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Does anyone else feel the slot machine effect here on HN is the karma displayed on the top-right? After a submission or comment, is that number the first thing

Does anyone else feel the slot machine effect here on HN is the karma displayed on the top-right? After a submission or comment, is that number the first thing you check when you come back to the site?

6stringmerc 10y ago
Often, yep. Sometimes watching it go down is quite a trip too. It's something an article I came across used as a conclusion while looking into how commenting communities can become friendly, turn into cliques, and then into "Join the Consensus or Die" cesspools: >Numerous comment sections and message boards and forums probably have ups and downs between Community, Clique, and Cesspool outside of this example — I know I’ve seen it on Ars Technica as well. It looks to me like a general extension of human social habits, like an evolutionary necessity where feeling part of a group is comforting. Experience makes me believe getting upvote currency is a pathway to the pleasure center of the brain. https://medium.com/@LongTimeLurker1stTimePoster/the-av-club-comment-section-community-clique-or-cesspool-f9c2e3295786#.ohili7t1w https://medium.com/@LongTimeLurker1stTimePoster/the-av-club-...
- bikamonki 10y ago
  Yes, the "unlike-button" is the means to police the crowd and just have everyone behave on a consensual manner. Interesting enough, it only works on anonymous crowds b/c on social networks where you actually know the person, a downvote can actually have real-live consequences.
  - philovivero 10y ago
    Reddit almost stumbled upon the golden formula. They have a feature that shows a comment is "controversial" in that it's being up- and down-voted a lot. Those comments should be featured top and center.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Only looking for a change - which means somebody may have replied, and I'll want to be polite and check that out. I don't remember anything but the last 2 digits short-term.
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  Same here with the exception of arbitrary milestones I try to reach out of geeky habits like 42, 69, 1337, etc.
- Mendenhall 10y ago
  Pretty much this, I find some of the best internet conversations can be had on this website and there are very intelligent people here so I check a few times to see if someone responded more than for karma. I don't think my ideas fit into the mainstream too often so the karma doesn't do much for me lol I also drop accounts and start new ones.
tdaltonc 10y ago
So based on what this author is saying, what is a more ethical design pattern for karma? or is there no ethical karma design pattern?
- bikamonki 10y ago
  Hard to tell, my first guess is that hiding the karma points will help. Perhaps replacing it with a comment reply alert.
- curun1r 10y ago
  What Slashdot did comes to mind...replacing the actual number with an enumerated set of descriptions. It was fairly easy to get to the top classification of 'Excellent', so once you achieved that, there was no reason to check it. It also cut down on the 'karma whoring' that led them to make the change in the first place, so it was a positive in multiple ways.
dharma1 10y ago
Dopamine is a hell of a drug
itsfunny 10y ago
I've always just created a new account for any comment I make here. In the beginning this was simple privacy consciousness. Paranoia, if you like. I just didn't want a long-lived trail of comments, however apparently benign, to be trivially associated with my actual persona. As the years went by, though, I found that the lack of score consciousness was itself a noticeable relief of cognitive load from my earlier status-conscious state. The actual feeling was similar to when I desynced my work email account from my smartphone and disabled all but SMS and incoming call notifications.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  I used to do that, for similar reasons, but stopped and stuck with the random account I happened to be using at the time. The reason? Nothing more than HN has the least solvable captchas going and I was tired of a dozen attempts every time I create a new one. I still think of it as a throwaway though, so don't care about the karma or pay heed to it. Ironically the comments I expect to go heavily negative often attract the highest positive response.
ljk 10y ago
almost every "social news" site is guilty of this. reddit even has two types of imaginary internet points: link and comment karma. reddit also has endless scrolling, a bar that shows daily "reddit gold" goals, and oranged envelope to see unread messages(slot machine)
orbitur 10y ago
I don't make submissions, only comments, but I like that no one else comment score is displayed for me, and I only feel the need to check my own comments page to see if anyone's replied to me. On reddit I'm much more likely to check how my comments are doing.
petercooper 10y ago
Nope. However, I used to be addicted to /leaders when it was in the header (and made efforts to post and comment here every day) but points mean absolutely zero to me unless they place me in a ranking compared to someone else's so I don't care much now.
hypertexthero 10y ago
https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental-2/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental... > If I have learned anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.
- zymhan 10y ago
  Coming from one of the founders of Stack Exchange, no less. On Reddit, HN, and SE, I'm always checking to see if I have any more points and any replies first.
- zatkin 10y ago
  Or, conversely, they'll do whatever they can to make it go down. I'm guilty of buying a small ICQ number.
userhacker 10y ago
I will add to the comment I posted on the articles website and incoming shameless plug. I am usually logged out when I read HN so the karma thing is not that big of a deal but I tend to open multiple articles in new tabs, problem is I feel like I missed out if I don’t finish reading them that’s why I designed a reading time estimator as a chrome extension. I think if you put the true cost upfront and the user knows how much of their time it will take they will be hesitant to start reading the article. Its open-Source and you can contribute here https://github.com/usergit/read-time https://github.com/usergit/read-time and the extension link https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-time/nccohhimobidpghgpnejnbkpoichbbml https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-time/nccohhim...
greggman 10y ago
I have wished for a way to turn that number off. (yes, I could make an extension to hide it I guess)
- arh68 10y ago
  You could set your topcolor to #222222.

