A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post • Hacker News Board

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#221

Post by forrestthewoods » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:41 PM UTC

zerostar07 wrote: post #218

forrestthewoods wrote: post #208

Any solution relying on karma is doomed to fail imo. Karma is easy to min-max. I've gotten good at it. Only ~1200 karma but I'm averaging over 10 per post. It's easy with a bit of practice. None of my comments are particularly good. They typically express a mostly safe opinion in a mild manner. I don't like to make non-root posts as they rarely get upvotes and I hesitate to post in a large thread (like this one) as i…

Wow that is very insightful. I 'm surprised that even here people are willingly conformists to gain acceptance.

I think it started with the 500 karma requirement for downvoting. I wanted the ability to downvote so I min-maxed my comments to get there quickly. After that trying to increase my average is just a way to see if I'm improving.

I don't view it as conforming or trying to gain acceptance. It's more like a silly game. It does have potential value as it's good practice for interacting with the media and making company blog posts.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#222

Post by simon » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:46 PM UTC

aeontech wrote: post #217

simon wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mentioning religion is guaranteed downvotes, unless the thread is about depression or suicide. That's the reason that I am a 95% (or more) lurker rather than poster. I loved HN when it first came out, but the heavy anti-faith undercurrent is off-putting.

Are you saying that it was more religion-friendly in the "old days"? I don't think I've ever seen a single religion-related comment on HN, so I'm not sure where you see a "heavy anti-faith undercurrent". Isn't it more likely that religious discussion is just off-topic here, so we don't see much of it?

Any conversation that mentions evolution triggers it.

As for the old days, I don't recall it being an issue, but that could be because I have a bad memory or that previous work environments were hyper-sensitive about posting to websites (or some combination of both) so I didn't get involved directly.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#223

Post by simon » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:48 PM UTC

elviejo wrote: post #215

simon wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2025 days! Woohoo! :-) Sorry about that ... back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I've been a leach for 2023 days :-)

Yep. I remember that when I saw the initial announcement (don't remember where), I grabbed my account name just incase I ever wanted to try the startup thing, trying to make sure that I could get my name rather than "some31337d00d_27".

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#224

Post by pg » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:49 PM UTC

You can test how well this would work by collecting a corpus of whatever sort of comments you think HN could do without, and then checking to see how many of those commenters would have run out of karma using whatever combination of initial karma and cost to post you have in mind.

I'd be open to experimenting with charging karma to comment if someone did a study of that type and showed that it would work.

(I realize it's not a perfect test, because people would make different comments if they knew comments cost karma. But that is a desirable direction to have error in.)

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#225

Post by solnyshok » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:52 PM UTC

hmm, to fight noise, make every char and click count. If you want to upvote, give up one karma point. Downvote? Minus one point from you too. And, finally, daily word limit, so that people give couple of thoughtful and conside comments.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#226

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:12 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #169

chris_wot wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh Wikipedia is the worst. I feel like half the time I post something intelligent I basically get a bunch of people calling me a faggot for reading books, more often than not with 'references' to Wikipedia to explain why I'm wrong. I feel the need to point out that this is not, in fact, a problem with Wikipedia.

Maybe not entirely, but Wikipedia being wrong about lots of basic things is certainly a problem.

No, not at all. Wikipedia is not responsible for another person misusing it.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#227

Post by prodigal_erik » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:15 PM UTC

alttag wrote: post #20

ed209 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do care about karma. I care because it's a measure of whether what I say is agreeable or disagreeable. It's not about fitting in or following the herd, but if I say something that loses me karma I want to understand why. Maybe I'll end up with the same opinion anyway or maybe it teaches me to think more before I talk. Mostly, karma helps me reflect on my opinions and question those opinions. The only thing I would…

... And much of the time, I think asking for a comment with a down vote is a good idea. Except, there are obvious trolls. Or someone else has already explained why the comment was inappropriate. It happens enough that the reason for the downvote seems—to me—facially clear ... so while I agree it's a good courtesy in most situations, I don't think enforcing it would help. Maybe a UI change could encourage this behavio…

Maybe if it's out of band somewhere. If comments are not worth reading (IMHO the purpose of downvoting) I would usually prefer not to plow through subthreads explaining why.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#228

Post by ced » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:16 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #83

bluedanieru wrote: post #34

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed this huge drop in quality that has everyone bitching and moaning lately? The signal-to-noise ratio has dropped slightly compared to when I started reading about four years ago, but this is still a great place for technical discussion. Comparisons to Reddit and other such nonsense are baseless. HN does not need any major overhaul or whatever else. I think a lot of this is just old-…

As an old-timer who used to be very active but isn't anymore I agree with you. When I first created an account 1883 days ago I thought this place was amazing, and that I'd never seen such high quality discussion on the Internet before. Now I don't find the quality to be quite as high, but after thinking about it I've realised what has changed: Me. It's been 5 years, and I've changed. I've become much more knowledgeab…

Whereto? I appreciate your contributions to HN.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#229

Post by Alex3917 » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:19 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #226

Alex3917 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not entirely, but Wikipedia being wrong about lots of basic things is certainly a problem.

No, not at all. Wikipedia is not responsible for another person misusing it.

Of course not, but they're still responsible for being wrong in the first place.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#230

Post by charlieok » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:26 PM UTC

I like the custom filters http://hnapp.com/ provides. I have one that sets a point threshold stories must pass before they show up in my feedreader. If the signal/noise gets a little too low, I raise the threshold. Works for me :)