6 ms·

Hiding HN Karma

20 points by andrewcooke 17y ago

chaosmachine 17y ago
PG actually hid comment karma for a while, but it was quickly restored. It's just a very useful shortcut for scanning comment threads.
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  aren't threads already sorted by karma (amongst other factors)? but anyway, i'm not saying karma is not useful - this just makes the way i use the site less frustrating for me. i threw it out there in case others felt the same way, is all.
  - chaosmachine 17y ago
    The problem with that was threads with a 1 karma parent and a 100 karma reply end up at the bottom. With karma displayed, it's easier to spot important posts.
    - sidmitra 17y ago
      Maybe one can use colour based coding depending of the karma percentile? So something at the top 10% percentile would have small green icon next to it. The colour would be a gradient till it reaches the bottom 10%, where it would show red. This would make it even easier to scan, to look at top comments just search for green..... just a thought.
      - chaosmachine 17y ago
        Actually, that was tried, too. There was an orange dot that showed up for comments with over 15 karma.
  - bendtheblock 17y ago
    The sort value is a function of karma and age (so newer comments are higher up to start with).
Roridge 17y ago
Why do you find it "frustrating"?
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  well, you can check my recent comments, but one way of looking at is that it's a "judgement" that doesn't fit with my own idea of what is good and bad. this is a simple way to avoid having to consciously reconcile the difference.
  - Roridge 17y ago
    So you are frustrated because you feel it gets misused. Or that you don't enjoy having your opinions rated? (I'm not trying to be factious, I'm genuinely interested) I saw one of the things you listed in previous comments is you don't get up voted when you get closest to the correct answer. Is it that important?
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      i think i explained it elsewhere as feeling like a judgement that's not consistent with my own standards. so both of the examples you give (misuse and rating) are part of that. it's a little like having a label stamped everywhere saying "good" and "bad" that you constantly have to ignore, because it's not your set of values. obviously the same kind of thing happens in real life, but there conversation is much more fluid, so these signs are transient and negotiable. also, there's not a finite number of rooms in which you can chat to other people - it's easier to adapt the context. someone else has said how they managed to get over this in the shower. good for them. i got over it by writing a greasemonkey script. generally i find writing a script to be easier than changing my (largely subconscious) cognitive processes, but ymmv.
      - Roridge 17y ago
        I am intrigued that it means so much to people that their opinions are accepted by everyone. Perhaps I don't understand completely, but when you wrote that you "got over it" that surprised me as I couldn't imagine there really is anything to get over. I appreciate your reply though, I am always interested to understand peoples frustrations with such things. Whether it is with my own applications or other peoples.
BigZaphod 17y ago
I have occasionally been bothered by the scores of my own comments and the comments of others as they relate to mine. I would feel attacked or spited or somehow otherwise wronged if I saw my own witty scribbling voted down while someone else's similarly witty (and, might I add, less-awesome-because-I-didn't-write-it) comment voted up or untainted by a down vote. This bothered me and sometimes I'd get disappointed in the community's apparent unwillingness to appreciate my obvious total superiority in all matters of opinion. Sometimes I'd stop commenting for awhile - after all, they don't deserve my great and valuable insights! Eventually, probably in the shower, I began to realize that I was an idiot. It's stupid to get bent out of shape when people don't agree with your every word or understand your every joke. After reading over some of my lower rated comments, it also became clear that most of the time they actually sucked. :) I decided to make a conscious effort to watch myself for that kind of thinking and to curb it before it dominated my mood the rest of the day. It has influenced me deeply in ways that extend far beyond this site. I'm now a chang(ed/ing) man. I'd be lying if the occasional down vote didn't still irritate me now and then, but I've successfully trained myself to use the comment scores as a reminder that we're not all the same and that it is a valuable and important thing to internalize. I try to learn from it. If you want to hide the scores - more power to you. It's no skin off my back and it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the site in the least. You don't have to feel guilty about doing it. I would just ask that you consider putting some real time into trying to figure out why the scores bother you and decide, once a reason is identified, if it's something worth changing your mind over or not. Perhaps it isn't. No big deal. We all see the world slightly differently.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  I'd be lying if the occasional down vote didn't still irritate me now and then, but I've successfully trained myself to use the comment scores as a reminder that we're not all the same and that it is a valuable and important thing to internalize. I try to learn from it. Upvoted to show agreement with this idea that comment scores can teach each commenter about how the commenter fits into a diverse community. Not necessarily every true comment will be upvoted for helpfulness, and not necessarily every funny comment will amuse other participants, but every comment obtains a score, and the person posting comments can learn in the aggregate from each and every score. Ups and downs come in life, and so upvotes and downvotes are attached to comments. But every human being has opportunity to learn every day.
