity of a comment by moving it to the top but it's wrong to silence an unpopular comment by fading it away. That should be reserved only to comments that violate the rules: spams, trolls, shameless ads, etc. Put the unpopulars at the bottom or indicate the degree of popularity with a number, but don't disappear it. Fading away honest unpopular comments is a big turn off that ultimately harms the debate.
nikcub 15y ago
Are you filtering on the server side for cheating? (I am testing it with this very comment) Edit: No Double Edit: well it was 99999 for a moment, back to 1, so you are doing something. gg.
tokenadult 15y ago
The submitted site is interesting. I will not go to the trouble of contributing any scores I am aware of to the database, however. Here in this thread, we are once again in metadiscussion about whether or not it was a good idea for HN to experiment with not showing users the comment karma scores of other users, a change that happened not long ago. When pg wrote his post "Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?" just 47 days ago, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 he wrote, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted." That's still the key issue. In the view of the site founder, who has had a registered account here for 1684 days, many of the high-scoring comments carried a false signal of quality, likely to mislead users about which comments are factually accurate or helpful to the community. If some change of voting rules or comment karma visibility brings about higher scores for good comments, and lower scores for mean, dumb, or other bad comments, that is helpful to all readers of HN. Feel free to review the site guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and the site welcome message http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html for guidance on what is desired here and thus guidance on how to vote. I defer to the site founder on all issues of site governance. I have found HN largely to be a worthwhile website for my 914 days as a registered user, and my interest is mostly to make sure that the site founder and the members of his volunteer editor ("curator") team http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html continue to enjoy the site and find it useful for themselves. They are doing a good job, and I want them to have incentive to keep up the good work. On my part, I have been able to find good comments more readily since the comment karma scores were hidden than I was before.
- Hawramani 15y ago
  I wonder if a system that weighed upvotes based on the commenter's karma would make things better. The top 10% (or 50%) of users could get full upvoting capability, while the rest can give a fraction of an upvote based on their location on the karma order.
ozataman 15y ago
Dear PG, please bring back the vote counts and vote-based sorting. If you want to give the option, make it a per-user setting to disable. My recent approach to having to weed through ALL comments to find the interesting ones has been to completely avoid reading them and switch to different channels of obtaining information (blogs, apps, reddit, etc.)
smosher 15y ago
I was relieved when the scores disappeared. The less unnecessary information the better, I find. Besides, I think score visibility just promotes groupthink. I don't use score sheets with my friends. Moderation becomes necessary in a pseudonymous environment, but there's no reason for it to become visible where it's not necessary. Reply-order shuffling and grey-out seem to be a pretty good fit there.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
plasma 15y ago
OT: What do names highlighted green mean?
- radq 15y ago
  It represents a new user. (I think it is for accounts having age < 1 day.)
  - plasma 15y ago
    Thanks!
taphangum 15y ago
I hope everyone on HN installs this.
marknutter 15y ago
Seriously, just bring the friggin' scores back. I feel this experiment has run its course and at this point it's really just more irritating than anything.
ck2 15y ago
Take away points from people too. Only submissions themselves should have points. That way there is no "ego" - it's only about the articles.
chrishan 15y ago
I knew someone will do this.
resdirector 15y ago
Goodness and badness is subjective. Up/down voting should exist only for the purpose of recommending articles to each individual user. This is far different from the typical use of up/down which is to recommend articles to the collective, which is not robust against influxes from other communities, e.g. reddit, digg etc. In other words, when I log in, I should see my own personal HN list of stories, that have been submitted by people I respect (i.e. people I've previously upvoted), or people that they respect etc. I call this idea PeopleRank.
lwhi 15y ago
For goodness' sake people. You don't need to be told which comments are 'good'. In any case, the score system is indicating popularity, not quality. Use your own judgement, you don't need to behave as part of a herd.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
MrMatters 15y ago
For some reason it just doesn't feel the same ;) : http://i.imgur.com/3u1Rb.png http://i.imgur.com/3u1Rb.png I wish we didn't have to rely on a 3rd party.

