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Auto submission bots on Hacker News

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#141

Post by bmelton »

roel_v wrote: post #20
edu wrote: post #8

It might be interesting to hide total karma score from users. I guess that if we don't know our total karma score the karma harvesting will stop but keep the points for submissions and comments so there's still the incentive to contribute good material (the pride of seeing your comment/submission being upvoted). What do you think? edit: the first version didn't make much sense, I got interrupted in the middle of the…

This is a lesson that was learned on Slashdot in 1999 already I think. A 'karma cap' makes perfect sense and the total karma wouldn't even have to be displayed to the user himself, to avoid karma whoring. What does it matter if someone has 1500 or 15000 karma? They've both proven to be contribute; maybe the one with the higher score just has more time, or a more popular opinion, or has been here longer. In the same v…

I quite like the 'karma average' actually. You can argue whether or not it works, but to me, the two highest signal posters (that come to my mind) are grellas and patio11.

They have averages of 26.23 and 18.93, respectively. This, to me, aligns with my expectation that their comments are high value, well thought, and usually worth reading.

Compared to my own measly karma average of 4.57, which is comprised, often, of throwaway remarks and dumb questions, I think it's a fair representation of a user's contribution.

The actual number itself, I agree, is all but meaningless.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#143

Post by zacharycohn »

Vivtek wrote: post #37
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #26

FWIW, I was one of the people running a bot to auto-submit. I've always been a big-iron algorithms programmer, and I've never done much web programming, and certainly never programmed an auto-submitter before. Since I figured most of Jacques' idle thoughts were worth more than half the things making it to the Front Page, I figured it was an ideal time to learn a little about the back-n-forth of a form submission syst…

Perhaps splitting karma between submitters until the item reaches the first page, then. I know I've never managed to be the first submitter of an interesting link; there's always somebody that saw it before me. So normally I don't even think of posting a link. (Of course, lately, I get the vast majority of my interesting reading from here anyway, but still...) I don't blame you for bot-submitting Jacques' stuff. His…

That wouldn't really work, since an article can pop with 4 upvotes.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#144

Post by [deleted] »

noahc wrote: post #126
mzl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seldom comment on HN, and when I do I typically do so in threads that are somewhat dormant, with little activity. I don't really care about karma/votes at all, I just say something when I think I have something of value to add. My comment average is 1.7, but I would still like to believe that I have yet to exhibit any behavior that I'm just angry at the world. I hope that I could still get yours or others attention…

When I comment my goal is to have the most Karma per thread. In some ways its very Karmic in that my goal is to maximize all users Karma over my own individual Karma. I get really excited when a comment of mine results in multiple 20+ Karma comments because that means I'm really contributing.

[deleted]

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#145

Post by JakeSc »

damncabbage wrote: post #64
barrkel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The karma matters precisely because it can't be bought (not in any ordinary way, at least). It represents peer acclaim (or conformity to groupthink). If it was bought and sold, the basis for its value would evaporate.

It's also valuable because it eventually grants the ability to downvote. (It's annoying to see obvious trolls and spam sitting at 1 and not be able to do anything about it. I'm still a few hundred points away, unless the threshold has gone up again.)

Do you happen to know what the threshold is?

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#146

Post by mirkules »

damncabbage wrote: post #64
barrkel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The karma matters precisely because it can't be bought (not in any ordinary way, at least). It represents peer acclaim (or conformity to groupthink). If it was bought and sold, the basis for its value would evaporate.

It's also valuable because it eventually grants the ability to downvote. (It's annoying to see obvious trolls and spam sitting at 1 and not be able to do anything about it. I'm still a few hundred points away, unless the threshold has gone up again.)

How do you find out the threshold anyway? It seems like it's a mystery for some reason (unlike, SO for example, where it's all spelled out)

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#147

Post by icey »

oemera wrote: post #65

Is HN karma worth anything? Don't get me wrong. I love HN and I think it is unique in its way but I never thought that I could earn a medal because of a lot karma on HN. I can understand this "function" on StackOverflow (even though I don't have much karma there either) cause karma at StackOverflow can bring in new chances. My question: Do anyone use HN karma as measurement to see if this guy is worth to hire or wort…

I would certainly hope not.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#148

Post by Vivtek »

zacharycohn wrote: post #143
Vivtek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps splitting karma between submitters until the item reaches the first page, then. I know I've never managed to be the first submitter of an interesting link; there's always somebody that saw it before me. So normally I don't even think of posting a link. (Of course, lately, I get the vast majority of my interesting reading from here anyway, but still...) I don't blame you for bot-submitting Jacques' stuff. His…

That wouldn't really work, since an article can pop with 4 upvotes.

Well, it would split the initial karma four ways, then. It would be better than not splitting.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#149

Post by rhizome »

knowtheory wrote: post #137
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i submitted a link ... about an hour ago, and after > watching it depressingly fall off the first page of > the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting > a link to HN again. > What's so frustrating is that i can identify content > that is good, and relevant (the link above is about > open data, citizen access to data, and information > management), which are obviously relevant to the > hacker news commun…

I appreciate the POV. At the risk of litigating a separate issue, i think you're wrong. Aside from people who care about big data, information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers. You're going to fall into at least one of those categories, and i think that hackers in particular are going to fall into multiple of t…

information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers

I think you're getting into a long-deplored mailing-list tendency for people to ascribe general attributes to their community based on personal preference. "I like ice-cream, lots of other people probably like ice cream, so it's a good post for HN." Journalistic feature-creep, if you will.

My point being that yes, we are all tax-payers more or less, but that doesn't mean everything paid for with tax revenues is germane. Syllogistic posting rationales tend to cast a wider and wider umbrella, sometimes venturing into the realm of slippery slopes.

EDIT: fixed quote-italics

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#150

Post by khafra »

mzl wrote: post #78
jasonkester wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I hope my upvote just gave your average a bit of a boost. Second, you'll need to produce a bit more anger and irrationality before anybody starts labeling you as a troll :) Frankly, the only time I ever check anybody's profile is when they say something really valuable or really obnoxious. So by the time I get there I've pretty much made up my mind about the character of the individual in question. I can't ima…

Thanks. That comment was my biggest hitting one ever, so my average will probably jump quite a bit. Funny that it should be in a meta-karma thread. I do see what you mean, I didn't think you were discarding comments from low karma commenters. I mostly wanted to bring up a point that is often missed in these discussions, that karma points might be very dependent on not only participation and quality, but on timing. Gi…

You started me thinking about ways to normalize average karma, but I haven't come up with one that makes me happy yet:

- adjusting to other comments on the same post doesn't account for timing

- adjusting for time after the post is gameable by necromancers

- adjusting by the total karma of the post commented on is incomplete; it also needs some relation to the time lapse from posting to comment

- penalizing short comments might help discourage snarky one-liners

Are there browser plugins to give an adjusted average karma score this way, yet?

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