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I've actually thought that the biggest flaw in HN's interface is that the user's karma is displayed on the home page. I've no doubt it seemed like a good way to

I've actually thought that the biggest flaw in HN's interface is that the user's karma is displayed on the home page. I've no doubt it seemed like a good way to encourage and reinforce contribution, but I fear it's enabling to a subtle sort of addiction. Precisely what that addiction is to is perhaps what's hardest to answer. Is it attention? Validation? Some more abstract notion of amassment and score? I've noticed myself looking up into the corner upon return to the site, and have even consciously avoided that gaze pattern at times. It may even come down to such fundamental questions as the existence of altruism. Just as one can ask "are you doing this for someone else, or just because doing things for others makes you feel good?" one can ask at "are you contributing thoughtfully because you want to participate in the community, or because you want to see your karma go up?" If you want to see your karma increase, is it because you want to participate, or the converse? Can the two be functionally separated?

hammerdr 16y ago
I write very few comments. When I do write a comment, I always do the top-right corner check when I come back. To me, its validation that my opinion was well taken by the community (a community that I respect). I'm going to try to avoid that this time :)
- xenophanes 16y ago
  If you're not getting down voted a reasonable proportion of the time, you're too timid a thinker (or your comments avoid all controversy and stick to technical matters).
  - billswift 16y ago
    Except that on HN, if you are not getting more upvotes than the number of comments you are posting, you can't vote on the comments. That is what the "avg: " on your profile page is for, if it's not 2 or higher your votes don't count.
    - edanm 16y ago
      Didn't know that. And this isn't the first time. Is there somewhere to read up on all the rules of HN? I figured out a few things on my own (like that you have to have 200 rep to downvote), but once in a while I come across something I don't understand (like, it seems that you can't downvote immediate children of your comments?).
      - kmfrk 16y ago
        The features do feel like easter eggs, but I would imagine that pg isn't mentioning them on purpose to preserve the incentive structure on HN and prevent people gaming the system.
      - billswift 16y ago
        I have found out most of this stuff gradually, by reading comments. The best advice I can give you, to maybe speed it up a bit, is to click on "ask" on the orange bar and browse the local posts that discuss HN.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        * like that you have to have 200 rep to downvote* This kind of thing also tends to change. I think I got my downvoting privileges at 50 or so. Like words after a long night of drinking, voting has flowed a lot mre frequently of late. Pg usually modifies the caps to compensate, but they aren't usually announced. I noticed, for example, that /leaders is no longer in the top bar. I think that was a while ago, but just an example of how the site changes.
        vijaydev 16y ago
        The leaders link in the top bar was removed when a separate page was added with the Ask HN questions. Here is pg's announcement: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173801 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173801 In the same discussion, in response to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1174132 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1174132, pg moved the leader link to the Lists page and had the Ask HN on top bar.
  - sesqu 16y ago
    I disagree. If you're not getting downvoted, that could just as easily mean you're not unconvincing. Downvotes are ideally for low-value content. If your viewpoint is contrary to popular opinion, the onus is on you to explain your reasoning persuasively enough to not come off as a simple contrarian. Downvotes are not a reward for thinking independently. They are a penalty for sloppy thinking or overly presumptious output. They are also the only way I can think of for fighting populist, short-circuit comments that troll for upvotes - by encouraging actual argumentation.
    - xenophanes 16y ago
      Ideally, and in practice, are not the same thing here... People downvote things they disagree with, including unconventional views, all the time.
      - sesqu 16y ago
