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Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#41

Post by prakash »

pg wrote: post #29
giles_bowkett wrote: post #26

At 600+ karma, you get infinite bonus mushrooms and infinite ammo. You have to beat the game twice on impossible mode in the military suit and max out all your guns, though, even the stupid one that takes forever to fire and then the zombie eats your head because you were sitting there trying to warm it up instead of shooting zombies, which would have been the logical thing to do. At 1000+ karma, you take off your he…

These numbers are way too low. I'd have to have gone to 94 people's houses and made them sandwiches. (I already explained the meaning of life in a footnote in "Great Hackers.")

[3] I think this is what people mean when they talk about the "meaning of life." On the face of it, this seems an odd idea. Life isn't an expression; how could it have meaning? But it can have a quality that feels a lot like meaning. In a project like a compiler, you have to solve a lot of problems, but the problems all fall into a pattern, as in a signal. Whereas when the problems you have to solve are random, they seem like noise.

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#42

Post by laut »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #21

20 karma – downvote comments. 200 karma – make polls ( http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll ). 250 karma – customize the top bar background color. ??? karma – flag posts and comments (on their individual page).

I think the limit for comments down-voting is 75 (or a number close to 75).

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#43

Post by CalmQuiet »

pg wrote: post #24
CalmQuiet wrote: post #17

My question would be: why the secrecy? HN worried that transparency about the processes of ratings & their "rewards" (which (plus + $5.00) will buy you a cappuccino) would lead to abuse of the system? I think openness system would allow for HN viewers to discuss the value of different site-karma processes -- enabling the site designers (and all of us) to benefit more from the community's collective genius and experie…

It's simpler than you think. As moderately dangerous new features got added, I gave them karma thresholds to avoid abuse. Since there's no man page there's nowhere to list them all. Most got explained individually in News News though.

Thanks for the reply. That leads me rather automatically to rephrase my question: "Why no man page?" And (sorry to be such a newb) what is News News? Do you mean just http://news.ycombinator.com/news ? If so the SEARCH button/form is proving hard for me to find !?¿?!

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#44

Post by fallentimes »

giles_bowkett wrote: post #26

At 600+ karma, you get infinite bonus mushrooms and infinite ammo. You have to beat the game twice on impossible mode in the military suit and max out all your guns, though, even the stupid one that takes forever to fire and then the zombie eats your head because you were sitting there trying to warm it up instead of shooting zombies, which would have been the logical thing to do. At 1000+ karma, you take off your he…

At 4000+ karma you start receiving Christmas cards.

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#45

Post by iamelgringo »

pg wrote: post #29
giles_bowkett wrote: post #26

At 600+ karma, you get infinite bonus mushrooms and infinite ammo. You have to beat the game twice on impossible mode in the military suit and max out all your guns, though, even the stupid one that takes forever to fire and then the zombie eats your head because you were sitting there trying to warm it up instead of shooting zombies, which would have been the logical thing to do. At 1000+ karma, you take off your he…

These numbers are way too low. I'd have to have gone to 94 people's houses and made them sandwiches. (I already explained the meaning of life in a footnote in "Great Hackers.")

But, let me tell you, it's a _great_fucking_sandwich. It was actually so good, I'm going to register a new username: MORE_SANDWICH and climb the karma ladder again, just so PG makes me another sandwich. I need one... more.... taste...

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#46

Post by gravitycop »

prakash wrote: post #41
pg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These numbers are way too low. I'd have to have gone to 94 people's houses and made them sandwiches. (I already explained the meaning of life in a footnote in "Great Hackers.")

[3] I think this is what people mean when they talk about the "meaning of life." On the face of it, this seems an odd idea. Life isn't an expression; how could it have meaning? But it can have a quality that feels a lot like meaning. In a project like a compiler, you have to solve a lot of problems, but the problems all fall into a pattern, as in a signal. Whereas when the problems you have to solve are random, they…

The text linked to the footnote:

Nasty Little Problems

It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big, clear, problems, you have to solve a lot of nasty little ones. One of the worst kinds of projects is writing an interface to a piece of software that's full of bugs. Another is when you have to customize something for an individual client's complex and ill-defined needs. To hackers these kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts.

The distinguishing feature of nasty little problems is that you don't learn anything from them. Writing a compiler is interesting because it teaches you what a compiler is. But writing an interface to a buggy piece of software doesn't teach you anything, because the bugs are random. [3]

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#47

Post by cx01 »

CalmQuiet wrote: post #43
pg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simpler than you think. As moderately dangerous new features got added, I gave them karma thresholds to avoid abuse. Since there's no man page there's nowhere to list them all. Most got explained individually in News News though.

Thanks for the reply. That leads me rather automatically to rephrase my question: "Why no man page?" And (sorry to be such a newb) what is News News? Do you mean just http://news.ycombinator.com/news ? If so the SEARCH button/form is proving hard for me to find !?¿?!

News news is here: http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#48

Post by petercooper »

giles_bowkett wrote: post #26

At 600+ karma, you get infinite bonus mushrooms and infinite ammo. You have to beat the game twice on impossible mode in the military suit and max out all your guns, though, even the stupid one that takes forever to fire and then the zombie eats your head because you were sitting there trying to warm it up instead of shooting zombies, which would have been the logical thing to do. At 1000+ karma, you take off your he…

Hmph.. you might like to think so, but I'm still waiting for my sandwich!

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#49

Post by gravitycop »

_5y6p wrote: post #11

I have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect the score. Which is to say, I click on the downvote, and the points go down by one, but upon reloading the page, the score is the same as before. (And yes, it's happened enough times that I know it isn't just someone voting the comment back up in the intervening period.)

I have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect the score.

It's part of karma-grump protection. One's downvotes do not count, unless he upvotes first and at least as many times. If you run across something you want to downvote, first find something else to upvote. If you want to rack up downvote ammo to spare, upvote often. For example, if you upvote 10 times in a row, you will have 10 downvotes available. After that, your downvotes will no longer count, unless and until you do more upvoting.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301

I'm considering adding an additional layer of protection against grumps: to only allow users as many downvotes as they've made upvotes. That way each user's net contribution to the global karma would be at least neutral.

Re: Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

#50

Post by gravitycop »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #21

20 karma – downvote comments. 200 karma – make polls ( http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll ). 250 karma – customize the top bar background color. ??? karma – flag posts and comments (on their individual page).

Your numbers are wrong. They are changed by the management over time to account for karma inflation. http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+%22kar...

Recent karma-threshold schedule:

  10 karma - Upvote comments.
  51 karma - Downvote comments. Flag comments.
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