8 ms·

Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this.

46 points by anthonyb 15y ago

kenrikm 15y ago
I follow this simple rule when dealing with trolls online. "Don't argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" It's better not to engage in the first place.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  Well, I come to HN for the discussion, so I want to engage. Not with the idiots obviously, but I'm finding that karma is an insidious brainhook that makes me start taking things personally. Particularly drive-by downvotes - they drive me insane. Now I have no idea whether you're downvoting me or not (other than the position of the comment relative to others), so hopefully there will be less stress and aggravation from here on :)
- pge 15y ago
  Your rule reminds me of Mark Twain's line, "never argue with a fool; a bystander may not be able to tell the difference."
andrewcooke 15y ago
earlier work using greasemonkey (no idea if it still works) - http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html
- anthonyb 15y ago
  I'd forgotten about [dead] comments. I'll add that in - thanks!
  - julienc 14y ago
    For something as straightforward as this, I think you shouldn't load jQuery and use native JS instead.
chris_wot 15y ago
I actually quite like the Karma system. I think that the way that it's implemented on Hacker News is pretty awesome - it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. I have actually made one or two snarky comments, but I immediately went back and deleted them before anyone replied. Other times it's been a misunderstanding, and being downvoted helped me understand that something wasn't quite right. Certainly it's doing its job, which is to keep the signal to noise ratio high. The only disturbing aspect of Hacker News is the way that valuable contributors can be hellbanned even after only a few comments. For instance, I saw an individual hell banned for commenting on a controversial story: they weren't trolling (which I assume is the purpose of the facility), only engaging in a debate. I suspect that the one who did the hellbanning did it because they didn't agree with what was being said. As there is no review mechanism, this is purely speculation on my behalf - I will never know why this was done!
- ot 15y ago
  > it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. Isn't this the ultimate form of groupthink?
  - chris_wot 15y ago
    Not really. The purpose of this site is for news about Hackers and startups, or as the FAQ says "Anything that good hackers would find interesting". One of the issues with snark is that it doesn't foster appropriate communication - instead it makes people get defensive or react badly. There are ways of stating disagreement without being nasty, defensive or arrogant. It's a good thing :-) As in RL, thinking before you speak is a wise way to conduct yourself on HN.
    - anthonyb 15y ago
      I disagree. There are plenty of snarky people on HN who know what they're talking about and aren't afraid to tell you. Unfortunately, that means that they get a disproportionate share of downvoting groupthink. Perhaps the saddest example (for us) that I can think of is CPlatypus (http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CPlatypus http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CPlatypus). Apparently a start up veteran, works at RedHat - I don't know what his blog is. I trawled back through his comments when I noticed he was hellbanned, and they were all pretty insightful. He hasn't been back in the last 30 days or so.
jaysonelliot 15y ago
I like the karma system overall, and I think the general quality of discussion on HN is evidence that things are mostly working well. The only thing I find off about it is the average karma on profile pages. Personally, I find that it subconsciously dissuades me from commenting anywhere that is likely to result in few/no upvotes. My first comment on a story might get 20, 40, 80 upvotes, but any extended discussion is going to be rather nested, and so you're essentially burning through your average as each comment sits with only one or two votes. Similarly, commenting on "unpopular" articles means few people will see your comment, so you're pulling your average down again. Should karma matter to me? Probably not. But I will confess to looking at people's profiles to see their average karma and time on HN as a way of knowing a bit more about them. I don't think it's unreasonable to feel that the average should be more representative than a straight average of all comment votes. I don't like to complain without offering a solution, so this would be mine: weight the comment average as a function of the overall points on an article, to allow for more conversation around niche topics. Weight comments according to how deep in a thread they are, to allow more in-depth conversations to occur without a karmic penalty. Karma can sometimes feel like a superficial way of "keeping score," but I think it serves a valuable role in promoting quality discussion. It still has room for improvement, though.
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  Once I realized that most of my karma was coming from my most casual comments, I stopped attaching much importance to it at all.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    My main issue with that attitude is that it primarily comes from older users with a ton of karma. Of course you don't need to worry about it.
- scrrr 15y ago
  Karma matters to me. It puts the good replies on the top of the page, the bad ones move down. And that´s the main purpose I think.
n9com 15y ago
If any of you are 'stressing' about a pointless number next to your username, then I think you need to take a step back and put things into perspective.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  My thoughts exactly. The whole idea of caring (at least more than a light curiosity) about whether other people from the interwebs disagree with something you wrote sounds bizarre to me.
- hackermom 15y ago
  I think that's good advice, and I would like to send it along also to the tiny-minded portion of users here on HN who campaign personal, pityful battles on others by systematically downvoting their posts for no apparent reason, as well as those who just can't seem to let things fly, but rather just have to hammer down on users with opinions they simply don't agree with. I think the karma system as it stands now is problematic because of how it simply enables the generally grumpy crowd of HN to fuel their own overgrown negativity.
  - Flow 15y ago
    Who can down-vote? Not me. Seems to me that it's people who have written lots of good comments that can down-vote. And of course, people running scripts that help them achieve high karma that they can abuse. A simple "I Like This" without any count would be enough IMHO. Or at least a simple rule that you can only down-vote if you write a positively karma'd comment to the post you down-vote.
    - kaybe 14y ago
      What kind of script would that be? It won't be able to make good comments (I hope), so it would have to monitor pages that have been cited often and submit new things as soon as they pop up. Any other options?
      - 14y ago
Tomis02 15y ago
You'll still get banned by the cabal running HN when you inevitably bump into the guy who can't accept an opinion different from his. Add a "you've been banned, try again" notifier.
- hackermom 15y ago
  Couldn't have said it any better. Just look at how your post was downvoted for simply pointing this sensitive fact out. The action speaks so loud and clear. In every social construct and gathering you always find that group of "socially immechanical" people who, with every means possible, try to assert some kind of status or rank over others. In the case of HN, it's done by downvoting posts of users holding a different opinion than your own.
Monotoko 15y ago
The iPhone app I use to access HN when I'm on the move goes one further. It removes the name from everyone, still lets me reply... but doesn't show me the username. Now in all honesty I think something broke it last year because it used to show, but I've forgotten about karma and it just lets me focus on the content and context of the post.
driverdan 15y ago
I noticed you're loading jQuery before testing the page's URL. You'd be better off testing the URL first to prevent unnecessarily loading jQuery.
- julienc 14y ago
  Or better, get rid of jQuery completely.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    What do you have against jquery?
- anthonyb 14y ago
  I doubt it makes much difference once jQuery's loaded the first time, but I'll have a play around with it when I have a minute. There's some lag currently while it searches the page and replaces attributes, but it's fast enough for my needs.
Karunamon 15y ago
Something I'd like to see is a "HN Enhancement Suite", kind of like Reddit. I don't at this time have the JS chops to pull something like this off, but what I'd add: * User tagging * Un-hellbanning per user (Find someone who has legitimate contributions yet is hellbanned? Restores their posts to a normal color and moves their post closer to the top in a thread) * Ignore text lightening for downvoted posts * Hide post on flag or downvote * Popups on username mouseover with profile page info * Custom CSS (why not?) * An "ignore karma" switch. Hides comment thread vote arrows, ignores hellbans and text coloring, hides all mention of points anywhere on the site. * Ignore option, hides all posts by a given user
- fuckyoupg 15y ago
  There is no per-user unhellbanning. The cadre hellbans with extreme prejudice and we change our logins when we see lies and disinformation being spread by the YC apologists and the willing dupes. That works out to several times per week.
endlessvoid94 15y ago
I can safely say I've never been stressed about my karma.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

