HN Explorer

Hacker news. Great news site but what purpose does karma serve?

8 points by everyone ↗ HN
I've only been checking HN for the past few months. In fact I only started coding last March! I love this site. It has a high volume of interesting links every day. Also the comments are often worth reading with a healthy contrarian/pragmatist streak which is a pretty amazing achievement on the internet. I made an account so I could join in the conversation, but then I noticed this number in the top right which it turns out is my karma This kind of thing makes sense in, say, stack overflow where the quality of peoples technical answers is important but on a news site? I like a healthy debate and I'm not shy about expressing myself bluntly. I've noticed on some of my comments they get downvoted and then upvoted multiple times. It seems all the karma is really used for is as a pissing contest between people who agree or disagree. Seeing my karma move up and down is just annoying and distracting to me. It doesnt seem to serve any vital purpose so I would just get rid of it, however a good alternative would be to have an option on your account to just not display any of that info so it does not bother you. I'd be happy with that.

7 comments

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sbarre
At a bare minimum it encourages submissions?

I know that might sound trite, and it's obviously not the only factor, but I bet if karma went away, you would see a measurable decline in submissions over time.

brudgers
Karma encourages better discussions. Myself, I treat it as a tool for becoming a better writer. If karma moving up and down is distracting, figure out how to make it move in one direction...and not the easy one. Otherwise it is best ignored.
samwillis
The main issue with karma is that people sometimes down vote to show disagreement. That's is not what down voting is for, the idea of votes on comments is to rank them by how much they contribute to the discussion. How interesting they are. Unfortunately there is little that can be done to change this other than education, making it clear what a vote is supposed to mean.

If you see your karma going down its supposed to be an indication that you are not contributing in a positive manner not that people disagree with your point of view.

We almost need votes on votes to indicate if the vote is constructive or destructive, although that's quite meta. (in all seriousness though there is probably a statistical analysis that can spot the different types of vote)

brudgers
Downvotes exist to curb destructive behavior.

Sometimes the destructive behavior is actual and embodied in the comment being downvoted.

Sometimes the destructive behavior is potential and in the person down voting.

I've downvoted bad comments. I've downvoted comments instead of arguing with them. I've downvoted comments because I was feeling ill-will toward the ideas it expressed, and I've even downvoted comments because I didn't hold good-will toward the poster.

In each of these cases, I had more destructive alternatives to the down vote. Was it fair? Well when a person has been around long enough, the recognize that these things even themselves out over time.

BTW, a community in which everyone votes in assent and descent according to some set of rules, isn't really voting.

running_foo
I think downvoters should be public, and also require a short contextual explanation for their downvote (< 100 chars; separate metadata from a comment).

This would help curb abusive down-voting. Too many people downvote whimsically simply because they disagree.

running_foo
The downvote to my comment is case-in-point. Somebody disagreed with what I was saying and downvoted me. I broke no HN policies and my comment was on topic. If they were required to enter a reason as to why they downvoted me, and their name made public, it's highly unlikely they would have downvoted me just because they disagreed.
lesslaw
You rack up karma so you can downvote.

You can get 100s of karma and then get banned for one post that gets blasted for going against the hive mind. (happened to me 3 times).