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it's probably better to just block all new users from downvoting. This way you teach the new users for 3-4 months, and they get ingrained not to go look for the
by vaksel 16y ago
it's probably better to just block all new users from downvoting. This way you teach the new users for 3-4 months, and they get ingrained not to go look for the downvote button every time they read a comment they disagree with.
- chaosmachine 16y agoNew users are blocked from downvoting until they pass a certain karma threshold.
- vaksel 16y agoyes but a karma threshhold can be reached in a few weeks if not days. So it's not long enough for someone to get used to the idea that this isn't reddit
- lubos 16y agoI've been member for almost 2 years and still haven't reached the karma threshold. it's simply more difficult to build up karma on specialized site such as hackernews reddit is general purpose, you can collect points merely by posting pictures of kitties or nsfw.
- vaksel 16y agonot really, just submit like 5 techcrunch posts, and you are pretty much guaranteed 200 points, just from the people who also submit techcrunch stuff hoping to be the first. And since these end up in upvotes, you are pretty much guaranteed frontpage.
- chollida1 16y agoTry gaining karma from well thought out comments rather than posting stories. I think you'll find that's how most of the respected names on this site do it.
- vladd 16y agoKarma rewards extrinsic behaviour, there's no reward for just logging in and reading stories on HN. I think that explains why some are members for 2 years, comfortable in reading the content on the site and contributing rather rarely when they have something insightful to say, while others are able to reach the threshold for down-voting in short periods of time without fully understanding the community or reading the guidelines.
- twymer 16y agoIf you get lucky with a couple story posts, yes. If you're strictly commenting you've got a while.
- chegra 16y agoYea maybe that is it, 200 karma from comments for downvote privilege.
- mitjak 16y agoThat's how it is right now.
- twymer 16y agoI like how there's plenty of examples of down voting and not discussing the reason on this thread. I'm assuming you got down voted because it's just a flat karma value (I guess 200?) to allow down votes. They meant that your karma from submissions shouldn't count because it's trivially obtained. Edit: Thanks for down voting this.
- mitjak 16y agoThat's how it is right now.
- chollida1 16y agoI think the solution to this is to have no Karma on submitted stories. If karma comes only from useful comments then I'd posit that the user will be more invested in discusion and not as likely to down vote others.
- vaksel 16y agonot really, since that will put a lot of emphasis on comments, so downvoting someone would hurt them even more
- chollida1 16y agoI don't see your argument. My point is if you remove karma for submitted stories you only get people who earned the right to downvote via well thought out comments. My hypothesis is that these are the type of people who are more likely to counter a point they disagree with, with a well thought out comment, rather than a downvote, as that's how they got the karma they have to begin with.
- terrym 16y agoDoesn't every comment start with 1 point, though? People trying to game the system could still do so simply by commenting a lot (maybe on older, less visible submissions that won't get them down-votes). Maybe every comment should start at 0 points?
- kranner 16y agoI believe you don't actually earn a point until someone upvotes you away from that default 1.
- doki_pen 16y agoI agree. One thing that bothers me about the karma on stories system is that an extremely popular story gets you an absurd amount of karma. But the thing about extremely popular stories is that they would have been posted by someone else if you didn't post them. So it's really a huge reward for simply being quicker then other users. On the other hand, and obscure story that get's on the board for a few hours, and that no one else would have posted gets much less points. Perhaps stories that make the front page for X amount of time should earn a standard rate of karma for the submitter. Or even just a limit, say you can't get more then 10 karma on a submission.
- phreeza 16y agoI reached it with my first post, i think. maybe it should be a function of community karma distribution, eg only the top 80% can downvote.
- FraaJad 16y agoI thought HN already did that. When my account was fresh, i could not find the down button for a long time. I believe there was karma threshold i had to cross before I could start down voting, habit I have since mitigated in favour of letting neutral comments untouched.
- tkahn6 16y agoAnd maybe more radically, block all new users from upvoting. Say HN gets an influx of new users who typically upvote inflammatory or LOL-evoking one-liners. If they all upvote each other, they all get karma, and the community starts to shift towards that behavior (because that's what earns you karma, and karma is supposed to be indicative of your contribution to the community). I know I lurked here for about 6-8 months before creating an account and that time period allowed me to appreciate HN's community and what was and was not acceptable. Of course new members could still post comments and submit articles -- they just wouldn't have the ability to decide the community ethos.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mkr-hn 16y agoI still can't downvote. Not that I mind--if I can't, then random passerby can't either. Social conscience++
- jacquesm 16y agoIt already works like that. The solution would seem to be to increase the karma cap on downvoting.