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You joined the conversation. I mentioned another user. I quickly looked at your account once you became indignant. I scanned your last submissions page and saw

You joined the conversation. I mentioned another user. I quickly looked at your account once you became indignant. I scanned your last submissions page and saw you’re karma farming too and picked out the most egregious submission. I didn’t say it wasn’t ok. I’m sure I do it occasionally. I’m waiting for the first person to write a karma farming AI. Take great stories, determine a decay time, then repost. “HN Karma Farming with Deep Learning (in Rust)”

fierarul 7y ago
> I’m waiting for the first person to write a karma farming AI. Take great stories, determine a decay time, then repost. > > “HN Karma Farming with Deep Learning (in Rust)” This probably doesn't even need any AI, just some scrapping and scripting to determine when it's worth resubmitting. Somebody should implement this, seems like fun. Of course, if it's done with deep learning... then it would be something else. Maybe even determine correlation with other themes in the other news of the day/front page, or month, etc.
- willvarfar 7y ago
  Machine learning is just a currently popular approach that is called “AI”. Expert Systems are also AI, and a title that called a karma whore bot AI wouldn’t be technically misleading...?
hombre_fatal 7y ago
You’re forgetting that people actually have to upvote submissions. Presumably not everyone sees every submission on HN every time thus are candidates to upvote it. Sure, write that karma farming bot. Seems like a good service to those of us who want to see good content we may have missed, generate new discussions on classic content. Complaining about “karma farming” has always seemed like a weird jealousy thing to me. Where you presumably care so much about karma that you’re annoyed over your arbitrary concept of karma-fairness. Who cares? If someone can get karma by reposting classic content for HNers who missed it the other times, more power to them. They reposted the content to an audience that wanted to see it. You can’t always take it personally or lash out at others just because you’re not part of that audience.
- melling 7y ago
  I’m not complaining. I’m providing deeper insight into why people are seeing repeated posts. I did point out a downside, but have at it.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
Why are the motives to Karma farming-- is it the fuzzy feeling of internet points? Or is it people wishing to gain a reputation with a community, and then leverage the account to share their world view / interests / etc. I suppose it could be a matter of both, but since points take a more minimal role on HN, it's tough to say why Karma farming would make more sense here versus other platforms.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  I assume you're comparing to Reddit. I wouldn't say internet virtue points play any less of a role here. Your total "internet virtue points" here are displayed in the top right corner (whereas on Reddit you have to go looking). The virtue points any given comments gains are not visible to other people (unlike on reddit) but losses are. That doesn't seem like a big net difference between the two platforms. HN's karma system is just as good as Reddit's at faking a consensus and marginalizing whoever has even a slightly less popular viewpoint on a subject.

fierarul 7y ago

> I’m waiting for the first person to write a karma farming AI. Take great stories, determine a decay time, then repost. > > “HN Karma Farming with Deep Learning (in Rust)” This probably doesn't even need any AI, just some scrapping and scripting to determine when it's worth resubmitting. Somebody should implement this, seems like fun. Of course, if it's done with deep learning... then it would be something else. Maybe even determine correlation with other themes in the other news of the day/front page, or month, etc.

willvarfar 7y ago
Machine learning is just a currently popular approach that is called “AI”. Expert Systems are also AI, and a title that called a karma whore bot AI wouldn’t be technically misleading...?

hombre_fatal 7y ago

You’re forgetting that people actually have to upvote submissions. Presumably not everyone sees every submission on HN every time thus are candidates to upvote it. Sure, write that karma farming bot. Seems like a good service to those of us who want to see good content we may have missed, generate new discussions on classic content. Complaining about “karma farming” has always seemed like a weird jealousy thing to me. Where you presumably care so much about karma that you’re annoyed over your arbitrary concept of karma-fairness. Who cares? If someone can get karma by reposting classic content for HNers who missed it the other times, more power to them. They reposted the content to an audience that wanted to see it. You can’t always take it personally or lash out at others just because you’re not part of that audience.

melling 7y ago
I’m not complaining. I’m providing deeper insight into why people are seeing repeated posts. I did point out a downside, but have at it.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

Why are the motives to Karma farming-- is it the fuzzy feeling of internet points? Or is it people wishing to gain a reputation with a community, and then leverage the account to share their world view / interests / etc. I suppose it could be a matter of both, but since points take a more minimal role on HN, it's tough to say why Karma farming would make more sense here versus other platforms.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I assume you're comparing to Reddit. I wouldn't say internet virtue points play any less of a role here. Your total "internet virtue points" here are displayed in the top right corner (whereas on Reddit you have to go looking). The virtue points any given comments gains are not visible to other people (unlike on reddit) but losses are. That doesn't seem like a big net difference between the two platforms. HN's karma system is just as good as Reddit's at faking a consensus and marginalizing whoever has even a slightly less popular viewpoint on a subject.