What I've Learned from Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#91

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 4:01 PM UTC

trominos wrote: post #66

dcurtis wrote: post #42

I think a lot of the growth problems might have to do with the devaluation of karma. The solution to this might actually raise the quality of comments and front page stories. When I posted a comment here a year and a half ago, I felt like each vote was a real, actual smart person praising or agreeing with what I had said. Each point had a lot of meaning, and back then 5 points was considered a pretty good score. Now…

I agree, and I think that the solution is simple: limit people's ability to give out upvotes. Maybe restrict people's weekly upvotes to c * ln(karma) + d or something. (Make d small!) Or have upvotes actually cost you like a tenth of a karma point. (Dunno if karma should be turned into currency, though, since then I could imagine people trying to game the system.) This solves another problem that really bothers me: a…

[deleted]

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#92

Post by twopoint718 » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 4:13 PM UTC

I've been toying with the idea of adapting the Elo rating system from chess to a social site's user score. The basic idea from chess is that you assume someone has an intrinsic skill in some arbitrary units (I think you start out around 1,000 and a 2400+ is senior master) and that we can only infer that skill from how they perform in tournaments. Furthermore, your skill in any particular game is assumed to be normally distributed about that intrinsic skill value. It is also assumed that your skill will only change slowly over time (we don't have to pin down a moving target).

So the mechanics of this system are basically that when you compete with someone that is much better than you and win your score should be adjusted upwards. Conversely, if you lose to someone worse than you, your score will be adjusted downward. Adjustments are done in batches, say after a player has finished a tournament (I use five voting events between readjustment).

My application to a user karma system would be analogous in that a "match" or "competition" would happen every time someone directly rates someone else (stories may be exempt). A high-karma user upvoting a low-karma user would increase the low-karma user's karma and decrease the high-karma user's karma. If there are two users with equal karma and one up or downvotes the other. the number of points exchanged will be minimal (the gain/loss scales with the difference in karma).

The idea is that your ideas are competing with the opinions of the high-ranked users. The assumption is that new users will have bad ideas and that high-karma users will downvote them. A downvote from a high-karma user is expected and doesn't cost the new user very much (they are expected to "lose" to them often).

I've sketched out some of the functions here: http://paste.lisp.org/display/76193

EDIT: grammar fix, typed this before coffee

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#93

Post by calambrac » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 4:35 PM UTC

twopoint718 wrote: post #92

I've been toying with the idea of adapting the Elo rating system from chess to a social site's user score. The basic idea from chess is that you assume someone has an intrinsic skill in some arbitrary units (I think you start out around 1,000 and a 2400+ is senior master) and that we can only infer that skill from how they perform in tournaments. Furthermore, your skill in any particular game is assumed to be normall…

That doesn't seem like a very nice assumption, that new users will have bad ideas, and if old users lose karma every time they vote up a new user, how can you ever know if the new user genuinely has nothing to offer, or if old users are just wary of decreasing their score, and therefore, influence? (i.e., I have lots of karma, and I know if I upvote this comment that I like, it will increase their score quite a bit - I have influence now - but it will also lower my karma, and I'll have less influence over the next comment I see which I may like more...)

This is what happens in chess: highly-ranked players just simply won't play new or lower-ranked players at all. It's not a bad thing there, but then again, it is a competition. A social site isn't, though.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#94

Post by pg » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 4:59 PM UTC

kwamenum86 wrote: post #19

aneesh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I guess my point is that Hacker News is being gamed the way reddit and digg are." Only if you think the "game" is to accumulate karma. For me, the submissions are merely seeds around which insightful discussions grow.

There is a tangible reward for people who have the most karma though.

Sort of. Consistently making smart comments carries a lot of weight in getting an invitation to YC interviews. It was the deciding factor for at least 3 people we funded: danielha, alexwg, and one other I probably can't disclose because they're not launched yet.

It's not simply a function of karma, though, but whether we recognize the username as someone who seems smart.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#95

Post by pg » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 5:03 PM UTC

gabrielroth wrote: post #37

I would be interested to know how much time PG and others spend moderating the site -- not improving the code but killing stories and comments, banning users, etc. HN always feels to me like a self-policing community, but this and other remarks from PG point to non-trivial amounts of intervention by higher authorities, which makes me wonder how much work it takes to keep things on track.

