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My take is Karma provides feedback from the community, though the signal can be noisy. Comments and stories “in the spirit of HN” tend to accumulate points. C
by brudgers 4y ago
My take is Karma provides feedback from the community, though the signal can be noisy.
Comments and stories “in the spirit of HN” tend to accumulate points.
Comments and stories antithetical to community norms tend not to.
To me, using visible upvotes and downvotes would no more be judging comments and stories on their own merit than using user karma. Both are external signals. Votes integrate over short term. Karma over long terms.
YMMV.
- mooreds 4y agoThis is exactly it in my mind. It's a public (but not too public) way for the community to give feedback anonymously to each community member. Voting also serves as a low effort way to engage, which probably helps keep people coming back. I don't think most people on HN are here for the karma, but the feedback is definitely useful. (I wrote up some other thoughts here a few months ago: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3533 https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3533 )