6stringmerc 10y ago

Often, yep. Sometimes watching it go down is quite a trip too. It's something an article I came across used as a conclusion while looking into how commenting communities can become friendly, turn into cliques, and then into "Join the Consensus or Die" cesspools: >Numerous comment sections and message boards and forums probably have ups and downs between Community, Clique, and Cesspool outside of this example — I know I’ve seen it on Ars Technica as well. It looks to me like a general extension of human social habits, like an evolutionary necessity where feeling part of a group is comforting. Experience makes me believe getting upvote currency is a pathway to the pleasure center of the brain. https://medium.com/@LongTimeLurker1stTimePoster/the-av-club-comment-section-community-clique-or-cesspool-f9c2e3295786#.ohili7t1w https://medium.com/@LongTimeLurker1stTimePoster/the-av-club-...

bikamonki 10y ago
Yes, the "unlike-button" is the means to police the crowd and just have everyone behave on a consensual manner. Interesting enough, it only works on anonymous crowds b/c on social networks where you actually know the person, a downvote can actually have real-live consequences.
- philovivero 10y ago
  Reddit almost stumbled upon the golden formula. They have a feature that shows a comment is "controversial" in that it's being up- and down-voted a lot. Those comments should be featured top and center.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Only looking for a change - which means somebody may have replied, and I'll want to be polite and check that out. I don't remember anything but the last 2 digits short-term.

Raphmedia 10y ago
Same here with the exception of arbitrary milestones I try to reach out of geeky habits like 42, 69, 1337, etc.
Mendenhall 10y ago
Pretty much this, I find some of the best internet conversations can be had on this website and there are very intelligent people here so I check a few times to see if someone responded more than for karma. I don't think my ideas fit into the mainstream too often so the karma doesn't do much for me lol I also drop accounts and start new ones.

tdaltonc 10y ago

So based on what this author is saying, what is a more ethical design pattern for karma? or is there no ethical karma design pattern?

bikamonki 10y ago
Hard to tell, my first guess is that hiding the karma points will help. Perhaps replacing it with a comment reply alert.
curun1r 10y ago
What Slashdot did comes to mind...replacing the actual number with an enumerated set of descriptions. It was fairly easy to get to the top classification of 'Excellent', so once you achieved that, there was no reason to check it. It also cut down on the 'karma whoring' that led them to make the change in the first place, so it was a positive in multiple ways.

dharma1 10y ago

Dopamine is a hell of a drug

itsfunny 10y ago

I've always just created a new account for any comment I make here. In the beginning this was simple privacy consciousness. Paranoia, if you like. I just didn't want a long-lived trail of comments, however apparently benign, to be trivially associated with my actual persona. As the years went by, though, I found that the lack of score consciousness was itself a noticeable relief of cognitive load from my earlier status-conscious state. The actual feeling was similar to when I desynced my work email account from my smartphone and disabled all but SMS and incoming call notifications.

anexprogrammer 10y ago
I used to do that, for similar reasons, but stopped and stuck with the random account I happened to be using at the time. The reason? Nothing more than HN has the least solvable captchas going and I was tired of a dozen attempts every time I create a new one. I still think of it as a throwaway though, so don't care about the karma or pay heed to it. Ironically the comments I expect to go heavily negative often attract the highest positive response.

ljk 10y ago

almost every "social news" site is guilty of this. reddit even has two types of imaginary internet points: link and comment karma. reddit also has endless scrolling, a bar that shows daily "reddit gold" goals, and oranged envelope to see unread messages(slot machine)

orbitur 10y ago

I don't make submissions, only comments, but I like that no one else comment score is displayed for me, and I only feel the need to check my own comments page to see if anyone's replied to me. On reddit I'm much more likely to check how my comments are doing.

petercooper 10y ago

Nope. However, I used to be addicted to /leaders when it was in the header (and made efforts to post and comment here every day) but points mean absolutely zero to me unless they place me in a ranking compared to someone else's so I don't care much now.

hypertexthero 10y ago

https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental-2/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental... > If I have learned anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.

zymhan 10y ago
Coming from one of the founders of Stack Exchange, no less. On Reddit, HN, and SE, I'm always checking to see if I have any more points and any replies first.
zatkin 10y ago
Or, conversely, they'll do whatever they can to make it go down. I'm guilty of buying a small ICQ number.

userhacker 10y ago

I will add to the comment I posted on the articles website and incoming shameless plug. I am usually logged out when I read HN so the karma thing is not that big of a deal but I tend to open multiple articles in new tabs, problem is I feel like I missed out if I don’t finish reading them that’s why I designed a reading time estimator as a chrome extension. I think if you put the true cost upfront and the user knows how much of their time it will take they will be hesitant to start reading the article. Its open-Source and you can contribute here https://github.com/usergit/read-time https://github.com/usergit/read-time and the extension link https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-time/nccohhimobidpghgpnejnbkpoichbbml https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-time/nccohhim...

greggman 10y ago

I have wished for a way to turn that number off. (yes, I could make an extension to hide it I guess)

arh68 10y ago
You could set your topcolor to #222222.