Ask YC: Redo the Leaderboard

The point system should encourage participation. If we reset the point system every quarter (3 months) or every YC funding cycle, and then give permanent awards to the leaders, then all of us, leaders or laggards, have more reason to participate positively.

Or, instead of awards, we can tack permanent bonus points onto each user. #1 place gets +20 bonus points. Starts the next season with an automatic advantage (like racee qualifiers).

nickb (100+53) 100 is permanant.. 53 is current quarter.. total 153

Keep things fresh.

maybe the total accumulated points of all time are also kept. YC doesn't erase any data. its just writing a new database query.

old query: Points = "select count(votes) where user.id = 123"

new method: "select votes, date where user.id = 123" and do some heuristic magic in the model or results datastructure.

The problem is not as urgent as you might think, though. In a site that's growing, you get a de facto karma decay, because a top submission gets more points than it would have 6 months ago.