5 ms·

I would love something that aggregated all your karma points into an exchange of some kind. I would use it, but I would never build it.

Kaizyn 18y ago
What kind of 'karma exchange'?
- rms 18y ago
  A full-on reputational economy.
  - mattdennewitz 18y ago
    what about acting as gatekeeper for invite-only or beta sites, prioritizing invite distribution by a global karma factor? or is that too eugenic?
    - rms 18y ago
      That's fine, but I think invite distribution is too unimportant.
      - mattdennewitz 18y ago
        i guess, as w/ most things in life, it just depends on the context.
  - bd 18y ago
    Email prioritizing based on karma? High karma could move your mail towards top of the pile for people that don't know you (VIP). Or posts/mails could be filtered based on karma thresholds.
    - rms 18y ago
      That's a perfectly good application of a reputational economy. There's pretty much infinite possibility. I'm not sure if it has been explored in fiction better than Doctorow's Down and Out Magic Kingdom, about a post-scarcity, post-singularity society with a reputational economy. http://craphound.com/down/ http://craphound.com/down/ Available free online under a CC license.
    - signa11 18y ago
      gnus email/news-reader already provides, such a fature via scoring. You can score somebody up/down. At a configured threshold, you dont get to see the posts/articles from such folks anymore. love to have something like this in gmail. [edit]: the same can be done for articles/persons etc etc. for more info http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual//html_node/gnus/Summary-Score-Commands.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual//html_node/gnus/Sum....
    - joshwa 18y ago
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144580 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144580 http://www.seriosity.com/attent.html http://www.seriosity.com/attent.html
  - tptacek 18y ago
    How many Reddit points will a Hacker News point be worth?
    - tptacek 18y ago
      Wait, I'm an idiot; of course you run a market to solve this.
      - pudo 18y ago
        This is smart but I'm not sure what the fundamental transaction on such a market is. Keep in mind that there is no rivalry for karma (in an economic sense) and that people always keep their karma after giving to others (or possibly even increase it).
        tptacek 18y ago
        Not sure I agree; I think people are already using ad hoc methods to "price" karma; for instance, I have used such methods to "price" a Hacker News karma point as 1,000,000 reddit points. The side effect of the market would be to rank discussion systems by credibility, or signal/noise, in real time. It's also geeky enough that I think you could keep liquidity, even though there's no dollar value to karma.
    - gills 18y ago
      I guess someone will have to build the karma derivatives trading platform...
      - rms 18y ago
        Oh man... with 30:1 leverage I could make a killing.
    - jbert 18y ago
      Allow people on your aggregator site to manage the karma of the reputation sources. Open to gaming, but all karma is to some extent.
    - 18y ago
gojomo 18y ago
rapleaf.com is vaguely in this space.
pudo 18y ago
I have been coding a prototype of this in my free time over the past couple of weeks. It's fun, but I'm not sure it actually makes lots of sense. Not only is it really hard come up with a model to convert currency from many places into a "standardized" format (or even to allow for OpenID-style distribution) - it'll also not be easy to provide data to other sites that allows them to do useful things easily. Tags might be as good as it gets. One other thing Y-people might not like: this SHOULD NOT have a revenue model, I think. Freemium completely screws you and ads on a reputation site would just feel wrong. Besides, it's a platform. That's why I keep thinking about open-sourcing what I have, especially in order to try to solve the distribution problem before an alpha site might go online. Being a hopeless idealist I really want to see a service-decoupled reputation service that is NOT facebook/google FC. Please let me know if any of you'd be interested to join me in playing around with this.
- Tichy 18y ago
  I just don't see how it is technically feasible, as most sites don't provide a way to transfer karma? Or is the idea more that of an independent karma service that other sites could plug in to (like gravatar does for profile pictures)?

Kaizyn 18y ago

What kind of 'karma exchange'?

rms 18y ago
A full-on reputational economy.
- mattdennewitz 18y ago
  what about acting as gatekeeper for invite-only or beta sites, prioritizing invite distribution by a global karma factor? or is that too eugenic?
  - rms 18y ago
    That's fine, but I think invite distribution is too unimportant.
    - mattdennewitz 18y ago
      i guess, as w/ most things in life, it just depends on the context.
- bd 18y ago
  Email prioritizing based on karma? High karma could move your mail towards top of the pile for people that don't know you (VIP). Or posts/mails could be filtered based on karma thresholds.
  - rms 18y ago
    That's a perfectly good application of a reputational economy. There's pretty much infinite possibility. I'm not sure if it has been explored in fiction better than Doctorow's Down and Out Magic Kingdom, about a post-scarcity, post-singularity society with a reputational economy. http://craphound.com/down/ http://craphound.com/down/ Available free online under a CC license.
  - signa11 18y ago
    gnus email/news-reader already provides, such a fature via scoring. You can score somebody up/down. At a configured threshold, you dont get to see the posts/articles from such folks anymore. love to have something like this in gmail. [edit]: the same can be done for articles/persons etc etc. for more info http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual//html_node/gnus/Summary-Score-Commands.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual//html_node/gnus/Sum....
  - joshwa 18y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144580 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144580 http://www.seriosity.com/attent.html http://www.seriosity.com/attent.html
- tptacek 18y ago
  How many Reddit points will a Hacker News point be worth?
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Wait, I'm an idiot; of course you run a market to solve this.
    - pudo 18y ago
      This is smart but I'm not sure what the fundamental transaction on such a market is. Keep in mind that there is no rivalry for karma (in an economic sense) and that people always keep their karma after giving to others (or possibly even increase it).
      - tptacek 18y ago
        Not sure I agree; I think people are already using ad hoc methods to "price" karma; for instance, I have used such methods to "price" a Hacker News karma point as 1,000,000 reddit points. The side effect of the market would be to rank discussion systems by credibility, or signal/noise, in real time. It's also geeky enough that I think you could keep liquidity, even though there's no dollar value to karma.
  - gills 18y ago
    I guess someone will have to build the karma derivatives trading platform...
    - rms 18y ago
      Oh man... with 30:1 leverage I could make a killing.
  - jbert 18y ago
    Allow people on your aggregator site to manage the karma of the reputation sources. Open to gaming, but all karma is to some extent.
  - 18y ago

gojomo 18y ago

rapleaf.com is vaguely in this space.

pudo 18y ago

I have been coding a prototype of this in my free time over the past couple of weeks. It's fun, but I'm not sure it actually makes lots of sense. Not only is it really hard come up with a model to convert currency from many places into a "standardized" format (or even to allow for OpenID-style distribution) - it'll also not be easy to provide data to other sites that allows them to do useful things easily. Tags might be as good as it gets. One other thing Y-people might not like: this SHOULD NOT have a revenue model, I think. Freemium completely screws you and ads on a reputation site would just feel wrong. Besides, it's a platform. That's why I keep thinking about open-sourcing what I have, especially in order to try to solve the distribution problem before an alpha site might go online. Being a hopeless idealist I really want to see a service-decoupled reputation service that is NOT facebook/google FC. Please let me know if any of you'd be interested to join me in playing around with this.

Tichy 18y ago
I just don't see how it is technically feasible, as most sites don't provide a way to transfer karma? Or is the idea more that of an independent karma service that other sites could plug in to (like gravatar does for profile pictures)?