HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you like HN's karma system?

9 points by tictoc ↗ HN
I really think they do a good job of enforcing a certain style of communication. I like how I know very little about the benefits more karma gets me. I think it's really an under-appreciated aspect of modern day forums.

This is speaking from someone that does a poor job of following the rules of the place.

31 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 81.9 ms ] thread
zzo38computer
No. I think is good to have communications without it. I would like to be able to disable it, so that when displaying messages to me, the karma is not taken into account. (Even if other people want to keep it enabled for displaying messages to them.)
tlb
AFAIK, a user's total karma isn't used to sort comments. Only the score on the individual comment is. Do you mean you want to see the comments sorted only by time?

To help convince people that your idea works, perhaps you could take a popular comment page and mock it up the way you think it should be and post it somewhere.

zzo38computer
Yes, I would like to see it sorted only by time and by what comment it is in reply to. Possibly I could try to use GreaseMonkey to reorder them by ID number, maybe. (Are the order of ID numbers the same as the order by time?)

However, I am not saying that it should be sorted only by time for everyone, but only by the user who has changed their account options to specify that as the default sort order.

tlb
Yes, IDs are monotonically increasing over time. So you could write a script that, within each comment nesting level, extracts the ID and sorts.
open-source-ux
One thing I notice sometimes is that insightful, well-written comments will sink to the bottom of a thread (presumably from posters without a high karma), leaving less interesting comments percolating at the top of the discussion (presumably from posters with high karma). That's a shame and I don't really know how it could be resolved. But it's also a problem on many discussion sites (Reddit, Slashdot etc)

In long threads, I suspect many posters will never scroll towards the bottom of the discussion. Thus, the comments at the top of the discussion continue to accumulate upvotes while good quality comments further down never get a chance to rise up. But I guess that is more due to user behaviour rather than some algorithmic logic.

nullwasamistake
Like yours? :) .

With no evidence I blame downvotes, which seems to be a common thread with other users on this thread.

I don't think it's about high karma. I've got a few comments that gave me like 1/3 of my karma. It doesn't appear to bias towards established users. More likely, a few downvotes (luck) is what sinks you

muzani
I'm pretty sure it's algorithmic logic. The first posts in get ranked much higher, likely because they're getting upvoted more too.
p1esk
1. Separate submissions karma and comments karma. It's very easy to accumulate a lot of karma by submitting an article on some hot topic. This karma should be a lot less valuable than karma earned through writing high quality comments.

2. Limited number of upvotes/downvotes, or downvotes substracting your own karma (perhaps not 1:1).

3. Mandatory justifications for downvotes (e.g. choose from dropdown menu), with this information publicly visible for each comment.

nullwasamistake
I agree with #1. It's super easy to write a blog post that gets more upvotes than any comment ever will. If most HN readers are like me, I immediately go to comments before checking out the article. The current karma system encourages posts over comments, while comments are actually the vast majority of reason we visit HN. Comments are the community, especially in recent years where ask and show hn posts rarely breach first page :'( . Weighting non-article posts higher would achieve similar, bringing back importance of community over posting stuff.

I also agree with #2, a single unpopular comment can ruin your karma, and seems to rapidly contribute to a rate limiter that impedes your ability to interact with the site. I tend to comment on spurts when I've got a bunch of free time. It's common to have a comment downvoted below 0 and end up with "you're doing that too fast" rate limiting. I'm not 100% that downvoted comments are the cause, but it seems likely.

I disagree with #3. The few mods HN has already work hard. I don't think we should give them more to read. I would rather remove downvotes, I don't see a point besides encouraging echo chamber mentality

Fjolsvith
> If most HN readers are like me, I immediately go to comments before checking out the article.

And what do you do if most HN readers aren't like you?

But seriously, for number 3, what if the tallies for the reasons for downvotes are visible to the comment poster, as a form of feedback for that person?

muzani
To my understanding, submissions don't give any karma at all.
p1esk
About half of my karma is from ~10 submissions. The other half is from ~1000 comments.
Someone1234
I think downvotes are fundamentally broken.

If upvotes are agree/approval and downvotes are disagree/disapproval then why are downvotes used for automatic moderation too? It is a problem in this site and other sites that double-use downvote to mean two different, contradictory, things.

The strange thing about HK in particular is that they already offer a "flag" button. If the flag was dedicated to moderation and the downvote dedicated to discussion, the site would be fine, but downvote will auto-hide comments, grey them, shadowban people in certain cases (like green accounts), and is weighed during flagging/dead-ing (e.g. one flag for a grey comment Vs. multiple flags for others).

I think it has a chilling effect. People are hesitant to post controversial opinions no matter how well written because the consequences (via simple downvotes) can be problematic to even accounts in otherwise good standing.

In an ideal world a site should have an upvote/downvote and flag button. The first two should be dedicated to discussion only, and having a controversial viewpoint should be noteable but not punishable. The latter (flag) should be for comments thats that violate the site's guidelines or community standards (e.g. -isms, trolling, insulting, etc).

