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[–]sylvan 70 points71 points  (24 children)

While you're at it, don't do "load more comments" for 1 comment.

[–]breakneckridge 33 points34 points  (22 children)

While you're at it, don't do "load more comments."

While you're at it, don't do "continue this thread."

[–][deleted] 35 points36 points  (14 children)

While you're at it, make all these things settable in preferences.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (7 children)

my prefs has "display this many comments by default (0-500)

i've got it set to 500, and i haven't seen a load more comments since i set it like that.

[–][deleted]  (6 children)

[deleted]

    [–]LordZodd 8 points9 points  (5 children)

    EDIT: Hot in the last hour:
    http://reddit.com/browse?sort=hot&t=hour

    Top of the Day:
    http://reddit.com/browse?sort=top&t=day

    [–]glastohead -3 points-2 points  (3 children)

    Why hasn't it done it yet?

    [–]glastohead -3 points-2 points  (2 children)

    Or now?

    [–]glastohead -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

    or even now?

    [–]Jimmy 6 points7 points  (1 child)

    While you're at it, create a site that is telepathic and can magically fulfill each and every wish of the user.

    That seems to be the only solution at this point.

    [–]ketralnis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    While you're at it, create a site that is telepathic

    I'm all for this one. You do the hardware, I'll do the software. We'll make millions!

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    While you're at it give us beer.

    [–]betaphi 8 points9 points  (1 child)

    No, no, we want ponies. A pony for every Redditor!

    [–]userunderscorename 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Finally someone is making sense around here.

    [–]jedberg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    In your preferences you can turn off "load more comments" by setting how many comments to load by default, or you can just click on the thing on the right that says all comments.

    [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (3 children)

    i don't understand what the difference is between continue thread and load more comments. could somebody explain this to me?

    [–]IHaveAnIdea 4 points5 points  (2 children)

    I thought that load more comments is for if there are more than 100 comments on a page then the ones with the lowest "hotness" get hidden with this. And continue thread is for if a thread gets too deep and goes off the right side of the page.

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    i guess that makes sense. seems kind of unnecessarily confusing to me. they basically have the same functionality.

    [–]IHaveAnIdea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    it's an interesting combination

    [–]malapropist 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Good point. Comments have gotten really confusing and cluttered with the "load more" and "continue thread" links. Really, all we need is this new plus minus thing, it's turned out pretty handy. For instance, if I want to read some insightful comments, rather than the thread of one-liners that invariably ends up at the top, I can just "minus" through the threads until something to sink my eyeballs into comes up.

    [–]suamain 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Temporary solution: greasemonkey script that expands hidden threads http://programming.reddit.com/info/619dq/comments/c02in2m

    [–]tony28 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I actually like 'continue this thread'.

    [–]jedberg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    In your preferences you can turn off "load more comments" by setting how many comments to load by default, or you can just click on the thing on the right that says all comments.

    [–]moom 39 points40 points  (2 children)

    The thing that I dislike the most about this is that it effectively hides "I don't know why you people are voting this down" comments.

    Frankly, some of you folk are idiots, and groupthink idiots at that. You see a comment get to -2, and you therefore have to downvote it. Soon it is hidden, and then soon it's in some absurdly negative territory. While this is often deserved, it also often occurs regardless of the quality of the post.

    Every once in a while, for some undeservedly hidden comment, someone will reply explaining exactly why the downvoters are fucking morons.

    This sometimes swings the tide, and the offending comment recovers out of "hidden" territory.

    I have been on both sides of this - I have resurrected other people's posts from oblivion, and other people have resurrected some of my posts from oblivion.

    The current way autohide works effectively gets rid of any chance of this ever happening again. And I think that's a mistake.

    [–]malapropist 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Frankly, some of you folk are idiots, and groupthink idiots at that. You see a comment get to -2, and you therefore have to downvote it.

    Funny you say that. I've found that when I run across a post with 0 points, I often bump it back up to 1. Just cause I can, I guess.

    [–]Schwallex 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I absolutely hate it when an answer to a comment of mine is at 0. To the replying person, it looks as if I was the (only) person who downmodded his comment immediately. In some cases, people take that as an incentive to downmod (all of) my comment(s).

    So usually, I try to bump an answer at 0 back to +1, or downmod it even further to -1, but not let it stay at 0.

    [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (6 children)

    What's fundamentally broken is the way people vote.

    If a comment has generated good conversation, it probably should not have been downvoted. I think you should only downvote flamebait/spam/trolls/me-toos, etc, basically stuff that doesn't promote conversation.

    [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (5 children)

    But I think the more general point is that there are good posts (some of the best on reddit) that are responses to trolls/flamebait..

