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What you describe is the h-index ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index ). It is one of the fairest ways of measuring merit
by alextp 16y ago
What you describe is the h-index ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index ). It is one of the fairest ways of measuring merit, but for most social sites it has the problem of being too fair.
If you're maintaining a site like stackoverflow or reddit, you want lots of comments, and it is better to reward lots of marginally interesting comments than a few really insightful ones (since a lot of marginally interesting comments will make people come all the time to check for more and find new things to entertain themselves, keeping them at the site looking at ads, etc).
Maybe HN could display the h index of a user instead of his/her karma.
- ryanelkins 16y agoWhile that might work on a small scale, I think at larger scales it starts to just turn into excessive noise. It also becomes hard to distinguish between "marginally interesting" and "karma whoring". I think long term its much better to encourage the behaviors you want. Besides, you can always lower the threshold for "interesting". The point is to encourage the creation of good content and ignore (as far as rewards go) the creation of bad content. The h-index stuff is interesting, though, and I'll definitely be looking in to it some more.