46 points by anthonyb 15y ago

I follow this simple rule when dealing with trolls online. "Don't argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" It's better not to engage in the first place.

anthonyb 15y ago
Well, I come to HN for the discussion, so I want to engage. Not with the idiots obviously, but I'm finding that karma is an insidious brainhook that makes me start taking things personally. Particularly drive-by downvotes - they drive me insane. Now I have no idea whether you're downvoting me or not (other than the position of the comment relative to others), so hopefully there will be less stress and aggravation from here on :)
pge 15y ago
Your rule reminds me of Mark Twain's line, "never argue with a fool; a bystander may not be able to tell the difference."

andrewcooke 15y ago

earlier work using greasemonkey (no idea if it still works) - http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html

anthonyb 15y ago
I'd forgotten about [dead] comments. I'll add that in - thanks!
- julienc 14y ago
  For something as straightforward as this, I think you shouldn't load jQuery and use native JS instead.

chris_wot 15y ago

I actually quite like the Karma system. I think that the way that it's implemented on Hacker News is pretty awesome - it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. I have actually made one or two snarky comments, but I immediately went back and deleted them before anyone replied. Other times it's been a misunderstanding, and being downvoted helped me understand that something wasn't quite right. Certainly it's doing its job, which is to keep the signal to noise ratio high. The only disturbing aspect of Hacker News is the way that valuable contributors can be hellbanned even after only a few comments. For instance, I saw an individual hell banned for commenting on a controversial story: they weren't trolling (which I assume is the purpose of the facility), only engaging in a debate. I suspect that the one who did the hellbanning did it because they didn't agree with what was being said. As there is no review mechanism, this is purely speculation on my behalf - I will never know why this was done!

ot 15y ago
> it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made. Isn't this the ultimate form of groupthink?
- chris_wot 15y ago
  Not really. The purpose of this site is for news about Hackers and startups, or as the FAQ says "Anything that good hackers would find interesting". One of the issues with snark is that it doesn't foster appropriate communication - instead it makes people get defensive or react badly. There are ways of stating disagreement without being nasty, defensive or arrogant. It's a good thing :-) As in RL, thinking before you speak is a wise way to conduct yourself on HN.
  - anthonyb 15y ago
    I disagree. There are plenty of snarky people on HN who know what they're talking about and aren't afraid to tell you. Unfortunately, that means that they get a disproportionate share of downvoting groupthink. Perhaps the saddest example (for us) that I can think of is CPlatypus (http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CPlatypus http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=CPlatypus). Apparently a start up veteran, works at RedHat - I don't know what his blog is. I trawled back through his comments when I noticed he was hellbanned, and they were all pretty insightful. He hasn't been back in the last 30 days or so.