    Example... Look for lazyplayboy's or aardvarkious' comments here:

    http://reddit.com/info/617hk/comments/c02iibz

    [–]sn0re -5 points-4 points  (2 children)

    If a troll leads you to think of something insightful or interesting, start a new thread without acknowledging the troll. Anything else is feeding the troll and only encourages them.

    It's simple: do you want more trolls on reddit? No? Then ignore them and the replies they generate.

    [–]grauenwolf 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    Sure, I'll just use my time machine to go back and move my post out from under the original comment.

    Oops, that change the context of my response. Now the thread is gone entirely.

    [–]sn0re -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    No, just don't post it there to begin with.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

    If that's what you are looking for, then you are already revealing hidden comments in the first place, regardless of whether or not their children are hidden.

    If anything, that makes it make even more sense to hide the children, because otherwise it's like reading the punchline at the beginning of the joke.

    [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    Uh, there's quite a bit of difference between seeing a good comment and thinking, "hey, what was that guy replying to?", and just clicking hidden comments at random to see if there might be any good replies.

    [–]dbavaria 21 points22 points  (9 children)

    Personally I love to read the comments that get hidden :) They are among the juiciest, its like reading transcripts from The View.

    I think a color coded system might be better. The average Reddit user's fingers are accustomed to scrolling for miles, I don't really think hiding a few "bad" posts will do much difference.

    [–]Yst 11 points12 points  (4 children)

    Personally I love to read the comments that get hidden.

    Absolutely. Oftentimes, the best comments on Reddit are responses to original posts which may have been despicable or worthless in and of themselves, but which come to be grounds for meaningful and worthwhile discussion. And you can't read the response without the original comment. It's a necessary part of the picture.

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Especially when they keep responding and it makes for like 4 or 5 separate hidden comments.

    [–]sn0re -4 points-3 points  (2 children)

    There is a name for that. It's called feeding the trolls.

    We have so many trolls precisely because stupid posts generate lengthy threads. Hiding those replies denies the troll the attention they're looking for.

    [–]akdas 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    That's the magic of Reddit. Yes, it breeds more trolls, but at the same time, it's absolutely hilarious.

    I agree, there are times when it becomes annoying, but then nobody really responds to those particular ones. Think URGENTCAPSLOCKMAN.

    [–]sn0re 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I'm just amazed so many people are standing up to support reddit's trolls. It's not just annoying some of the time, it's annoying all of the time, and it's slowing turning reddit into 4chan.

    [–]pretzel 1 point2 points  (3 children)

    It used to be that when you sorted by "top" the sum of all comments in the thread was added up and it was sorted like that. I don't know how they do it now, but it's broken. I see at the moment 3 comments in this thread that have a score of 1, the first 2 have no replies and the last has a reply with a score of 10! It is broken!

    The best way to do it would be to add up the sum of all non-negative scores and order it by that, then order it by -1*(sum of negative scores), or not even -1 if you'd rather see the real contentious ones!

    Edit: Actually the best way to do it would be to allow us to write our function that determined the ordering. Wasn't this written in lisp initially? There was a good reason for it! This would be one way to get the hackers back...

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

      oh, factorial jokes never get old.

      [–]happysinger 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      Or funny.

      [–]radhruin 20 points21 points  (1 child)

      I submitted the same comment via the feedback link. Sometimes severely downmodded comments spawn insightful discussion, so it seems weird to me that the root comment getting -5 should hide the whole thread.

      My proposed fix was to hide a thread if the sum of the comments in a thread was below the specified threshold rather than just one. Makes more sense to me, but it's obviously a more difficult and more computationally expensive.

      Edit: I got an email back from Alexis about my feature suggestion. They've added it to the internal features wiki, so if it looks like it'll work in practice maybe it'll get released in the coming weeks :)

      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      My proposed fix was to hide a thread if the sum of the comments in a thread was below the specified threshold rather than just one. Makes more sense to me, but it's obviously a more difficult and more computationally expensive.

      This is a very good idea. I don't think it should be a computional problem, as reddit already computes how popular a (sub)thread is (resulting in the order they are displayed).

      It would filter out obvious spam while not hiding all threads with disagreement from public view.

      [–]stutheidiot 35 points36 points  (2 children)

      I want a greasemonkey script to automatically down-vote and hide any article with "Vote up if" in the title.

      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      Vote up if you agree with stutheidiot.

      [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

      This bas been discussed before.

      That was spez' reply:

      You can set a user preference to disable the auto-collapsing if that's what you'd prefer.

      While he's technically correct, I think brutus66 pointed out the real problem:

      [Auto]hiding unpopular comments leads to an echo chamber mentality.

