> Well, there's always 4chan, which is exactly what you just said.
I disagree. 4chan isn’t Twitter without visible voting, it also has anonymity baked in, you can’t register an account, and old threads are automatically deleted.
A more apt example of (my understanding of) the argument you’re replying to is HN: you can see your own points on a discussion, but not anyone else’s. Posts are given more prominence due to their score, but due to their invisibility you only get a rough idea of how popular they are inside their own discussion, not how much more popular they are in relation to other posts.
Does anybody actually look at other users points on a regular basis? I think it’s rare which is why it’s not really relevant.
Besides, it’s not even a measure of popularity but more of a lifetime scoreboard. If HN reported something like average points per post or per day, that would be closer to a popularity metric (eg more inline with “number of followers”)
I disagree. 4chan isn’t Twitter without visible voting, it also has anonymity baked in, you can’t register an account, and old threads are automatically deleted.
A more apt example of (my understanding of) the argument you’re replying to is HN: you can see your own points on a discussion, but not anyone else’s. Posts are given more prominence due to their score, but due to their invisibility you only get a rough idea of how popular they are inside their own discussion, not how much more popular they are in relation to other posts.