PS - Part of the problem right now is that for comments the flag button is hidden below the fold. Many new users may never see it.

hellofunk
To be honest, I don’t think Hong Kong has anything to do with it.
i_cant_speel
Do you really feel that people here don't allow opposing viewpoints? IMO that is an area where Hacker News shines, especially in comparison to sites like Reddit. I rarely see, respectful, well thought out counter-viewpoints downvoted simply for disagreeing.
brokenmachine
I have showdead on, and often see dead comments where I don't understand what the problem is with them.

I'd say it's about 10% of dead comments where I would understand if they were just dimmed, but they're dead so you can't upvote to help resurrect them, and you can't reply.

yesenadam
If you have the time, could you link to a few (or lots) of these dead comments with absolutely nothing wrong with them? Thanks.
brokenmachine
This is just the first one I thought of, not the greatest example but should serve to demonstrate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600442

>And then when people will inevitably start wanting better home security (I'm thinking armored doors and such, not hackable "smart" locks) as a consequence of this, the government will start whining about not being able to break into people's homes as easily when they look for someone.

It's not aggressive or rude, and it does add something to the discussion (some other possible consequences of the things being discussed).

No reason IMO for that comment to be dead.

I'll try to add more as I see them.

edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20599625

>My federal tax bill is $50k per year. That means I'm spending $50k/year for my government to murder people, and spy on me, in my name. How sociopathic is that? Our money is being used to oppress is, and most people are just like "wow! neat-o tech!"

edit2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20615725

>Where does using an ally's spy agency to circumvent being unable to target US Citizens fall on that list?

edit3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583625

>1. Expose the Government. 2. Run from the Government. 3. Profit.

I thought that one was funny.

edit4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542119

>If it means free video sharing (YouTube), photo hosting and messaging (Facebook), and career network (LinkedIn), yes, I'll gladly pay the small probability I'm collateral damage of a spy game.

I personally disagree with this opinion, but I don't see why it should be a dead comment. They are just saying that they are willing to accept the risks in exchange for the convenience. Not a popular position on hn, but in truth going by the success of companies that sell our data, this must actually be the majority opinion of our population.

All of the memorable unfairly dead comments to me are ones that some people may disagree with, but do seem to add something to the discussion. Looks to me like [dead] is being used to disagree.

allenbrunson
you mentioned this as an example non-offensive comment that is nonetheless dead:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600442

the reason it is dead is because the person who made it recently got banned for bad behavior.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20582828

i'm not going to go through all of your examples, but this should hopefully be enough of a nudge to indicate that you have to look at the bigger picture.

brokenmachine
Odd that previously-ok comments go dead when the poster is subsequently banned. I wouldn't have expected that to happen.
allenbrunson
no, that didn't happen here. the user got banned first. the comment you noticed came after that.

every comment that user makes after getting banned starts out dead, but can be vouched back to life, if somebody thinks it is worthy.

dang
> they're dead so you can't upvote to help resurrect them

That's why we added the vouching feature. If there's a comment that's [dead] that shouldn't be, you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp and then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. When enough users vouch for a comment, it is restored to visibility. (There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.)

Fjolsvith
> People are hesitant to post controversial opinions no matter how well written because the consequences

I post controversial opinions quite a bit and get downvoted regularly. However, my well-liked comments and posts generally cause my karma to increase over time despite this.

non-entity
> I think downvotes are fundamentally broken.

How do they even work? I see posts get downvoted, but no downvote button.

Jemaclus
You have to have a certain amount of karma before you can downvote.
autisticmind
If karma is a prinicple, then only the one person know why its reciveig bad karma. And when its given from a system, admins, users or an AI, then its worthless. Only makes me think, who the f. you are, to judging (my) other peopels thoughts, words, meaning or intentions, life. Better go 5 stars system wit 1-2 Extra points. helpful or not, funny and bad behaveiour, or maybe toxic, whatever. Just read about a better definition, so wich sort of karma this system think its used? ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma
nullwasamistake
I like upvotes of course, and flagging is fine. IMO downvotes tend to greatly increase the echo chamber effect and should either be removed or less weighted.

The least controversial comments usually bubble to the top, even when they're not the most informative or constructive, due to downvotes.

Controversial but otherwise fine comments should not be punished by downvotes if they don't violate site policy (flagging). IMO a site that promotes good discussion shouldn't allow users to tank comments they don't agree with

SkyPuncher
I think HN has one of the better systems. The waiting period means you kind of have to learn the norma before you can apply them.

Sometimes people can using voting for the wrong purpose. In general, it seems to work well.

karmakaze
I don't think the karma system is the important part. Once I had enough karma to post/comment/downvote I've always had more than I ever needed.

I do wonder though if a few users are posting a large volume of stories (even automatically) adding to the general mainstreamness of content. Is there a per user daily post limit? I think there ought to be.

What's important is the rules by which we act. This is of varying consistencies. In particular downvotes shouldn't be used for disagreement or dislike but rather identifying clearly incorrect statements or noncondusive/worthless comments--an opposing view well presented shouldn't be downvoted.

Instead of the karma system, I wish there was an update to the story points. HN now has so many users that unexceptional stories of general interest get far too many points.

I would be great if posts could be tagged (e.g. 36 point 'physics' label) and the reader could vary weights of labels to surface or partially bury some categories.