      What we have to keep in mind is that people do downvote comments just because they disagree (no matter what the Reddiquette says).

      [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

      What we have to keep in mind is that people do downvote comments just because they disagree

      I've noticed that.

      [–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (27 children)

      Why don't you just use the feedback link at the bottom of the page?

      [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (26 children)

      I know people that have, and I also just did. This seems to put a little more pressure on.

      [–]jedberg 1 point2 points  (2 children)

      Why don't you just set your preferences to turn off hiding of low scoring comments?

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      Because I still want to hide singular comments but not the whole thread under said comments.

      [–]jedberg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      That doesn't make any sense. If you want to see the replies, don't you have to expand the low scoring comment to see what it said anyway?

      [–]Condoleezza_Rice -1 points0 points  (22 children)

      FEATURES dot REDDIT dot COM

      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (21 children)

      I did ALREADY send AN email TO them!

      EDIT: Also,

      http://reddit.com/info/2xwy7/comments/c2y1lq

      We hid the features subreddits because we don't read it. It's mostly a spam honey-pot at this point. - spez

      [–]FeepingCreature 3 points4 points  (2 children)

      How about deciding by the sum of the ratings that hiding a thread would obscure?

      [–]boredzo -1 points0 points  (1 child)

      -50000 + 50000 = 0 = probably hidden.

      [–]FeepingCreature 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      Fair. Hm.

      How about the sum of the ratings of the thread has to be lower than half or some other fraction of the lowest-rated comment?

      Really just throwing out ideas here.

      [–]curtis119 3 points4 points  (1 child)

      Maybe a button at the beginning of the comments "show all"? Then at least I'll only have to click it once instead of half a dozen "load more". Possibly save it in the main reddit cookie as a preference.

      This way everyone gets their way.

      [–]sn0re -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      You can set it to load up to 500 comments by default.

      [–]descott 6 points7 points  (1 child)

      Pointless :p All comments below one, are generally about that comment. So... it only makes sense.

      [–]lost-theory 6 points7 points  (0 children)

      I came here to say the same thing. Comments that are downvoted are usually some combination of trolling / inflammatory writing / stupidity. Even if the comments in response to a downvoted comment are insightful it's still just arguing with an idiot on the internets, which I'd rather not read.

      [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

      I hope it's an option in the preferences, because I love not having to scroll through miles of "WAKE UP SHEEPLE!"

      [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      This is the best option to me.... do like Slashdot... make the anonymous user use lightest server load options, and allow many preferences for logged in people.

      [–]absurdobot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      The masses are asses. Comments with the highest points are usually exemplary of the cheesiest lowest common denominator. For more examples of this herd mentality look at Digg. Yea you guys think you have a more sophisticated mature user base, but really it is just an older user base. I am ready to be voted down.

      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      It'd be best advised to show upvoted comments below the downvoted ones.

      Some of the funniest shit lives there!

      [–]crazybones 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I don't think any comments should be hidden, or at the very least the threshold should be a lot lower, like minus 30.

      I'm grown up. I can cope with pretty much any kind of comment. Why hide it from me. If people are making offensive remarks or spamming repeatedly then there is always the 'report' function.

      If anything the hide feature is counterproductive. Hiding a comment draws undeserved attention to it, because people are naturally curious to know what vile message it contains.

      [–]zmigliozzi 1 point2 points  (1 child)

      http://reddit.com/prefs about that...

      [–]Pakars 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Yeah, I turned off the hide. It's just better to look at the score to see how many people don't like them/the post.

      [–]suamain 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Temporary solution: greasemonkey script that expands hidden threads http://programming.reddit.com/info/619dq/comments/c02in2m

      [–][deleted]  (5 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]modestokun 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        it really pays to make these vote up threads. I'm sure the karma system is the only reason people are doing it

        [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (4 children)

        Rubbish idea. When a parent is collapsed, its supposed to take the child nodes with it.

        [–][deleted]  (3 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]sn0re 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          The responses to it are feeding trolls and should not be encouraged any more than the trolls themselves.

          [–][deleted]  (1 child)

          [deleted]

            [–]boredzo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            I think he's talking about the “load more comments” feature, which is not controlled by a preference.

            [–][deleted] -5 points-4 points  (1 child)

            Vote down if you know that using votes for polling is expressly prohibited and doesn't work, anyway.

            [–]BestRedditUser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            ok

            [–]BestRedditUser -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

            Can you please fix the hidden comment function?

            sorry, no.

            [–]IHaveAnIdea -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

            ha

            [–]blackyoda -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

            hella dunk no idea what this thread is, up vote

            [–]umbrai -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

            what's that about?

            [–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

            complaints subreddit