HN Explorer

Please don't use hnreputation

199 points by pg ↗ HN
A bunch of people have been emailing me asking to have their IP unblocked after using this script

http://github.com/brainkarma/hnreputation/tree/master

which apparently hits the server so hard that it gets their IP ignored.

90 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] thread
jnorthrop
For those that don't know what this is...

"This Greasemonkey script for news.ycombinator.com will display the reputation of a user in the comment header as well as in the links' title tooltip."

DannoHung
This does not strike me as conducive to the purpose of HN.
mjgoins
It's not, and I seem to remember that this exact problem (the technical problem, but also the one you mention) was pointed out when the script was introduced.
henning
It does one HTTP request for each comment in a thread, it looks like.

Kind of irresponsible coding, I think.

javanix
Heh, I think the person who wrote it needs to read more HN.
algorias
Kind of? sounds almost like a DOS attack to me...
randallsquared
Well, that's why the IP is blocked -- it looks like a DoS attack to the server software as well. Are there different terms for intentional DoS attacks, as opposed to incidental ones like this? I have the impression that two separate terms might have made your meaning clearer. :)
billswift
Maliciousness has limits; stupidity has none. Paraphrasing Napoleon
gloob
Are there different terms for intentional DoS attacks, as opposed to incidental ones like this?

Denial Of Service Slip-up? ;)

keyist
Irresponsible usage as well. Those who used the script should really have at least eyeballed the source first.

[EDIT: This is HN. Surely I don't have to explain the pitfalls of downloading a Greasemonkey script and running it in your browser without checking what it does? It's even worse than uneducated users tricked into running malware since you're knowingly installing a script.]

PieSquared
Whoa, what?!
PieSquared
True, I guess, but it seems a bit extreme to say that anyone downloading a Greasemonkey script should be examining the javascript inside it to figure out what it does. That's all I meant by my 'Wait, what' comment. Should've elaborated, then.
jwecker
Looking at the karma there, it seems your explanation is exactly adequate.
yan
If this functionality is desired enough for enough people to use this, why not publish a list of users, updated say, hourly so these scripts can cache the reputations? But then again, don't really see the point in using this.

Also, if reputation's that important, you can just cache the 'leaders' list.

icey
A) Reputation isn't a very good measure of anything as far as I'm concerned.

B) It's trivial to click on someone's name and see what their reputation is if it's important to the person reading / replying.

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nir
The whole idea of "Karma" is silly. It encourages conforming to majority views and rewards people who are talkative rather than insightful - often mutually exclusive groups, since insight is gained by thinking & doing rather than posting comments.

I think HN would do well to drop karma scores altogether, making this script a non-issue to begin with.

brk
While we're on the topic of suggestions that aren't likely to be implemented ;)

I like to see the user name hidden on comments and submissions until after you vote and/or reply. Judge the content on the content alone, not on the author.

comatose_kid
But then people would upvote comments (or worse, decrease s/n by responding) just to find out who authored them.
rincewind
I trust security advice from tptacek or cperciva more than from [name withheld until you vote].

Threads get really confusing when [name withheld until you vote] argues with himself all the time.

nir
That's my point - some people got high karma by posting intelligent comments, but many others just got it by posting a lot and echoing popular views. So, karma score in itself is pretty useless, in my opinion.
johnmw
This is probably getting a tad too complicated but having a number of different 'upvote' icons (ala Slashdot) would be interesting.

You could upvote someone for being funny, informative, insightful, and so on.

If someone has a high karma for being funny in topics related to computer security, you probably wouldn't trust their security advice so much.

brk
Your point about valuing an opinion more highly from a person who is known to be accurate on a subject is valid. In the arguments case, I think it's easy enough to follow an A/B conversation, even without names.

In the first case though, it still seems that the majority of comments here are not so specialized as to require the posters identity to determine if the content is accurate enough or not. Ideally, if you could not judge the accuracy of the comment on your own you would leave it alone. There would be enough others that could judge it impartially that the comment itself would get voted up or down appropriately.

apotheon
There's still the matter of confusion when [name withheld] is responding to [name withheld], though -- and for that reason alone, I'm afraid I have to disagree with your suggestion.

It's also the case that sometimes I'm not entirely sure what someone's trying to say unless and until I look at it within the context of his or her earlier comments in the same discussion. If I can't match someone's comment with the context of previous comments, I sometimes can't tell if they're being sarcastic, accidentally saying "can" instead of "can't", and so on.

I judge by the content of a comment rather than by name, and I agree that's a good way to do it, but I don't think that needs to be enforced by withholding information from us.

pbhj
You could simply name all respondents by their response position in the thread, first is person1 (hope that's not too limiting!):

person1:yay person2:people here like intelligent comments person3:go to digg if you want to yay all the time person1:yay

And have an option to reveal names and/or show them on the mouseover link for personX.

Bleys
You would just need to break out the gensyms to resolve the differentiation issue.
adimit
How about withholding the name still, but offering a way to 'opt-out' from voting. You don't see the name until you either vote up or opt out. After you've withheld your voice, you can't go vote again on that submission/comment.
eru
> you either vote up or opt out

How about voting down?