jmillikin 17y ago
Along the same lines, I realized that sometimes I was giving undue weight to comments depending on the author. This was also solved with Greasemonkey -- if anybody's interested, the script is at < http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/67722 http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/67722 >.
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  interesting idea. on the implementation: you might be interested in looking at the source for my code. i use a library called jquery and it allows for most things to be doing in "one line". on the flip side there's a lot of boilerplate and it may make things run slower (i have no comparison - this is the first time i've written one of these).
  - jmillikin 17y ago
    I prefer to avoid jQuery for Greasemonkey, because the per-page performance hit of inserting it into the DOM / waiting to load from Google / running through various abstraction layers is IMO not worth reducing a 20-line script to 10 lines.
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      ok, thanks - i was curious about that (i suspect there must be some caching, that ameliorates the cost of loading if you use a site regularly, but i have no idea about the rest).
eplanit 17y ago
I've come to find the whole 'karma' thing the most absurd aspect of this site. I give not a s#&t about my 'score' anymore. A high score can indicate someone who actually submits useful entries....but just as often (or more) it's those who are "running with the herd". The most agreeable amongst the clique. It's group-think, largely. Personally, carrying on a debate with people via keyboard is very slow and tedious. Carrying on debates with anonymous folks along with the so-called Karma system (I think it's more of an Applause Meter) tends to sway argument based on popularity and acceptance. The 'karma' system generally leads to: "Oh, you just insulted my iPad...minus 1 for you!", or "How dare you consider JSON to be stupid...minus 1". Toss the "points". Besides, what prize am I working towards? I'll troll here for good articles, but I've lost any interest in being "part of the community" (a.k.a. schoolyard).
- shadowsun7 17y ago
  You forget that it's a really good filter for new users. Over time, as your karma gets higher, I believe you'll think about it less - but for the new user who's likely to be rude and probably doesn't yet get the community, karma is a rather useful tool. I can attest to that - I'm a new poster; and I'm still getting the feel for the community here. Karma helps bring me up to speed far quicker than other existing forum systems.
  - eplanit 17y ago
    Yes, the tool of group-think. "Rude" comes to mean disagreeing too often. Being critical is often deemed as "disagreeing". The same holds for "doesn't yet 'get' the community". All these loaded terms: get, community. It's a great place to find references to good articles. I find participating in discussions, over time, a huge time drain and stress producer. It's anonymous debate with the masses (smart as many of them are), with an applause meter running the whole time.
    - shadowsun7 17y ago
      ...with an applause meter running the whole time Good point. That said, at a crude level Karma works for telling the user what kinds of comments are expected. I am tempted, for instance, to make funny one-liners on some HN topics. Karma makes me rethink that decision, as in: does it contribute to the discussion? The posters here seem to reward intelligent analysis, so maybe a one-liner isn't a smart move ... and so on so forth.
jrockway 17y ago
I like HN karma. Back when HN was new and there weren't many people around, it was a good incentive to stick around and contribute. Now that "leaders" is gone (although only hidden), I'm not sure there is that much incentive to contribute. The community is still small enough, however, that it's easy enough to identify the regulars, so maybe karma is not that important. If there was one thing I would change, it would be how karma is doled out for submissions. It seems unfair that if someone submits my blog that I don't get any points for the post. But since I am usually first to submit my own stuff, I guess I don't really care :)
tokenadult 17y ago
What do you think of this proposal by pg http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589 from not quite three months ago?
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  personally, i like the idea - it removes some of the semantic ambiguity about what voting means. something similar has helped on metafilter, for example (which already has less emphasis on votes).
petercooper 17y ago
Note that you can do this stuff in Safari too using Greasekit: http://8-p.info/greasekit/ http://8-p.info/greasekit/