        Right. I attempted to argue that this was because the comment they disagreed with failed to make them stop and think about why disagreement exists, and re-evaluate their position. That is, downvotes are generally a sign of failure. Certainly, some people stop, think, disagree, and downvote. I believe that this is the case when the original comment is sloppy, and generally warrants a reply. In some cases, especially various kinds of politics, the replies are omitted presumably because of fatigue. Such people have already replied to the argument enough times in their life to not want to do it again. That could be interpreted as a failure of domain research on the part of the original commenter, but I don't like to blame people for not being "well-read".
      - nostrademons 16y ago
        The behavior of a group and the behavior of individuals in that group aren't necessarily the same. It's quite possible for the majority of people to vote based on agreement, and yet have the overall score of the comment be determined by those who vote by quality. Of the ones who vote by agreement, some will agree and some will disagree, and they end up cancelling each other out. The remaining comment score is made up of those who voted because it was a well-reasoned argument. Reddit has the "Controversial" tab for this, though HN unfortunately doesn't make a distinction between a comment with 50 upvotes and 40 downvotes vs. one with 10 upvotes and 0 downvotes.
  - shasta 16y ago
    Don't let all of these naysayers slow talk you out of your crackpot proselytizing. Here, have a downvote.
  - lotharbot 16y ago
    My comment history serves as a counterexample to this claim. I make plenty of comments on controversial topics, often in opposition to mainstream opinion. I get lots of critical responses, but I only rarely see downvotes, and have only one comment that I know of that's below 1 (deservedly so; it was snarky and non-contributory). I'm neither timid nor controversy-avoiding; I just present my controversial ideas in a way that's engaging and enlightening.
- bmelton 16y ago
  I do too, but I would MUCH prefer it if that number were replaced with a count of new replies made to posts you've made, and linked to the 'threads' view of that same count. The majority of time when I post it isn't to make a point, but to get clarification or ask a question, and sometimes I forget to look for the answers, or the answer comes after my 'threads' page has gone through a few pages, making it harder to find, etc.
barrkel 16y ago
PG tried hiding the karma for every comment a year or so back, but that made it harder to to skim pages looking for insightful comments. Something that could reduce the game-like unpredictable reward aspect of karma scanning might be to delay updating it, perhaps only once a day. But then you might fall back to checking 'threads'. Perhaps only hide karma score from your own comments made more recently than a day?
- 10ren 16y ago
  I think he means your overall karma (in the top right hand corner), not the karma on each comment. An experiment would be to remove it, and only display it on your username page (as your average karma is now.)
  - barrkel 16y ago
    I know he meant overall karma. That's why I suggested only updating it once a day, but you could still check how recent comments are doing with the "comments" link on the top bar, so you'd need to hide those scores too, hence my comment.
    - 10ren 16y ago
      Ah, sorry, I see what you mean now.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
I was just thinking about this the other day too. Some Swiss students posted a survey to Reddit asking things like, is karma beneficial or not? After thinking about it, it's not clear whether social news sites truly benefit from quantifying reputation with karma and other measures. It creates an incentive to game the mechanic, makes it easier to game the mechanic with vote rings and bots and whatnot, causes people to comment and submit for the wrong reasons (build their karma rather than listen, learn, and contribute), and displaces the more natural, organic reputation from Web 0.99beta (Usenet, BBS, mailing lists, etc) where you actually had learn netiquette and figure out for yourself who knew what they were talking about and who didn't Perhaps it's useful to some social networks, but I think HN is much more capable of getting along just fine without it.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Karma is useful at the system level, but not for end users. You can use it to weed out the bad apples but it will only ever be a very superficial indicator of quality.
hugh3 16y ago
I agree with this. A large part of the addictiveness comes from knowing that every time you reload the page you might gain the tiny quantum of satisfaction that comes from seeing that number increment. Hey pg, next time you're making changes to make HN a little less addictive, how about a "hidekarma" option, which would stop my karma appearing in the top right hand corner of every page?