234 points by HNPoints 15y ago

blhack 15y ago

I love this. A hacker approach to getting the points back :)

HNPoints 15y ago
Thanks for your support! Yep, just trying to make something people want. :)
- blhack 15y ago
  This is definitely something people want. Thanks for building it :)

user24 15y ago

Yeah, having got past the initial "ooh, this is cool" phase, I do actually think HN was better off with the comment scores. For example, I was looking at a popular submission the other day and someone had said "Hey is there a PHP port of this?". Back in the day, I'd be able to see how many points it had as a rough indicator of how many other people would have found a PHP port useful. Now I can't tell if that was just one guy, or if 50 people thought the same. Please, PG, bring the points back? (and while you're at it, stop new users being shown in green?)

ericb 15y ago
Speaking of coloring, what if, instead of points, highly voted items showed orange-red or something to that effect. I lost information when comments went away. When someone suggested a payment processor and got 150 upvotes, I would know they sound respectable. Maybe bringing comment scores back isn't needed, just a rough sense of how the comment was received via coloration.
- user24 15y ago
  Yeah that would solve it. (even better, make the shade of colour relative to the number of votes deployed on that page. So it's indicative of the percentage of votes on the page, rather than some absolute value)
Silhouette 15y ago
> Please, PG, bring the points back? (and while you're at it, stop new users being shown in green?) +1 (not least because then I could hit the up arrow instead of wasting space with this post).
- KeithMajhor 15y ago
  I'm not following. Why does a lack of visible comment scores necessitate your post?
  - bsaunder 15y ago
    Perhaps because (s)he wants to share with the community that at least one person agrees with the comment: Previously: click up arrow, score of parent shows as 2. Now: click up arrow... no one knows. Post a comment to make it visible (ideally add some other relevant detail). Definitely suboptimal.
    - Locke1689 15y ago
      Isn't that what we're trying to avoid? Having some symbol of agreement?
      - Silhouette 15y ago
        I'm not really sure what people wanted to avoid by getting rid of the voting numbers. Posts still appear to be ranked based partly on score, and posts near the top of a discussion are still going to get more upvotes and replies. Meanwhile, if someone posts about the project they are setting up and 50 people reply to the discussion with an assortment of feedback, it is probably useful/interesting to know that 5 of those ideas were also supported by many other people. Personally, I would rather see that from a simple, discreet number than a million "me, too" posts. The latter is the most obvious negative change I have observed since the scores disappeared, though as it happens I do agree with many of the other points people have made in this discussion as well. If you're worried about too much groupthink and people trying to score every last point they can for some reason, surely there are other approaches that could be implemented quite simply: you could use some sort of grouping with a logarithmic scale, for example, or cap the maximum points any post can receive and let it decay accordingly in the priorities relative to newer posts no matter how many upvotes it got at the start of the discussion.
r00fus 15y ago
I present sorting as a possible solution. Have a sort (optional setting) that puts the highest rated comments at the top of each thread branch. This combined with graying of zero/neg rated comments should be adequate to see what the community prefers. That way, skimmers can see and read comments that are rated higher first, but there's much less gaming for higher scores (just implicit ranking within the specific blog-post context). Also an indicator of a comment that's much higher rated than others in the comment thread or post could also be indicated. There are many ways to see quality without revealing the scores. Look at say, online stores like Amazon for "bestselling" sorts... you don't see overall sales, but a sales rank and even that's hidden at the search results level.

blhack 15y ago

If we're going to open a new dialog on this: Has anybody noticed the drastic decline in quality of links and comments in the last month or so? I think one of the problems is that, without comment scores, new users don't have feedback from the community on how they're supposed to act. There's no way for them to learn the culture. So it's September, but with no way to tell the new students to mind their manners.