Novash
You can't vote down until you hit a certain karma threshold.
eru
Yes, I know. I just could not resist making the itemization complete.
[dead] neoclassical
I oppose voting down. It encourages a lynch mob mentality.

What helps instead is an ability to, Slashdot-like, tag posts with warnings: spam, stupid, irrelevant, "humor," etc.

calcnerd256
If users can no longer rely upon their names being displayed, they will come up with alternate ways of identifying themselves. Forced anonymous has worked in some places in the past.
Novash
I don't know why you were downvotted. You do have a point. If we hide the name of the user on the header, they will probably simply post their name on the post itself.
jwr
I don't trust security advice from tptacek. First because we had a discussion and we clearly do not agree as to who can be trusted, but second (and more generally), I don't trust anyone who has enough time to gather lots of karma on HN. Most people have better things to do.
jacquesm
If you are not in a position to evaluate an argument about security you probably shouldn't be following the advice anyway.
xuhu
> Threads get really confusing when [name withheld until you vote] argues with himself all the time.

Randomly generated names, until you vote ?

pjvandehaar
An answer to the second would be a system pointing out people's replies to themselves.
pg
Intriguing idea. Maybe I'll do something like that.
scott_s
Keep in mind that this might have adverse affects on the community. I upvote/downvote sparingly, but after over a year of reading people's comments, I feel like I "know" certain people because I recognize trends in what they say.
sachinag
The issue is that respondents may start addressing their comments to nerf such a change. Instead of:

"You're forgetting something", you may get:

"tdavis, you're forgetting something."

pyre
True, but that person could get appropriately down-voted for that 'work around' if enough people dislike it.
apotheon
What -- so now we aren't allowed to refer to people by name? I think that's a terrible idea, especially when I'm talking to foo about something bar said.
hughprime
I don't think that the upside (creating a marginally fairer karma system) would outweigh the downside (making the whole site a whole lot less readable).
diN0bot
what about this: make up random names for people. these names should be consistent for the entire discussion on this page across page views, but different for a different discussion.

i've never been able to remember who someone is or what they do. the benefit of trusting A more on a security issue because A has proven himself to be a master of security issues...well, that's a tough problem. i'd rather see anonymous names, no karma and a security certificate.

karma is useful to draw n00bs into the system--i found it pretty darn cool when i started out. now i don't care at all. after 200 points they should disappear: now you've earned yourself a real soul.

apotheon
Heh. Maybe, instead of anonymizing names, pg should just ensure that once you pass 200 points your point value is replaced with the word "ensouled". That way, we can still tell who's who, newbies still get drawn in and invested by the karma system, and people with 20,000 karma don't get automatically upvoted by impressionable people just because they have high karma scores.
adrianwaj
Just wondering if you see the same HN as everyone else? Are there tools for power users you'd suggest? Have you ever had a negative karma score placed on a comment?
apotheon
Well . . . the word "Maybe" in pg's comment is the only reason I didn't downvote it.
kirubakaran
Have you ever had a negative karma score placed on a comment?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=190451

( my memory is a gift and a curse ;) )

adrianwaj
How did you find it? Well done.

PG's my hero, but how would you escape the negative sign below for a Google search so it works:

"-9 points by pg" site:news.ycombinator.com

I haven't had much success.

kirubakaran
I searched in searchyc.com for pg blue as I remembered the comment that got down-voted. Also check this out : http://searchyc.com/user/pg?only=comments&sort=by_points... I didn't use this method earlier though.
adrianwaj
Yes, just saw it, thx. How bizarre, for an item about Arc it was very taxing on Paul. Perhaps it just shows how no one really gets it, and why bother explaining if you do: those who know don't tell.
kirubakaran
I think I too voted that comment down, as I felt that it was not addressing the intent/spirit of that person's question, however ill-formed it might be considered to be.

From your comment : Perhaps it just shows how no one really gets it, and why bother explaining if you do: those who know don't tell.

IMHO this is a dangerous attitude to have towards a disagreement, as it can cloud your thinking.

adrianwaj
Quite. It's one half of a Zen proverb: a person cannot be told the truth- they have to realize it internally.
kirubakaran
So if that proverb is a truth, why are you telling it to me? :-) That is just a statement that Zen monks used when they were logically cornered, I guess. I used to use it on my sister when I was a kid: "You won't know. Even if I explain, you can't comprehend." I think I used this to get her to trade her real coins for some "wax coins" that I made.
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skmurphy
My $.02: I find that it's much more useful to know who made the comment (at least in the sense of a handle that allows me to easily read their other comments and submissions) than their karma score or the karma score for the comment. I find the leaderboard the least useful and would rather do away with it than karma for individual comments.
wheels
That would remove some of the utility of the site for me. Some people consistently say smarter things than the mean, so it's more worth my time to read what they write than most of the content on the site. (I subscribe to some comment RSS feeds from searchyc.)

If all domain names were removed from the blogosphere it would enable a more fair distribution of readership, but it wouldn't make for a better reading experience. It would also mean the regulars would have to qualify things more often.