I would guess about 1-3 hours a day between all the editors combined. But it's not too painful, because the editor UI is designed to make it easy to kill crap as you come across it while reading the site.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#96

Post by pg » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 5:07 PM UTC

simonb wrote: post #84

alain94040 wrote: post #8

Hear, hear: if you have a solution for detecting stupid comments, let Paul know. I liked the two ideas Paul mentioned: length of comment is related to stupidity, and not using the same words again. Just make those fall toward the bottom of the page and we'll all be happy. While any algorithm can be gamed, length is still pretty good. If I have to go through the extra effort of adding two paragraphs each time I write…

Having length as an indicator of quality intuitively (i.e. I don't have statistically significant counter-examples) seems wrong to me. It goes directly against what hacking stands for (quick, dirty and yet elegant solutions).

tl;dr

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#97

Post by Kaizyn » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 5:47 PM UTC

dcurtis wrote: post #42

I think a lot of the growth problems might have to do with the devaluation of karma. The solution to this might actually raise the quality of comments and front page stories. When I posted a comment here a year and a half ago, I felt like each vote was a real, actual smart person praising or agreeing with what I had said. Each point had a lot of meaning, and back then 5 points was considered a pretty good score. Now…

When you have more people voting, naturally each vote is worth less than when fewer people are around to vote.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#98

Post by yamil » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 5:50 PM UTC

I don't post any comment on HN anymore and I don't read comments often. It's time consuming. I visit HN every day and I pick 2 to 3 interesting links on average. That's it. If I need more time to waiste I go to reddit it's more fun.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#99

Post by twopoint718 » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 5:53 PM UTC

calambrac wrote: post #93

twopoint718 wrote: post #92

I've been toying with the idea of adapting the Elo rating system from chess to a social site's user score. The basic idea from chess is that you assume someone has an intrinsic skill in some arbitrary units (I think you start out around 1,000 and a 2400+ is senior master) and that we can only infer that skill from how they perform in tournaments. Furthermore, your skill in any particular game is assumed to be normall…

That doesn't seem like a very nice assumption, that new users will have bad ideas, and if old users lose karma every time they vote up a new user, how can you ever know if the new user genuinely has nothing to offer, or if old users are just wary of decreasing their score, and therefore, influence? (i.e., I have lots of karma, and I know if I upvote this comment that I like, it will increase their score quite a bit -…

Oh I agree completely that it isn't a nice assumption; it is just a simplifying one (like the proverbial spherical cow) that's mostly wrong. But I don't think it is entirely wrong, and the ways that it is right may be useful, as an experiment.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word bad. But new users may not know the established traditions of a group, maybe they haven't even bothered to read the FAQ. The articles that got me thinking along these lines were: http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html and http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2001/cs6470_fall/LTAND.ht... . The gist is that an important group function is to defend itself against (new) users.

But I think that what it'll do is to make votes matter because they cost something. Mostly, I'm interested to see what the implications would be.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#100

Post by calambrac » Thu, Feb 26, 2009, 6:18 PM UTC

twopoint718 wrote: post #99

calambrac wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem like a very nice assumption, that new users will have bad ideas, and if old users lose karma every time they vote up a new user, how can you ever know if the new user genuinely has nothing to offer, or if old users are just wary of decreasing their score, and therefore, influence? (i.e., I have lots of karma, and I know if I upvote this comment that I like, it will increase their score quite a bit -…

Oh I agree completely that it isn't a nice assumption; it is just a simplifying one (like the proverbial spherical cow) that's mostly wrong. But I don't think it is entirely wrong, and the ways that it is right may be useful, as an experiment. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word bad . But new users may not know the established traditions of a group, maybe they haven't even bothered to read the FAQ. The articles that…

Okay, but why should votes cost more for a user with more karma? I would think the opposite should be true, that if karma is an indicator of a user's value to the site, someone with more karma should pay less to vote up a newer user.