hammerdr 16y ago

I write very few comments. When I do write a comment, I always do the top-right corner check when I come back. To me, its validation that my opinion was well taken by the community (a community that I respect). I'm going to try to avoid that this time :)

xenophanes 16y ago
If you're not getting down voted a reasonable proportion of the time, you're too timid a thinker (or your comments avoid all controversy and stick to technical matters).
- billswift 16y ago
  Except that on HN, if you are not getting more upvotes than the number of comments you are posting, you can't vote on the comments. That is what the "avg: " on your profile page is for, if it's not 2 or higher your votes don't count.
  - edanm 16y ago
    Didn't know that. And this isn't the first time. Is there somewhere to read up on all the rules of HN? I figured out a few things on my own (like that you have to have 200 rep to downvote), but once in a while I come across something I don't understand (like, it seems that you can't downvote immediate children of your comments?).
    - kmfrk 16y ago
      The features do feel like easter eggs, but I would imagine that pg isn't mentioning them on purpose to preserve the incentive structure on HN and prevent people gaming the system.
    - billswift 16y ago
      I have found out most of this stuff gradually, by reading comments. The best advice I can give you, to maybe speed it up a bit, is to click on "ask" on the orange bar and browse the local posts that discuss HN.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      * like that you have to have 200 rep to downvote* This kind of thing also tends to change. I think I got my downvoting privileges at 50 or so. Like words after a long night of drinking, voting has flowed a lot mre frequently of late. Pg usually modifies the caps to compensate, but they aren't usually announced. I noticed, for example, that /leaders is no longer in the top bar. I think that was a while ago, but just an example of how the site changes.
      - vijaydev 16y ago
        The leaders link in the top bar was removed when a separate page was added with the Ask HN questions. Here is pg's announcement: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173801 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173801 In the same discussion, in response to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1174132 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1174132, pg moved the leader link to the Lists page and had the Ask HN on top bar.
- sesqu 16y ago
  I disagree. If you're not getting downvoted, that could just as easily mean you're not unconvincing. Downvotes are ideally for low-value content. If your viewpoint is contrary to popular opinion, the onus is on you to explain your reasoning persuasively enough to not come off as a simple contrarian. Downvotes are not a reward for thinking independently. They are a penalty for sloppy thinking or overly presumptious output. They are also the only way I can think of for fighting populist, short-circuit comments that troll for upvotes - by encouraging actual argumentation.
  - xenophanes 16y ago
    Ideally, and in practice, are not the same thing here... People downvote things they disagree with, including unconventional views, all the time.
    - sesqu 16y ago
      Right. I attempted to argue that this was because the comment they disagreed with failed to make them stop and think about why disagreement exists, and re-evaluate their position. That is, downvotes are generally a sign of failure. Certainly, some people stop, think, disagree, and downvote. I believe that this is the case when the original comment is sloppy, and generally warrants a reply. In some cases, especially various kinds of politics, the replies are omitted presumably because of fatigue. Such people have already replied to the argument enough times in their life to not want to do it again. That could be interpreted as a failure of domain research on the part of the original commenter, but I don't like to blame people for not being "well-read".
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      The behavior of a group and the behavior of individuals in that group aren't necessarily the same. It's quite possible for the majority of people to vote based on agreement, and yet have the overall score of the comment be determined by those who vote by quality. Of the ones who vote by agreement, some will agree and some will disagree, and they end up cancelling each other out. The remaining comment score is made up of those who voted because it was a well-reasoned argument. Reddit has the "Controversial" tab for this, though HN unfortunately doesn't make a distinction between a comment with 50 upvotes and 40 downvotes vs. one with 10 upvotes and 0 downvotes.
- shasta 16y ago
  Don't let all of these naysayers slow talk you out of your crackpot proselytizing. Here, have a downvote.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  My comment history serves as a counterexample to this claim. I make plenty of comments on controversial topics, often in opposition to mainstream opinion. I get lots of critical responses, but I only rarely see downvotes, and have only one comment that I know of that's below 1 (deservedly so; it was snarky and non-contributory). I'm neither timid nor controversy-avoiding; I just present my controversial ideas in a way that's engaging and enlightening.
bmelton 16y ago
I do too, but I would MUCH prefer it if that number were replaced with a count of new replies made to posts you've made, and linked to the 'threads' view of that same count. The majority of time when I post it isn't to make a point, but to get clarification or ask a question, and sometimes I forget to look for the answers, or the answer comes after my 'threads' page has gone through a few pages, making it harder to find, etc.

barrkel 16y ago

PG tried hiding the karma for every comment a year or so back, but that made it harder to to skim pages looking for insightful comments. Something that could reduce the game-like unpredictable reward aspect of karma scanning might be to delay updating it, perhaps only once a day. But then you might fall back to checking 'threads'. Perhaps only hide karma score from your own comments made more recently than a day?

10ren 16y ago
I think he means your overall karma (in the top right hand corner), not the karma on each comment. An experiment would be to remove it, and only display it on your username page (as your average karma is now.)
- barrkel 16y ago
  I know he meant overall karma. That's why I suggested only updating it once a day, but you could still check how recent comments are doing with the "comments" link on the top bar, so you'd need to hide those scores too, hence my comment.
  - 10ren 16y ago
    Ah, sorry, I see what you mean now.

SkyMarshal 16y ago

I was just thinking about this the other day too. Some Swiss students posted a survey to Reddit asking things like, is karma beneficial or not? After thinking about it, it's not clear whether social news sites truly benefit from quantifying reputation with karma and other measures. It creates an incentive to game the mechanic, makes it easier to game the mechanic with vote rings and bots and whatnot, causes people to comment and submit for the wrong reasons (build their karma rather than listen, learn, and contribute), and displaces the more natural, organic reputation from Web 0.99beta (Usenet, BBS, mailing lists, etc) where you actually had learn netiquette and figure out for yourself who knew what they were talking about and who didn't Perhaps it's useful to some social networks, but I think HN is much more capable of getting along just fine without it.

jacquesm 16y ago
Karma is useful at the system level, but not for end users. You can use it to weed out the bad apples but it will only ever be a very superficial indicator of quality.

hugh3 16y ago

I agree with this. A large part of the addictiveness comes from knowing that every time you reload the page you might gain the tiny quantum of satisfaction that comes from seeing that number increment. Hey pg, next time you're making changes to make HN a little less addictive, how about a "hidekarma" option, which would stop my karma appearing in the top right hand corner of every page?