Basically I care more about utility than fairness and I think reputation is a concept with significant utility.

lsc
just my $0.02, but personally I really, really like having my name attached to my comments. In fact, if I could get it to say "Luke S. Crawford" <lsc@prgmr.com> that would be even better. (but I know most people wouldn't like that)

So -1 anything that would obscure my name more than a handle with a link to my profile does.

calambrac
I disagree. There are people on here that I don't want to waste my time reading at all, they're more or less consistent trolls (who knows, maybe I'm one for some people). I may miss out on some accidentally or authentically insightful commentary now and then because I completely skip over comments by certain people, but there's enough insightful commnentary in the universe that I can live with it.

Reputations are important.

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PebblesRox
Hiding names should be optional, like "showdead." Then you can choose for yourself instead of getting stuck with a system you dislike.
sp332
It's really hard to follow threaded conversations without any kind of ID.
jwecker
This was mentioned by someone here a few years ago, but I still think it would be cool to see the karma/posts ratio for people. Just for kicks, not for voting (:

To be perfectly honest I never even notice the names on comments.

OK, not totally true, I notice pg and one or two other people that I know personally. I remember when hacker news started and pg would automatically get pretty much every member upvoting him (hence him not being in the leaders section- no one even comes close I assume).

onreact-com
Imagine this with politicians: Not knowing whether a speech was made by Obama or Cheney would greatly improve trust in politicians ;-)
ilitirit
I'd prefer to see the number of karma points hidden, rather than the user name. The user names don't really interest me that much, and I tend to forget them very quickly.
radu_floricica
Or just hide it and show it on mouse over.

The only problem is that is makes conversations difficult to follow. Who answered this post? The OP? The grandparent? Somebody else? One solution is to display made-up ids, but they have to be easy to recognize. Some help would be if you mouse-over an id to show the name on all the posts of the same user.

javanix
I'm not sure I agree with you. Karma as a measure of personal worth is silly, but as a way of cutting down on trolls it works pretty well. That number at the top of the screen is something that I'd bet the Reddit and TechCrunch commentors would care deeply about, and as such, it keeps them from dumbing down the discussion here too much.

In any case, HN is by far the best self-moderated discussion forum I've ever seen, and I'd be leery of making any major change that might conceivably disrupt that.

thras
I like Karma, because it means that established members don't have to worry too much about how any particular post will be received, and can present unpopular points of view without too much penalty.
bendotc
Why would established members "have to worry too much about how any particular post received" if HN didn't have karma?

You say that karma allows established members to "present unpopular points of view without too much penalty" but how does karma's existence (that is, the total of all up-votes on all comments and features gated by that score) not encourage just the opposite? Also, why should we privilege established members' dissent more than outsiders'? It seems like outsiders might even have a better vantage point.

thras
Good points. But not everyone cares about maximizing karma. For most people, it just happens.

What karma does is allow people to find out that you aren't just a troll even if a particular comment is rated at -10.

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davidw
Footnote: it isn't completely "self-moderated", of course. There are moderators (although pg is the only one that is known) who can [dead] stories at will.
jobeirne
Like any compromise, it offers negative points as well as positive ones. I would argue that very often (at least in this community), posts with large karma are valuable, if not necessarily as valuable as the karma would indicate.

Karma is a mechanism of convenience; that isn't to say it precludes users from browsing and enjoying non-karma'd posts.

svjunkie
Karma isn't necessarily about conforming to majority views because (and I've especially practiced this at HN) it is completely reasonable to upvote a comment you disagree with. Of course, not everyone would agree with Voltaire, but I have seen enough civil disagreement within this community to believe that "Karma" at HN works the way it was supposed to. Moreover, insight is gained by thinking and doing, and those insights are often enriched by discussion with those who bring other perspectives to the table. By "rewarding" people who contribute to productive discussion, we help to encourage the HN community to enrich our existing insights.
scott_s
I don't see HN karma as a reward system, but a way to promote good, civil discussion.
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UpFromTheGut
I think karma can be very informative-- it gives me an idea of what the majority viewpoints are.
billswift
Karma can be more courteous than having to tell someone he's got his head up his butt; just downvote him, if enough people agree he should get the hint.
hc
or, you could man up and say something... isn't the one with his head up his ass precisely the one who needs more than "a hint"?
hughprime
What if the karma system were kept, but people could only see their own karma score and not others'?
zackattack
social shame/reward is a more powerful force than intrinsic motivation to be good/bad
tigerthink
>It encourages conforming to majority views and rewards people who are talkative rather than insightful - often mutually exclusive groups, since insight is gained by thinking & doing rather than posting comments.

Erm, I always upmod comments that I consider insightful. I think the picture is more complicated than you make it out to be.

jacquesm
Karma is a great tool, but mostly behind the scenes. Keep the up/down arrows, lose the points until after a vote has been made, keep the name. That way you get away from the 'group think' mode.
[dead] neoclassical
It's the "ad populum" fallacy in numeric form.
sh1mmer
I think you should read all comment without knowing the person's karama. You'll probably recognise some of our more illustrious users by username but really you should be evaluating each comment on it's merit, not the author's karma.