tptacek 15y ago
Bad comments are still grey. People can see their own comment scores. HN is still in decline, but I don't think it's worse than when it had public scores. Meanwhile, not having up-to-the-minute scores makes the site more pleasant to participate in; one isn't prodded to make statements in reaction to ludicrous (and likely ephemeral) voting swings.
- user24 15y ago
  >one isn't prodded to make statements in reaction to ludicrous (and likely ephemeral) voting swings. You can see your own score, so I'm not sure why you think that's true? It does mean that hivemind voting is negated, but I've not really seen that as a problem on HN. Some analysis of voting patterns etc before and after the change would be great to see from PG.
  - elliottcarlson 15y ago
    I think hivemind voting is pretty evident at times. You will see certain users with a much higher upvote (based on placement) than someone who had a far more insightful, far more thought and discussion provoking comment that was posted much earlier - and those certain users are people with names the community knows and respects (often rightfully so). This doesn't mean that those users should be upvoted just because of who they are. Granted I have no facts to back this claim up - but I have seen it happen again and again - just the way certain popular blogs always reach #1 regardless of their content.
- blhack 15y ago

user24 15y ago

How about throwing the code[1] up on github? [1] The XPI is a slim greasmonkey-compiled script which just loads http://hnpoints.com/hnpoints.js http://hnpoints.com/hnpoints.js into the page

HNPoints 15y ago
I'm planning on doing that, but wanted to fix up any bugs that crop up first. In the meantime, as you noted, the un-obfuscated JS file is up on the server for all to see. It's used in the bookmarklet and Firefox plugin directly, and the Chrome, Opera, and Safari extensions use the same file bundled up with minor or no changes.
- user24 15y ago
  By the way, I don't think you'll get past the mozilla review process with this extension structure. When I wrote one for my job, I seem to remember them being nervous about loading and executing JS from 3rd parties (the thinking being: if you're hacked, suddenly everyone who installed your extension is also hacked, especially as the JS is executed with raised privs.) Not that you're at that stage yet, but I just thought I'd give you a heads-up :) Nice idea, well executed. PS: You aren't using the extension yourself? edit: ah you are now :)
  - HNPoints 15y ago
    Thanks for the tip! Given how technically savvy most of HN is, I was thinking the XPI download would be sufficient at least for now, but when I do go to submit it to the addons repository, I will be sure to put the actual JS in there. I am indeed using the Chrome extension, but it only updates comment scores every 10 minutes while on HN as not to slow down the HN reading experience. :)

ignifero 15y ago

I liked it for 2 weeks, but, as a data driven person, i would like to be able to see the scores . What was the incentive to hide them again?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

brandall10 15y ago

Thank you so much for doing this.

mtogo 15y ago

Thanks for this! I was hoping pg would fix his own site, but since he won't i guess the community will have to.

KeithMajhor 15y ago
You can't "fix" it. It's deliberate.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  Broken is broken, deliberate or not.
  - KeithMajhor 15y ago
    Honestly, I think you're being less than objective. If PG wants comment scores off and comment scores are off then I'd say its correct... Calling it broken is like calling piracy "theft". It's flamebait and it obscures the issue.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- mtogo 15y ago
  It was deliberate, but it's still horribly, horribly broken.
  - KeithMajhor 15y ago
    If you define broken as "I don't like it". The person you're trying to persuade is PG. His metric for "broken" is the quality of HN. Make an argument don't just say things.
    - mtogo 15y ago
      If the quality of HN is a metric, HN is horribly, horribly broken. The quality has been steadily declining until a few months ago when it bottomed out somewhere around the quality of r/atheism. Take the top voted item from any time maybe 6-8 months ago, and another from 1 month ago to today, and compare the quality. HN used to be full of good stuff, now it's "How i made 200M in 15 minutes by writing Github for Mint in the Cloud (YC S12)" and "How Ruby is better than Python because i wear a fedora and skinny jeans". I'm just here for the 1 or 2 good submissions per day, and hoping it will get better. Sir His Grand Amazing Great Majestic Greatitude of Fancy Amazingness doesn't seem to want to fix anything, though.

gnosis 15y ago

I much prefer the new HN, without visible comment scores. When comment scores were visible, it was obvious that many people would just vote with the herd, downvoting comments with lots of downvotes, and upvoting comments with lots of upvotes. This is still a problem, since HN still tends to put highly rated comments near the top, and low rated comments near the bottom. But it's not nearly as much of a problem as it was when comment scores were visible. I think the quality of comments has increased with the new system, and I find myself reading more of the comments now that the scores aren't visible. I also find myself voting less, and voting only on comments I personally feel are exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. One change I would like to see HN experiment with is making the score of a given comment visible only after you've voted on that comment. This will both encourage voting and also satisfy people's curiosity, while still discouraging voting with the herd.

