3 ms·

I'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 thi

I'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 ago
Submitting 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 ago
Sometimes 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.

thrower123 7y ago

Submitting 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 ago

Sometimes 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.