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Average karma triggers one behavior: you can submit a lot to get karma points (no negative effect), and to keep you average up, you comment only when you think
by harscoat 16y ago
Average karma triggers one behavior: you can submit a lot to get karma points (no negative effect), and to keep you average up, you comment only when you think you'll be upvoted... It reinforces a HN readers cliché conformism (even if it is the conformism of being contrarian) about what one thinks HNers like.
- blasdel 16y agoI think it's solely based on recent comment karma, with at least the high outliers discarded.
- raganwald 16y agohaving it be a trailing fifty comments actually increases the incentive to avoid writing anything that won't get upvotes. Ultimately, you have to step back and ask whether you're trying to encourage upvotes or not. Upvotes are useful for helping readers choose what to read in a thread. But just because voting is useful for guiding the behaviour of readers... Does it automatically follow that we wish to guide the behaviour of writers? The current system of total karma encourages people to avoid comments that will get more downvotes than upvotes. Avoiding more downvotes than upvotes is not exactly the same thing as avoiding comments that won't get upvotes.
- jdavid 16y agoBut there is a different game with the average, which is to find popular comments and flow. it also reduced the value in commenting on old but important threads because they would not be as popular. I think any simple average is wrong. Would you buy a stock based on it's average selling price over the last year, and compare year to year? Plus in stocks there is risk. I wish karma was more of a market, and had intrinsic value.