user24 15y ago
> making the score of a given comment visible only after you've voted on that comment That would be an acceptable compromise to me. It fulfills my own use-cases for having scores, but retains the benefits of not having scores.
user24 15y ago
> When comment scores were visible, it was obvious that many people would just vote with the herd, downvoting comments with lots of downvotes, and upvoting comments with lots of upvotes. Hmm. First of all you had no way of knowing that people were voting because of the high (or low) scores. Your theory seems to be "Hmm, the score on this comment is un-naturally high, therefore people must have just been voting on it because it was high". Secondly, now that we can't see the scores, you've no way of knowing whether the points awarded are just as 'un-naturally' high as they were before scores were shown. For example, one of my comments in this thread has got 11 points in the last ten minutes or so - that's without scores being shown. In the past, you may have attributed that score to herd-voting. But clearly that can't be the case, as no-one can see the score. ( except the few who've installed the points plugin!)
- gnosis 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago

I'm onboard, but I think it's funny that this is the only thread I've seen numbers in so far.

user24 15y ago
Yeah, it's a nice idea, and without an API it's the best we can get, but really it requires the participation of the majority of the userbase in order to work.
HNPoints 15y ago
Yeah, in its infancy, it's natural for all of the participants to be congregated on the inaugural thread. :) Comment scores for people who have the extension should show up for any comment they've made in the past two weeks, though, and it should start filling in around HN as more people start using it.

larryfreeman 15y ago

In my view, the comment scores made the site more fun and more social. One thought is that maybe the score gets hidden if it is 1 or less. I think that scores are especially interesting when it highlights a great comment or provides feedback to the person making the comment. The ordering of comments without a score is a good example of why a visible score is needed. You assume that the best comments are on top but it is not clear how good are the comments below the top one. Since the scores were removed, I have been commenting less often and often ignoring many of the comments below the top ones.

michael_nielsen 15y ago

On the issue of scores vs no-scores, it'd be possible to A/B test this, so half of HN users see scores, and half don't. Metrics to track might include the number of comments made, number of hits on the site, number of upvotes / downvotes, and probably many more. Some people obviously feel strongly about this issue, and it might be necessary to take steps to prevent gaming of the outcome. Keeping the metrics secret until after the test would help with this. So would publicly announcing that only a small (say 10%) but undisclosed subset of users will be used to determine the outcomes of the testing. So any individual user wouldn't know if their behaviour would affect the results, and so would have little incentive to waste their time trying to affect the outcome. It'd be nice to take a data-driven approach to resolving this question.

gnosis 15y ago
An interesting idea. But what would stop someone from continuously creating new accounts until they got an account which could see the scores?
- michael_nielsen 15y ago
  You could exclude recently created or low-karma accounts, or at least track them separately. Indeed, there are many subgroups of HN users it might be interesting to track. E.g., new users, or users who've had accounts for a long time, or users with particularly high average comment scores, etc.

KeithMajhor 15y ago

How do you infer comment scores. The order of comments appears to be determined by both score and elapsed time. You'd have to have pretty exact knowledge of how it worked. Is that information available?

HNPoints 15y ago
The source code for Hacker News is available with the Arc download. pg has said that the actual ranking algorithm differs slightly from the code listed in order to thwart abuse, but for the purposes of ranges I thought it'd be close enough. Knowing the time, relative ranking, and the known scores of participants, the ranges are basically "how many points would this comment need to be one rank higher/lower".
- brianpan 15y ago
  Thanks for this extension. A suggestion- I understand what you're trying to convey with the point range, but for usability I'd prefer always seeing one number there. I don't mind a best guess and marking the score as an approximate number. Having to mentally parse ranges and less than symbols adds a slight speed bump.

