I missed the large discussion thread earlier, and I imagine someone there brought up something similar already, but I doubt it precisely what I am about to post. I'll make my more nuanced comment first.
What about older threads? Sometimes I don't visit HN actively throughout the day, but partake in the discussion at night or the next morning if I have spare time. Many times my comments are slight clarifications of a point being made, or providing some citations or links to resources that I happen to know about on the subject. They almost always go unnoticed with 1 karma, but I continue to do so because they provide helpful resources for someone who comes along later, perhaps by search, or through the discussion view on their user page. If no users with the ability to approve the comment browse the old threads, and my comment is quickly pushed off the earlier pages of the pending comments section, they'll be lost.
More generally, I get why this is being done, and it's even a touch exciting. I would love to see general comment quality improve if for the only reason that the general quality forms expectations in the community, and this can help raise the bar a little. However, it's also pretty concerning. It's a big surprise to see human activity be what is reached for.
Edit: Woah, so it turns out my main concern was discussed in the thread by cperciva [0], and it was an oversight by pg which resulted in the page of pending comments being added. This certainly has the potential to raise comment quality dramatically, but is fraught with danger.
Edit 2: I don't want to flood this comment thread with another post, so I'll make it here. Close to 40 minutes after making the above, I find even my lingering doubt has close to disappeared and been replaced by excitement. My initial horror disappeared surprisingly quickly, even before I made the above comment, as I realized quickly how much this could improve comment quality. Yet, after some reading in the announcement thread, I find myself feeling like a slightly modified system would require much less activity from users, but be nearly as effective.
Why not have, after a certain threshold of endorsed comments, comments by the user be automatically endorsed. Then, instead of requiring active endorsement for every comment, give high karma users the ability to require further comments by a bad commenter to require endorsement before appearing. This ensures that they can only make a handful of low quality comments before being pushed to active moderation, and presumably the event would happen rarely so that abuse of the ability can be more accurately monitored. I imagine that the opposite idea, having bad comments being endorsed by a user resulting in the removal their ability to endorse, would be more work.
Another 20 minutes later, and one last edit just for posterity: I still remain fairly bullish about the potential, but reading the discussion threads leaves me bouncing back and forth between excitement and concern. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, in either case.
What about older threads? Sometimes I don't visit HN actively throughout the day, but partake in the discussion at night or the next morning if I have spare time. Many times my comments are slight clarifications of a point being made, or providing some citations or links to resources that I happen to know about on the subject. They almost always go unnoticed with 1 karma, but I continue to do so because they provide helpful resources for someone who comes along later, perhaps by search, or through the discussion view on their user page. If no users with the ability to approve the comment browse the old threads, and my comment is quickly pushed off the earlier pages of the pending comments section, they'll be lost.
More generally, I get why this is being done, and it's even a touch exciting. I would love to see general comment quality improve if for the only reason that the general quality forms expectations in the community, and this can help raise the bar a little. However, it's also pretty concerning. It's a big surprise to see human activity be what is reached for.
Edit: Woah, so it turns out my main concern was discussed in the thread by cperciva [0], and it was an oversight by pg which resulted in the page of pending comments being added. This certainly has the potential to raise comment quality dramatically, but is fraught with danger.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445916
Edit 2: I don't want to flood this comment thread with another post, so I'll make it here. Close to 40 minutes after making the above, I find even my lingering doubt has close to disappeared and been replaced by excitement. My initial horror disappeared surprisingly quickly, even before I made the above comment, as I realized quickly how much this could improve comment quality. Yet, after some reading in the announcement thread, I find myself feeling like a slightly modified system would require much less activity from users, but be nearly as effective.
Why not have, after a certain threshold of endorsed comments, comments by the user be automatically endorsed. Then, instead of requiring active endorsement for every comment, give high karma users the ability to require further comments by a bad commenter to require endorsement before appearing. This ensures that they can only make a handful of low quality comments before being pushed to active moderation, and presumably the event would happen rarely so that abuse of the ability can be more accurately monitored. I imagine that the opposite idea, having bad comments being endorsed by a user resulting in the removal their ability to endorse, would be more work.
Another 20 minutes later, and one last edit just for posterity: I still remain fairly bullish about the potential, but reading the discussion threads leaves me bouncing back and forth between excitement and concern. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, in either case.