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This behaviour is not just limited to culture war topics (or even controversial tech topics like Electron). I think there's some level of the literal point scor
by Macha 4y ago
This behaviour is not just limited to culture war topics (or even controversial tech topics like Electron). I think there's some level of the literal point scoring with karma encouraging point scoring types of conversation on any topic
- krapp 4y agoYes, the entire purpose of karma is to encourage people to do whatever makes the number go up and not do whatever makes the number go down. On HN the assumption seems to be that people will tend to upvote civil, substantive, thought provoking comments and downvote everything else, but in reality all such systems tend towards a path of least resistance to reward - people will do what's easiest to gain karma, not what's best, and what that is tends to be extremely context sensitive.
- oblak 4y agoI can agree with that. Luckily, karma, as implemented here, doesn't seem to prevent people from sharing what they have to say. Not like on Slashdot where karma really is a bitch. Been there for 20+ years and still think it's an awful to moderate because we have the same 20 guys dominating almost every discussion
- starkd 4y agoI think the HN karma is subtle enough not to take it too seriously, and yet it's still there to give you the signal your comments may be out line. When I first started reading HN, I didn't even realize there was a karma feature. I also like how there are no notifications, so it doesn't feed a back and forth argument from continuing past its expiration. It may be a little less convenient, but it seems to strike the right balance.