ryanto 15y ago

I guess I don't really get the point of this. The whole idea of ditching points was to see if it could generate better discussion. By using this extension you are re-enabling points (even if only for a few select users). That re-enabling is going to encourage those users to go back to their bad posting habits... or so we would assume if the original theory that points cause bad posts is correct. I know a lot of you love your points, but maybe we should see if no points really does generate better discussion rather than trying to find a way to create a point system. PS: I think points is really tricky, it rewards people for great comments, but it also rewards those stupid-one-line-no-thinking comments. Maybe only show points for comments with more text... whatever, thats a whole other subject.

bradleyland 15y ago
The point of this is that users' wants & desires are really hard to dictate. The desired outcome of ditching points was to see if it could generate better discussion. The thing is, there are a certain sub-set of users (personally, I'm ambivalent) who really, really want the point system back, and don't necessarily agree with the assertion that HN was on the decline to begin with. I have a tendency to use HN in a few ways: * As a tech industry firehose: I review headlines in RSS (Reeder) and only 'v' through to headlines that really pique my interests. * As a means to directly interact with smart people whom I would not otherwise meet (I'm in a small town in Florida). * As a means to understand how people feel about the ideas I'm reading. That last use case has been more or less squashed by the removal of visible points. I can only know how much the community agrees or disagrees with what I say, not those in disagreement with me. What's ironic is that agreement/disagreement wasn't the purpose of the karma system at HN to begin with. That's just how it was frequently used. You can blame this on the fact that the attribution of karma points on HN was supposed to be driven by causes that many people simply don't think about. Put another way, voting the way we're intended to isn't intuitive to most people. This situation is made worse by the fact that virtually every other site with a similar voting system uses it to express agreement/disagreement, rather than conversational contribution/detraction. The benefit of transparency is offset by the many well argued counter-points. The perception of this issue has a lot to do with one's personal use case. I'm happy to keep two out of three, but for someone who plays more of a spectator role, I'm sure the loss of the point system is a big hit to the utility of the site.

togasystems 15y ago

Quick question that is off topic, but did you do the design for that page yourself or did you purchase it off some sort of theme site? Just wondering cause I love it.

HNPoints 15y ago
The design is from themeforest.net, with some minor adjustments. :)

CWuestefeld 15y ago

It really bothers me that so many people here seem to be saying "I am capable of scoring articles fairly, but the rest of the community seems not to be able to think for themselves, falling victim to group think and a herd mentality." This seems like a lot of fundamental attribution error [1] going on here. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

mixmax 15y ago
I don't think that's accurate - I want points back because it allows me to see what other people have voted. Because I trust this community I'll be fairly certain these ar ethe comments that will hold the most value for me.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  I agree with you. It seems to me that those opposed to visible points are saying that "other people don't vote properly".
  - smosher 15y ago
    I trust my judgment better with the lack of quantified information on how the group as a whole has behaved. Perhaps I'm just projecting but I trust the judgment of others better under the same circumstances.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I don't think I voted well either. I think you may have set up a false dilemma here.
    - scott_s 15y ago
      Agreed.
- brianpan 15y ago
  I agree with this too. HN community has value. Points = harnessing that value.

noneTheHacker 15y ago

Apparently Websense filters the site as "Potentially Damaging Content Sites." I am not saying this thinking that the site is potentially damaging. Websense is pretty dumb about most of the things it chooses. I just wanted to let HNPoints know that because it blocks people from seeing it from behind a Websense filter.

HNPoints 15y ago
Thanks for the heads up; I will see what I can do. :)

DTrejo 15y ago

I would love to see information from PG on the following in relation to the recent changes in HN: - increase/decrease in activity of users with highest karma - increase/decrease average in comment score, normalized by time after post of OP - amount of time the highest rated posts stayed on the front page - trends for # of flags Also, it would be great if he put the guidelines on the submission page. I've posted this before, but haven't heard anything.

tristanperry 15y ago

Thanks for this; I've installed it. I don't really think that disabling the public points has lead to better discussions.

