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Do we really want people chasing karma on here? I'd be tempted to go the other way, and limit the visibility and usefulness of it. I.e., on user profiles just s
by jml7c5 7y ago
Do we really want people chasing karma on here? I'd be tempted to go the other way, and limit the visibility and usefulness of it. I.e., on user profiles just show "between 1-50 karma", "500+ karma".
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoGiven that the content quality here is high, chasing karma could be a good thing, if it encourages additional high-quality, thought-provoking discussion. People should be rewarded for sharing content like that.
- lastofus 7y agoIsn't partaking in thought-provoking discussion reward enough? This also seems like one of those things where Goodhart's law may apply.
- claudiawerner 7y agoI'm skeptical of the notion that karma is gained through high-quality and thought-provoking discussion; in fact, in my experience (with previous accounts on this site and other sites with point/karma systems) is that thoughts which conform to pre-conceived notions, thoughts which sound clever (but may not be) and re-framing of old rigorous concepts in new sheen with new words gain the most karma. The illusion that good discussion is rewarded ignores the fact that despite thinking we are (and some even striving to be) we don't optimize our reward system for good discussion, we optimize it for things we like - which even for the readers of Hacker News(!) turns out to be not far off modern status-quo pleasing. As a corollary to my point, we'd also like thought-provoking material rather than pure provocateurs. But I'd take an intelligent provocateur over a philosophically/historically uninformed HN comment any day of the week.
- thrower123 7y agoSubmitting links also deeply skews the karma curve compared to regular commenting. A good submission that hits and gets to the top of the front page and stays there for a while can easily garner a few hundred internet points, and there is no risk of getting brigaded for an unpopular opinion. Even with points on submissions getting debuffed what seems like n/2 or something close to that (in any case it does not seem to be a one-to-one correspondence between the submission's point total and the increase to the submitter's score), submitting stories raises far more points than grinding in the comments. As this brief discussion of the HN metagame shows, anything that gets a number stuck next to it will attract people to optimizing it like flies to a manure pile...
- RandomBacon 7y agoSometimes I upvote things I agree with. Mostly I upvote if the user posted interesting/useful information. Sometimes I upvote things I disagree with if I think it promotes a good discussion.
- tptacek 7y agoWe should really do that across the whole site (on comments, for instance, and stories), not just in user profiles.
- krapp 7y agoThe purpose of karma is to be chased, it's supposed to be addictive. The utility of it as a means of operant conditioning and positive behavioral reinforcement can be debated (personally, I wish it would be done away with) but chasing karma is already a part of the site.
- quickthrower2 7y agoIt should show: floor(ln(karma))
- evian83 7y agoKarmaKitties?