Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#2I follow this simple rule when dealing with trolls online.
"Don't argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"
It's better not to engage in the first place.
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#3earlier work using greasemonkey (no idea if it still works) - http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#4I actually quite like the Karma system. I think that the way that it's implemented on Hacker News is pretty awesome - it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. I have actually made one or two snarky comments, but I immediately went back and deleted them before anyone replied. Other times it's been a misunderstanding, and being downvoted helped me understand that something wasn't quite right.
Certainly it's doing its job, which is to keep the signal to noise ratio high.
The only disturbing aspect of Hacker News is the way that valuable contributors can be hellbanned even after only a few comments. For instance, I saw an individual hell banned for commenting on a controversial story: they weren't trolling (which I assume is the purpose of the facility), only engaging in a debate. I suspect that the one who did the hellbanning did it because they didn't agree with what was being said. As there is no review mechanism, this is purely speculation on my behalf - I will never know why this was done!
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#5I follow this simple rule when dealing with trolls online. "Don't argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" It's better not to engage in the first place.
Well, I come to HN for the discussion, so I want to engage. Not with the idiots obviously, but I'm finding that karma is an insidious brainhook that makes me start taking things personally. Particularly drive-by downvotes - they drive me insane.
Now I have no idea whether you're downvoting me or not (other than the position of the comment relative to others), so hopefully there will be less stress and aggravation from here on :)
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#6earlier work using greasemonkey (no idea if it still works) - http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html
I'd forgotten about [dead] comments. I'll add that in - thanks!
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#7I actually quite like the Karma system. I think that the way that it's implemented on Hacker News is pretty awesome - it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. I have actually made one or two snarky comments, but I immediately went back and deleted them before anyone replied. Other times it's been a misunderstanding, and being downvoted helped me understand that something wasn't quite right.…
> it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made.
Isn't this the ultimate form of groupthink?
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#8I actually quite like the Karma system. I think that the way that it's implemented on Hacker News is pretty awesome - it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. I have actually made one or two snarky comments, but I immediately went back and deleted them before anyone replied. Other times it's been a misunderstanding, and being downvoted helped me understand that something wasn't quite right.…
> it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. Isn't this the ultimate form of groupthink?
Not really. The purpose of this site is for news about Hackers and startups, or as the FAQ says "Anything that good hackers would find interesting". One of the issues with snark is that it doesn't foster appropriate communication - instead it makes people get defensive or react badly.
There are ways of stating disagreement without being nasty, defensive or arrogant. It's a good thing :-) As in RL, thinking before you speak is a wise way to conduct yourself on HN.
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#9I like the karma system overall, and I think the general quality of discussion on HN is evidence that things are mostly working well.
The only thing I find off about it is the average karma on profile pages. Personally, I find that it subconsciously dissuades me from commenting anywhere that is likely to result in few/no upvotes. My first comment on a story might get 20, 40, 80 upvotes, but any extended discussion is going to be rather nested, and so you're essentially burning through your average as each comment sits with only one or two votes. Similarly, commenting on "unpopular" articles means few people will see your comment, so you're pulling your average down again.
Should karma matter to me? Probably not. But I will confess to looking at people's profiles to see their average karma and time on HN as a way of knowing a bit more about them. I don't think it's unreasonable to feel that the average should be more representative than a straight average of all comment votes.
I don't like to complain without offering a solution, so this would be mine: weight the comment average as a function of the overall points on an article, to allow for more conversation around niche topics. Weight comments according to how deep in a thread they are, to allow more in-depth conversations to occur without a karmic penalty.
Karma can sometimes feel like a superficial way of "keeping score," but I think it serves a valuable role in promoting quality discussion. It still has room for improvement, though.
Re: Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. Isn't this the ultimate form of groupthink?
Not really. The purpose of this site is for news about Hackers and startups, or as the FAQ says "Anything that good hackers would find interesting". One of the issues with snark is that it doesn't foster appropriate communication - instead it makes people get defensive or react badly. There are ways of stating disagreement without being nasty, defensive or arrogant. It's a good thing :-) As in RL, thinking before you…
I disagree. There are plenty of snarky people on HN who know what they're talking about and aren't afraid to tell you. Unfortunately, that means that they get a disproportionate share of downvoting groupthink.
Perhaps the saddest example (for us) that I can think of is CPlatypus (http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CPlatypus). Apparently a start up veteran, works at RedHat - I don't know what his blog is. I trawled back through his comments when I noticed he was hellbanned, and they were all pretty insightful. He hasn't been back in the last 30 days or so.