J3L2404 15y ago
+1

jcr 15y ago

Typing is kinda difficult for me on most days, so I don't comment much. I vote a little bit on comments, when I bother to read them, but I tend to vote-up more on submissions. I've also have been known to do a lot of flagging on the /newest queue (and even triggering the "excessive flagger" threshold). I do try to remember to make new submissions for all to enjoy, but the irony is, this means I'm off somewhere else looking for interesting stuff rather than finding it here. The stuff that I find interesting is new tech, engineering, security and science developments (i.e. hacking up new solutions and analysis) along with a small splattering of business. The speed of churn on the /newest queue means some of my submissions are not even seen. On average, there's maybe two or three other people here with similar interests to mine, or better said, they appreciated the submission enough to up-vote. But that is on average, so plenty of my submissions vanish into obscurity with no notice. --This is not a complaint. Other people have other interests, and the fast queue progression should be expected when there is no barrier to entry. The trouble is, the fast queue means submitters get very little USEFUL feedback. If you post some link-baited controversy, getting 1000+ points on the submission is not too unusual, but it probably isn't noteworthy new hacking. The good hacking stuff on HN seldom hits the main /news page, instead it's buried deeply in the /newest queue. --It has always been like this. Blame human nature. If you look at /classic or do some HN spelunking by item?id= or hit archive.org for old snapshots, you'll find the main /news page has neither improved nor declined. I think gaining points for submissions is unfair. In my opinion, I think a submission just says, "Hey, I thought this was interesting, and you might too." When a submission is sincere, it's just a friendly gesture with good intentions. But we all know how good intentions work. Whether or not the submissions is ever seen by others here, or more importantly, is interesting hacking to them is generally unknown, even to the submitter. The displayed up-votes on submissions are really just a popularity contest feeding on link-baited controversy. Another reason why gaining points for submissions is unfair is a submission has vastly superior visibility compared to a comment. I believe PG has some secret sauce running to address the visibility discrepancy. As far as I've been able to divine through observation, points from submissions don't count towards the "average" listed in your profile. Well, it seems that way on my account, but I think even older and more active commenting members (grellas) may have their average calculated with both submissions and comments. (Don't get me wrong, when grellas posts, I read it, and usually up-vote. I doubt I'm alone on that so his exceedingly high average might be warranted from comments alone). So the display of points on submissions fails to be particularly valuable metric. Similar could be said for the display of points on comments. I refuse to care what other people think of you or your statements, and I would prefer avoid being biased by displayed points so I make up my own mind on whether or not I find your comment interesting. For notes, it was tptacek that made the suggestion to remove the display of comment points in the "Stave Off The Decline of HN" thread from PG. I thought his idea was brilliant, possibly because I had the same idea, but as usual, tptacek thought of and posted it first. If you want a discussion to be useful, turning it into a game is entirely counter-productive. Worse yet, the display of points creates an unfair game due to manipulations of visibility, cognitive bias and other factors. Since the removal of comment points being displayed, there has been far less one-up-manship in the discussions, and people are more polite because they are not competing for points in a game. You are now more free to just state your opinion without worrying about whether or not others will agree or disagree with you. As long as you're not being an ass about it, you can generally post uncommon or even controversial opinions without repercussions. Some have (repeatedly) argued that the lack of displayed comment points results in a loss of context or loss of a valuable metric for deciding what is worth reading. I'd argue the opposite (and slightly less popular view) that displayed comment points fail to offer any real usefulness and are mostly harmful. --Just like whether or not my submissions are interesting, the usefulness of displayed comment points is a very subjective matter of opinion. Some find it helpful, but others consider it harmful. To you, my opinion about comment points does not matter. You already have your own opinion. And there is the very reason why displaying comment points doesn't really matter.

ignifero 15y ago

Science says that blind crowdsourcing is generally better: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/17/wisdom-of-crowds-decline http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/17/wisdom-of-cro... One could find arguments for both sides, though: - HN is not a crowd, it's a niche community - Voting is not blind even now. - The number actually encourages voting, since it serves to remind that your vote will change than number - It's good to know whether your vote will have little impact or will move the comment upwards - The site should encourage more people to vote, the more people vote the better.

