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Please no! HN should be about the content, not the people. Badges don't contribute to the community, rather they enforce ad hominem biases.
by m0th87 16y ago
Please no! HN should be about the content, not the people. Badges don't contribute to the community, rather they enforce ad hominem biases.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- patrickk 16y agoI was just thinking the same thing. Keeping the design minimalist and 'blingless' keeps HN from suffering a MySpace-like decline. People here are attracted to the content, not the eye candy (there is none). I recall a game developer saying that badges for achievement (Xbox Live! etc) are a sign that games are becoming less imaginative and less fun, and sticking badges in there is a way of getting the users to keep playing. Badge for reaching 100% completion in GTA 4? Screw that. My time is too precious.
- aspiringsensei 16y ago>Keeping the design minimalist and 'blingless' I read that as "bing-less" which might also be a wise design choice.
- sesqu 16y agoOver the past few years, I've tentatively decided to not play any game that has achievements. I used to scour regular games thoroughly, but have found that games with achievements tend to become endless grinding slogs for no satisfying reward. It's hard to quit, though.
- patrickk 16y agoYeah, like searching for all the 'flying rats' (pigeons) in GTA and shooting them. Utterly pointless. For the life of me I don't know how people do endless, repetitive bullshit on World of Warcraft either - I keep away from those that do. Seems like an utter waste of time, and I immediately think of the South Park episode 'World of Warcrack'.
- sesqu 16y agoGreat, I was just looking for something to watch. Probably this (I get a redirect, so can't verify): Season 10 Episode 8 "Make Love, Not Warcraft". http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103797/ http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103797/
- patrickk 16y agoYou will never look at WoW players again, if you have never seen it before!
- elblanco 16y agoI think that the basic design of HN is also good for community selection -- people who are more interested in good content than the wrapping.
- jgrahamc 16y agoWho remembers the golden usernames debacle? Let's not go there again.
- rick_2047 16y agoOh! Old and intelligent one, will you please educate us innocent and unintelligent ones over the issue of the golden usernames debacle?
- jgrahamc 16y agoPeople over a certain karma level (I've forgotten how much, but I was one of them) had their username colored differently (gold IIRC) in the comment threads. That meant that comments by high karma people stood out. This made it look like their comments were more important. The community here rebelled (including me) because there was a feeling that high karma and something interesting to say were not necessarily correlated. http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22orange+name%22+site:ycombinator.com http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468239 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468239
- amalcon 16y agoI've never managed to understand why everyone's buying into this "badge" concept so heavily. They're a fairly reasonable game mechanic (though I think they're overused even there), and game mechanics can be effective motivators, but they really only motivate people to "win". Do we really want people trying to "win" HN?
- danielford 16y agoYou've just earned your Voice of Reason badge.