20 points by andrewcooke 17y ago

PG actually hid comment karma for a while, but it was quickly restored. It's just a very useful shortcut for scanning comment threads.

andrewcooke 17y ago
aren't threads already sorted by karma (amongst other factors)? but anyway, i'm not saying karma is not useful - this just makes the way i use the site less frustrating for me. i threw it out there in case others felt the same way, is all.
- chaosmachine 17y ago
  The problem with that was threads with a 1 karma parent and a 100 karma reply end up at the bottom. With karma displayed, it's easier to spot important posts.
  - sidmitra 17y ago
    Maybe one can use colour based coding depending of the karma percentile? So something at the top 10% percentile would have small green icon next to it. The colour would be a gradient till it reaches the bottom 10%, where it would show red. This would make it even easier to scan, to look at top comments just search for green..... just a thought.
    - chaosmachine 17y ago
      Actually, that was tried, too. There was an orange dot that showed up for comments with over 15 karma.
- bendtheblock 17y ago
  The sort value is a function of karma and age (so newer comments are higher up to start with).

Roridge 17y ago

Why do you find it "frustrating"?

andrewcooke 17y ago
well, you can check my recent comments, but one way of looking at is that it's a "judgement" that doesn't fit with my own idea of what is good and bad. this is a simple way to avoid having to consciously reconcile the difference.
- Roridge 17y ago
  So you are frustrated because you feel it gets misused. Or that you don't enjoy having your opinions rated? (I'm not trying to be factious, I'm genuinely interested) I saw one of the things you listed in previous comments is you don't get up voted when you get closest to the correct answer. Is it that important?
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    i think i explained it elsewhere as feeling like a judgement that's not consistent with my own standards. so both of the examples you give (misuse and rating) are part of that. it's a little like having a label stamped everywhere saying "good" and "bad" that you constantly have to ignore, because it's not your set of values. obviously the same kind of thing happens in real life, but there conversation is much more fluid, so these signs are transient and negotiable. also, there's not a finite number of rooms in which you can chat to other people - it's easier to adapt the context. someone else has said how they managed to get over this in the shower. good for them. i got over it by writing a greasemonkey script. generally i find writing a script to be easier than changing my (largely subconscious) cognitive processes, but ymmv.
    - Roridge 17y ago
      I am intrigued that it means so much to people that their opinions are accepted by everyone. Perhaps I don't understand completely, but when you wrote that you "got over it" that surprised me as I couldn't imagine there really is anything to get over. I appreciate your reply though, I am always interested to understand peoples frustrations with such things. Whether it is with my own applications or other peoples.

BigZaphod 17y ago

I have occasionally been bothered by the scores of my own comments and the comments of others as they relate to mine. I would feel attacked or spited or somehow otherwise wronged if I saw my own witty scribbling voted down while someone else's similarly witty (and, might I add, less-awesome-because-I-didn't-write-it) comment voted up or untainted by a down vote. This bothered me and sometimes I'd get disappointed in the community's apparent unwillingness to appreciate my obvious total superiority in all matters of opinion. Sometimes I'd stop commenting for awhile - after all, they don't deserve my great and valuable insights! Eventually, probably in the shower, I began to realize that I was an idiot. It's stupid to get bent out of shape when people don't agree with your every word or understand your every joke. After reading over some of my lower rated comments, it also became clear that most of the time they actually sucked. :) I decided to make a conscious effort to watch myself for that kind of thinking and to curb it before it dominated my mood the rest of the day. It has influenced me deeply in ways that extend far beyond this site. I'm now a chang(ed/ing) man. I'd be lying if the occasional down vote didn't still irritate me now and then, but I've successfully trained myself to use the comment scores as a reminder that we're not all the same and that it is a valuable and important thing to internalize. I try to learn from it. If you want to hide the scores - more power to you. It's no skin off my back and it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the site in the least. You don't have to feel guilty about doing it. I would just ask that you consider putting some real time into trying to figure out why the scores bother you and decide, once a reason is identified, if it's something worth changing your mind over or not. Perhaps it isn't. No big deal. We all see the world slightly differently.