spottiness 15y ago

There is a huge asymmetry in the power of HN users between those that can down-vote and the rest. The problem is that many of the "powerfuls" use their privilege to punish other users based on disagreements, whims, or simply to silence opposite opinions. It is OK to indicate the popularity of a comment by moving it to the top but it's wrong to silence an unpopular comment by fading it away. That should be reserved only to comments that violate the rules: spams, trolls, shameless ads, etc. Put the unpopulars at the bottom or indicate the degree of popularity with a number, but don't disappear it. Fading away honest unpopular comments is a big turn off that ultimately harms the debate.

nikcub 15y ago

Are you filtering on the server side for cheating? (I am testing it with this very comment) Edit: No Double Edit: well it was 99999 for a moment, back to 1, so you are doing something. gg.

tokenadult 15y ago

The submitted site is interesting. I will not go to the trouble of contributing any scores I am aware of to the database, however. Here in this thread, we are once again in metadiscussion about whether or not it was a good idea for HN to experiment with not showing users the comment karma scores of other users, a change that happened not long ago. When pg wrote his post "Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?" just 47 days ago, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 he wrote, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted." That's still the key issue. In the view of the site founder, who has had a registered account here for 1684 days, many of the high-scoring comments carried a false signal of quality, likely to mislead users about which comments are factually accurate or helpful to the community. If some change of voting rules or comment karma visibility brings about higher scores for good comments, and lower scores for mean, dumb, or other bad comments, that is helpful to all readers of HN. Feel free to review the site guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and the site welcome message http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html for guidance on what is desired here and thus guidance on how to vote. I defer to the site founder on all issues of site governance. I have found HN largely to be a worthwhile website for my 914 days as a registered user, and my interest is mostly to make sure that the site founder and the members of his volunteer editor ("curator") team http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html continue to enjoy the site and find it useful for themselves. They are doing a good job, and I want them to have incentive to keep up the good work. On my part, I have been able to find good comments more readily since the comment karma scores were hidden than I was before.

Hawramani 15y ago
I wonder if a system that weighed upvotes based on the commenter's karma would make things better. The top 10% (or 50%) of users could get full upvoting capability, while the rest can give a fraction of an upvote based on their location on the karma order.

ozataman 15y ago

Dear PG, please bring back the vote counts and vote-based sorting. If you want to give the option, make it a per-user setting to disable. My recent approach to having to weed through ALL comments to find the interesting ones has been to completely avoid reading them and switch to different channels of obtaining information (blogs, apps, reddit, etc.)

smosher 15y ago

I was relieved when the scores disappeared. The less unnecessary information the better, I find. Besides, I think score visibility just promotes groupthink. I don't use score sheets with my friends. Moderation becomes necessary in a pseudonymous environment, but there's no reason for it to become visible where it's not necessary. Reply-order shuffling and grey-out seem to be a pretty good fit there.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

plasma 15y ago

OT: What do names highlighted green mean?

radq 15y ago
It represents a new user. (I think it is for accounts having age < 1 day.)
- plasma 15y ago
  Thanks!

taphangum 15y ago

I hope everyone on HN installs this.

marknutter 15y ago

Seriously, just bring the friggin' scores back. I feel this experiment has run its course and at this point it's really just more irritating than anything.

ck2 15y ago

Take away points from people too. Only submissions themselves should have points. That way there is no "ego" - it's only about the articles.

chrishan 15y ago

I knew someone will do this.

resdirector 15y ago

Goodness and badness is subjective. Up/down voting should exist only for the purpose of recommending articles to each individual user. This is far different from the typical use of up/down which is to recommend articles to the collective, which is not robust against influxes from other communities, e.g. reddit, digg etc. In other words, when I log in, I should see my own personal HN list of stories, that have been submitted by people I respect (i.e. people I've previously upvoted), or people that they respect etc. I call this idea PeopleRank.

lwhi 15y ago

For goodness' sake people. You don't need to be told which comments are 'good'. In any case, the score system is indicating popularity, not quality. Use your own judgement, you don't need to behave as part of a herd.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

MrMatters 15y ago

For some reason it just doesn't feel the same ;) : http://i.imgur.com/3u1Rb.png http://i.imgur.com/3u1Rb.png I wish we didn't have to rely on a 3rd party.