3 ms·

Given that I have fairly high karma, it's hard for me to claim that I'm unbiased... ... but this is a bad idea. For one thing, decaying karma is devalued karma

Given that I have fairly high karma, it's hard for me to claim that I'm unbiased... ... but this is a bad idea. For one thing, decaying karma is devalued karma. Why should people work so hard to gain something that is crumbling into dust all around us? But the bigger problem is that absolute value of karma is not that important. The important social signal is in the first derivative. If you make a post that people like, your karma goes up. If your flaming instinct gets out of control, your karma stays constant or goes down. If karma is constantly going down anyway it will confuse the issue. Either you're going to have to do some complicated mental arithmetic to figure out whether or not you suck ("let's see, I don't think I've looked at my karma total since Tuesday, so my karma should have fallen by 10 by now, but OMG I think it's fallen by 14, so I must suck!")... or, more likely, everyone on the site will subconsciously interpret the ever-falling number as a sign that they suck 100% of the time, so everyone will feel like crap at all times.

jbert 18y ago
> Why should people work so hard to gain something that is crumbling into dust all around us? Like money which will decay with inflation, or perhaps the regard of people who will be dust in a few decades? > If karma is constantly going down anyway it will confuse the issue If that's a problem, the site can provide the 1st derivative (ignoring decay). A bit like music charts ("at number 10, up 5, it's..."). Some sites (perlmonks) already give you an xp (karma) delta whenever you reload the page. A last 24-hours delta would be more useful (again ignoring decay). Then again, I don't see what the utility of decaying karma is personally. It smacks of "what have you done for me lately". I think it's OK to respect people for past glories.
- jrockway 18y ago
  Then again, I don't see what the utility of decaying karma is personally. It smacks of "what have you done for me lately". I think it's OK to respect people for past glories. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I don't participate on Perlmonks. There are a lot of people there that have "been around forever" and answer questions as though it's 1999. I really enjoy reading the "don't use Moose, it's bloat" threads from people I've never heard of. Anyway, karma decay would be good for Perlmonks, IMHO.
  - jbert 18y ago
    Interesting. Perhaps that's perl's main problem. Ruby (or python) snatched up that generation of hackers since they could make more of a splash. Someone commented on reddit a few weeks back "perl used to have a really cool culture" OK - I can now see a benefit of favouring recent contributors. It helps stop ossificiation.

jbert 18y ago

> Why should people work so hard to gain something that is crumbling into dust all around us? Like money which will decay with inflation, or perhaps the regard of people who will be dust in a few decades? > If karma is constantly going down anyway it will confuse the issue If that's a problem, the site can provide the 1st derivative (ignoring decay). A bit like music charts ("at number 10, up 5, it's..."). Some sites (perlmonks) already give you an xp (karma) delta whenever you reload the page. A last 24-hours delta would be more useful (again ignoring decay). Then again, I don't see what the utility of decaying karma is personally. It smacks of "what have you done for me lately". I think it's OK to respect people for past glories.

jrockway 18y ago
Then again, I don't see what the utility of decaying karma is personally. It smacks of "what have you done for me lately". I think it's OK to respect people for past glories. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I don't participate on Perlmonks. There are a lot of people there that have "been around forever" and answer questions as though it's 1999. I really enjoy reading the "don't use Moose, it's bloat" threads from people I've never heard of. Anyway, karma decay would be good for Perlmonks, IMHO.
- jbert 18y ago
  Interesting. Perhaps that's perl's main problem. Ruby (or python) snatched up that generation of hackers since they could make more of a splash. Someone commented on reddit a few weeks back "perl used to have a really cool culture" OK - I can now see a benefit of favouring recent contributors. It helps stop ossificiation.