tokenadult 17y ago
I'd be lying if the occasional down vote didn't still irritate me now and then, but I've successfully trained myself to use the comment scores as a reminder that we're not all the same and that it is a valuable and important thing to internalize. I try to learn from it. Upvoted to show agreement with this idea that comment scores can teach each commenter about how the commenter fits into a diverse community. Not necessarily every true comment will be upvoted for helpfulness, and not necessarily every funny comment will amuse other participants, but every comment obtains a score, and the person posting comments can learn in the aggregate from each and every score. Ups and downs come in life, and so upvotes and downvotes are attached to comments. But every human being has opportunity to learn every day.

jmillikin 17y ago

Along the same lines, I realized that sometimes I was giving undue weight to comments depending on the author. This was also solved with Greasemonkey -- if anybody's interested, the script is at < http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/67722 http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/67722 >.

andrewcooke 17y ago
interesting idea. on the implementation: you might be interested in looking at the source for my code. i use a library called jquery and it allows for most things to be doing in "one line". on the flip side there's a lot of boilerplate and it may make things run slower (i have no comparison - this is the first time i've written one of these).
- jmillikin 17y ago
  I prefer to avoid jQuery for Greasemonkey, because the per-page performance hit of inserting it into the DOM / waiting to load from Google / running through various abstraction layers is IMO not worth reducing a 20-line script to 10 lines.
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    ok, thanks - i was curious about that (i suspect there must be some caching, that ameliorates the cost of loading if you use a site regularly, but i have no idea about the rest).

eplanit 17y ago

I've come to find the whole 'karma' thing the most absurd aspect of this site. I give not a s#&t about my 'score' anymore. A high score can indicate someone who actually submits useful entries....but just as often (or more) it's those who are "running with the herd". The most agreeable amongst the clique. It's group-think, largely. Personally, carrying on a debate with people via keyboard is very slow and tedious. Carrying on debates with anonymous folks along with the so-called Karma system (I think it's more of an Applause Meter) tends to sway argument based on popularity and acceptance. The 'karma' system generally leads to: "Oh, you just insulted my iPad...minus 1 for you!", or "How dare you consider JSON to be stupid...minus 1". Toss the "points". Besides, what prize am I working towards? I'll troll here for good articles, but I've lost any interest in being "part of the community" (a.k.a. schoolyard).

shadowsun7 17y ago
You forget that it's a really good filter for new users. Over time, as your karma gets higher, I believe you'll think about it less - but for the new user who's likely to be rude and probably doesn't yet get the community, karma is a rather useful tool. I can attest to that - I'm a new poster; and I'm still getting the feel for the community here. Karma helps bring me up to speed far quicker than other existing forum systems.
- eplanit 17y ago
  Yes, the tool of group-think. "Rude" comes to mean disagreeing too often. Being critical is often deemed as "disagreeing". The same holds for "doesn't yet 'get' the community". All these loaded terms: get, community. It's a great place to find references to good articles. I find participating in discussions, over time, a huge time drain and stress producer. It's anonymous debate with the masses (smart as many of them are), with an applause meter running the whole time.
  - shadowsun7 17y ago
    ...with an applause meter running the whole time Good point. That said, at a crude level Karma works for telling the user what kinds of comments are expected. I am tempted, for instance, to make funny one-liners on some HN topics. Karma makes me rethink that decision, as in: does it contribute to the discussion? The posters here seem to reward intelligent analysis, so maybe a one-liner isn't a smart move ... and so on so forth.

jrockway 17y ago

I like HN karma. Back when HN was new and there weren't many people around, it was a good incentive to stick around and contribute. Now that "leaders" is gone (although only hidden), I'm not sure there is that much incentive to contribute. The community is still small enough, however, that it's easy enough to identify the regulars, so maybe karma is not that important. If there was one thing I would change, it would be how karma is doled out for submissions. It seems unfair that if someone submits my blog that I don't get any points for the post. But since I am usually first to submit my own stuff, I guess I don't really care :)

tokenadult 17y ago

What do you think of this proposal by pg http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589 from not quite three months ago?

andrewcooke 17y ago
personally, i like the idea - it removes some of the semantic ambiguity about what voting means. something similar has helped on metafilter, for example (which already has less emphasis on votes).

petercooper 17y ago

Note that you can do this stuff in Safari too using Greasekit: http://8-p.info/greasekit/ http://8-p.info/greasekit/