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To be honest I hadn't noticed a problem with too many smart-ass remarks before the change. Everyone makes poor decisions from time to time and punishing them m
by philk 16y ago
To be honest I hadn't noticed a problem with too many smart-ass remarks before the change. Everyone makes poor decisions from time to time and punishing them more harshly seems unnecessary.
- jrockway 16y ago"punish"? As far as I know, you can't cash in karma for money or women. So I am not sure what you lose when you get downvoted to minus a billion.
- TeHCrAzY 16y agoThe punishment is the removal of your voice from the conversation. Everyone wants to be heard :)
- philk 16y agoI think you're being deliberately obtuse here. If you give people a numerical rating most will feel compelled to improve their standing. Losing karma is negative feedback (hence punishment). It doesn't matter that your HN karma score isn't going to get you laid[1], people generally care about anything they're scored on. [1] If it did edw519 would probably be dead from exhaustion or at least severely chafed.
- thaumaturgy 16y agoJust so long as you understand that it doesn't work this way for everyone. I hate the notion of karma used by sites like HN and Reddit. It turns the content of the site into a popularity contest, specifically because the motivation you're talking about encourages people to do things that have crowd appeal. Conversely, when an active, respected community member -- like jrockway for example -- says something offbeat, controversial, or just different from the prevailing opinion of the audience, and then gets "punished" for it by this collective reduction of a totally worthless number ... to me, all that does is reflect badly on the community. To be honest, I have a pretty low opinion of a lot of the HN community, and the karma system contributes to that.
- jules 16y agoI agree. There is much less interesting discussion here than on sites without karma. The groupthink on HN is even worse than on reddit.
- swombat 16y agoI'm not sure how you can make this statement with a straight face. Name another site with tens of thousands of active users having this level of discussion without karma. (the fact that you're not being downvoted for making such an egregiously incorrect statement is proof if it was needed that the groupthink is not so bad, btw)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jules 16y agoTens of thousands of users I don't know, but Lambda the Ultimate for example. Discussion on blog posts also generally has less groupthink. Voting was intended as upvote means good comment and downvote means bad comment, but people use it as upvote means "I agree" and downvote means "I disagree". Not everyone of course, but a lot of people do. This problem is less severe on hacker news than on reddit, but on reddit more people keep posting regardless of downvotes whereas here they are banned from the site.
- philwelch 16y agoLtU has a decent community because it covers relatively esoteric stuff, and excludes a general audience by design. HN, on its worst days, is a glorified comments section for tech industry blogs.
- coderdude 16y agoI think you know what you gain from having high karma. If you didn't, I doubt you would have felt compelled to earn your ~18,000 karma over the past 3 years.
- thunk 16y agoHe could be arguing in his spare time.
- coderdude 16y agoI'm not sure if I understand what you're getting at. Are you insinuating that he has a lot of spare time, or that I do, or what?
- thaumaturgy 16y ago...I don't know what's gained from having high karma (seriously). Could you explain that? I dunno that you could say that someone has "earned" something that's primarily the result of their spending some spare time in a community and usually behaving in a way that the community likes.
- coderdude 16y ago>>...I don't know what's gained from having high karma (seriously). Could you explain that. On this site you gain preference by the ranking algorithm, for one thing. Your comments and votes hold more weight. Outside of that, many people believe the karma makes the man and not the other way around. It can be an instant way to determine whether someone making a statement is qualified to make that statement. Of course that isn't how it should be, but that is how the human brain works until you've trained it otherwise. I've seen people with 10k karma make an ass of themselves and people with 30 karma divulge great insight, but the image is still there. I would say on Hacker News you do more or less earn your karma. Since this community doesn't take too kindly to smart ass comments you are forced to conform to a higher standard than you find on other communities that give their users karma. It's not perfect, but I do believe if you have high karma you have earned it (on Hacker News).
- mahmud 16y agoI know you're on a comedic roll, but "women" are not objects to be earned, owned and traded as prizes. Please mind your language.
- araneae 16y agoWell, not in some societies anyway.
- ellyagg 16y agoWhether your parent's comment constitutes inappropriate objectification of women or instead your comment constitutes an insufficient sense of humor, that debate could fill volumes. Now is not the time for that. Please stop moralizing.
- swombat 16y agoIf you're too sensitive to take a joke, get the fuck out of my internet.