jaysonelliot 15y ago

I like the karma system overall, and I think the general quality of discussion on HN is evidence that things are mostly working well. The only thing I find off about it is the average karma on profile pages. Personally, I find that it subconsciously dissuades me from commenting anywhere that is likely to result in few/no upvotes. My first comment on a story might get 20, 40, 80 upvotes, but any extended discussion is going to be rather nested, and so you're essentially burning through your average as each comment sits with only one or two votes. Similarly, commenting on "unpopular" articles means few people will see your comment, so you're pulling your average down again. Should karma matter to me? Probably not. But I will confess to looking at people's profiles to see their average karma and time on HN as a way of knowing a bit more about them. I don't think it's unreasonable to feel that the average should be more representative than a straight average of all comment votes. I don't like to complain without offering a solution, so this would be mine: weight the comment average as a function of the overall points on an article, to allow for more conversation around niche topics. Weight comments according to how deep in a thread they are, to allow more in-depth conversations to occur without a karmic penalty. Karma can sometimes feel like a superficial way of "keeping score," but I think it serves a valuable role in promoting quality discussion. It still has room for improvement, though.

waterlesscloud 15y ago
Once I realized that most of my karma was coming from my most casual comments, I stopped attaching much importance to it at all.
- anthonyb 14y ago
  My main issue with that attitude is that it primarily comes from older users with a ton of karma. Of course you don't need to worry about it.
scrrr 15y ago
Karma matters to me. It puts the good replies on the top of the page, the bad ones move down. And that´s the main purpose I think.

n9com 15y ago

If any of you are 'stressing' about a pointless number next to your username, then I think you need to take a step back and put things into perspective.

reinhardt 15y ago
My thoughts exactly. The whole idea of caring (at least more than a light curiosity) about whether other people from the interwebs disagree with something you wrote sounds bizarre to me.
hackermom 15y ago
I think that's good advice, and I would like to send it along also to the tiny-minded portion of users here on HN who campaign personal, pityful battles on others by systematically downvoting their posts for no apparent reason, as well as those who just can't seem to let things fly, but rather just have to hammer down on users with opinions they simply don't agree with. I think the karma system as it stands now is problematic because of how it simply enables the generally grumpy crowd of HN to fuel their own overgrown negativity.
- Flow 15y ago
  Who can down-vote? Not me. Seems to me that it's people who have written lots of good comments that can down-vote. And of course, people running scripts that help them achieve high karma that they can abuse. A simple "I Like This" without any count would be enough IMHO. Or at least a simple rule that you can only down-vote if you write a positively karma'd comment to the post you down-vote.
  - kaybe 14y ago
    What kind of script would that be? It won't be able to make good comments (I hope), so it would have to monitor pages that have been cited often and submit new things as soon as they pop up. Any other options?
    - 14y ago

Tomis02 15y ago

You'll still get banned by the cabal running HN when you inevitably bump into the guy who can't accept an opinion different from his. Add a "you've been banned, try again" notifier.

hackermom 15y ago
Couldn't have said it any better. Just look at how your post was downvoted for simply pointing this sensitive fact out. The action speaks so loud and clear. In every social construct and gathering you always find that group of "socially immechanical" people who, with every means possible, try to assert some kind of status or rank over others. In the case of HN, it's done by downvoting posts of users holding a different opinion than your own.

Monotoko 15y ago

The iPhone app I use to access HN when I'm on the move goes one further. It removes the name from everyone, still lets me reply... but doesn't show me the username. Now in all honesty I think something broke it last year because it used to show, but I've forgotten about karma and it just lets me focus on the content and context of the post.

driverdan 15y ago

I noticed you're loading jQuery before testing the page's URL. You'd be better off testing the URL first to prevent unnecessarily loading jQuery.

julienc 14y ago
Or better, get rid of jQuery completely.
- anthonyb 14y ago
  What do you have against jquery?
anthonyb 14y ago
I doubt it makes much difference once jQuery's loaded the first time, but I'll have a play around with it when I have a minute. There's some lag currently while it searches the page and replaces attributes, but it's fast enough for my needs.

Karunamon 15y ago

Something I'd like to see is a "HN Enhancement Suite", kind of like Reddit. I don't at this time have the JS chops to pull something like this off, but what I'd add: * User tagging * Un-hellbanning per user (Find someone who has legitimate contributions yet is hellbanned? Restores their posts to a normal color and moves their post closer to the top in a thread) * Ignore text lightening for downvoted posts * Hide post on flag or downvote * Popups on username mouseover with profile page info * Custom CSS (why not?) * An "ignore karma" switch. Hides comment thread vote arrows, ignores hellbans and text coloring, hides all mention of points anywhere on the site. * Ignore option, hides all posts by a given user

fuckyoupg 15y ago
There is no per-user unhellbanning. The cadre hellbans with extreme prejudice and we change our logins when we see lies and disinformation being spread by the YC apologists and the willing dupes. That works out to several times per week.

endlessvoid94 15y ago

I can safely say I've never been stressed about my karma.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]