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HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

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Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#161

Post by krapp »

Loughla wrote: post #157
krapp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevertheless, having actual numbers there provides (by design) a form of operant conditioning, intended to encourage posters to want their numbers to go up, not down, and to associate a posters' credibility with their karma score. It might be a minor issue overall (as the effect of karma would be the same either way) but not having the numbers there at least makes the forum less obviously gamified. As an obvious exam…

So, is your argument that, because tptacek has 200k+ karma that its comments and submissions are upvoted more? I would argue that the content of submissions stands on its own compared to the total; I've not once checked a user's overall karma before voting. And it's still not on point. The point is that for the people we really need to worry about, it's not about karma at all. Get rid of karma, I agree with you. It s…

>So, is your argument that, because tptacek has 200k+ karma that its comments and submissions are upvoted more?

Not necessarily, but I would argue that the karma score is there to suggest that his comments should be treated more seriously in general, since karma is meant to be a signifier of 'quality.' It's an easy (and deceptive) metric to determine who in any argument should be listened to and who shouldn't. Although his having that much karma might mean his upvotes and downvotes count more which to me would be a bigger problem for the fairness of the forum in general.

I would be happy if Hacker News got rid of karma entirely, but that seems unlikely. The next best thing at least would be to just not have the numbers there at all.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#162

Post by dang »

Grue3 wrote: post #103
sudioStudio64 wrote: post #88

I was always suspicious of the LISP articles. Just kidding. I think that the lack of down votes for normal people means that you end up seeing a lot of support for some things that are popular with the people who CAN down vote. Maybe I've got it wrong, but it seems that way.

When I submitted my Lisp project, it didn't get even a single upvote. Maybe I should've mentioned I wrote it in Lisp to enjoy the grace of this invisible Lisp brigade, but I always felt it's tacky to submit stuff like "X but written in Go/Javascript/whatever!!!" because it basically shows that you're just reinventing the bicycle. The project should stand on its own regardless of the language it's written in.

If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8572800, that looks cool and you should repost it. Randomness more than suffices to explain why it didn't get upvoted.

I recommend providing more detail about how it works, to gratify readers' curiosity.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#163

Post by dang »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #148
simonsarris wrote: post #135

Topics like these crop up from time to time: 279 days ago Sama posted asking people to read newest as a solution[1], and I wrote: --- Sam I think you have great power to give /newest more views if you'd consider minor redesigns. Perhaps you could dither stories so the front-page list goes top/new/top/new/top/new, etc, but that is potentially very messy. Or perhaps instead, the front-page can show 30 top stories, then…

Another possibility is to show just a single random post from new. Considering the difference between loads of the homepage and the new page, even that would likely make a dramatic difference.

> Another possibility is to show just a single random post from new.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336759

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#164

Post by dang »

aunty_helen wrote: post #65

6 of the top 10 articles at the time of writing are corporate news sources (sciencedaily, nytimes, washingtonpost, cbc, bbc, medium). I don't have any data but I would be interested to know if these companies are gaming the system. It sure would be in their best interest and I can't help but shake the feeling that they are after looking at the front page sometimes. It would be good to get a 'hail corporate' button /…

I haven't seen evidence of that and would be shocked if they were. Maybe this is an advantage of HN being relatively small.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#165

Post by tptacek »

krapp wrote: post #161
Loughla wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, is your argument that, because tptacek has 200k+ karma that its comments and submissions are upvoted more? I would argue that the content of submissions stands on its own compared to the total; I've not once checked a user's overall karma before voting. And it's still not on point. The point is that for the people we really need to worry about, it's not about karma at all. Get rid of karma, I agree with you. It s…

>So, is your argument that, because tptacek has 200k+ karma that its comments and submissions are upvoted more? Not necessarily, but I would argue that the karma score is there to suggest that his comments should be treated more seriously in general, since karma is meant to be a signifier of 'quality.' It's an easy (and deceptive) metric to determine who in any argument should be listened to and who shouldn't. Althou…

My comments are absolutely voted up way more because of status. Some of it is unavoidable: there are people who follow my comments, just like I follow 'patio11 and 'rayiner, and so my comments get statistically more positive exposure.

I think the post/propter is swapped here, though. I doubt I'm voted up because of the silly number. I think the number is silly because of the reasons I'm voted up.

I agree: I'd like HN to get rid of karma. We got past the point where karma stopped being funny and became embarrassing for me several years ago.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#166

Post by PhantomGremlin »

dang wrote: post #163
rkuykendall-com wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility is to show just a single random post from new. Considering the difference between loads of the homepage and the new page, even that would likely make a dramatic difference.

> Another possibility is to show just a single random post from new. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336759

Maybe hire CmdrTaco to select stories for the front page? :)

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#167

Post by argklm »

Someone need to develop an userscript that will display a two pane Hacker News. On the left the standard page on the right the newest tab. These days I'm in rehabilitation from surgery if no one want to materialize the idea I will look into it.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#168

Post by tokenadult »

dang wrote: post #160
elmin wrote: post #37

To me the easiest solution is to expose more users to the /newest page. When more eyes are on the new stories, legitimate ones will have more of a shot.

Yes, except that users just don't do it. It's a tragedy of the commons: sifting through the story stream to find the interesting ones is not, itself, interesting enough. The reason people come to HN (to read interesting things) is a reason not to do that. Our current idea for the solution is twofold: create a new review mechanism for stories (not to replace /newest but to live alongside it), and reward users with kar…

That's funny. By reflex, I visit the new page most times after I visit the main page. And I venture to guess that on many days I visit HN more than the average user here. But, yeah, when N gets big enough, what any one person does doesn't set the culture of the whole community.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#169

Post by marrs »

krapp wrote: post #96
pajju wrote: post #20

Good that someone raised this topic. 1. Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted. 2. There are pre-formed HN groups who game the system often. My Feedback 1. Some special users can be given special Front-Page-Post Button permission. Say, 3 Top Users have voted this Post for FP(Front Page) 2. Frontpage should not be the highlighting part of HN. At least it looks like that as of now. The other good parts of HN: new…

I've felt for a while that HN would be much improved if vote count and karma were invisible. If you give users a stat, you're encouraging them to gamify and optimize for it. Personally, I would rather there was no karma at all, but that's not going to happen. It serves its purpose by affecting the sort order of the thread - it doesn't need to be visible to do its job. The value of gaming the frontpage could be reduce…

I think you're absolutely on the money and I think your suggestions would really help.

I'd like to add something: replace the down-vote button with a "report spam" link.

The one thing that makes me rage on HN is seeing people getting down-voted for having a disagreeable opinion. It's supposed to be to suppress trolling or spam, but people just can't help but use it to oppress others' opinion. Just on principle, it makes me angry, but for practical reasons it's irritating as well because it becomes harder to read often more interesting comments.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#170

Post by malka »

aout wrote: post #149
krapp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've felt for a while that HN would be much improved if vote count and karma were invisible. If you give users a stat, you're encouraging them to gamify and optimize for it. Personally, I would rather there was no karma at all, but that's not going to happen. It serves its purpose by affecting the sort order of the thread - it doesn't need to be visible to do its job. The value of gaming the frontpage could be reduce…

Well, if you hide Karma but still use it in the ordering of the thread then Karma could be derivated. In a day you could extract the data from the posts and build a kind of karma-book with top users etc etc...

reddit like : apply a random modifier. It would probably leak data, though.
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