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Gaming HN for an Orange Name - A Warning

64 points by GavinB 18y ago

My name, at the time of posting, is orange. It's kind of nice to be recognized for being upvoted on average, even if I don't make a huge number of comments and will never be on the leaderboard. However, it just feels wrong. I've been unconsciously working on getting a high average for a while, and this will only encourage my unproductive behavior. I sometimes refrain from posting when I know my comment won’t be read or won’t be upvoted. In the spirit of pointing out the full effects of this change, I will now offer a simple list of guidelines so that you too can get your name in orange and feel like a real man/woman/entrepreneur. As for me, I’m with tptacek—opt me out of a colored name. 1. Only post in threads that are on the front page or look sure to get on the front page. If no one will see your comment, no one will upvote you. 2. Don’t post on a front page post that already has more than a full page of text. Your comment will appear at the bottom and no one will scroll all the way down there. You’re just yelling into the void. 3. When possible, reply to a highly rated comment that doesn’t already have replies. Particularly focus on getting your comment to appear "above the fold" when it is posted. This will ensure that your comment is read and enjoyed. 4. Don't post against the prevailing mood of a post. If the mood of that article is pro-libertarian, beware critiquing that philosophy! On the other hand, when the population is more balanced in that individual thread, feel free. In general someone who agrees is more likely to upvote than someone who disagrees, so you should get be ahead on balance. 5. As soon as you make a comment, upvote the article and all of the parents to your comment. This will put your article closer to the public eye. If you want to truly join the dark side, vote down the other comments on the thread or other replies. I’ve never done this, but it’s an option. 6. Say something interesting. Without this, you’ve got nothing! 7. If you’re trying to be funny or sarcastic, make it incredibly obvious. If it’s not incredibly obvious what you’re trying to say, don’t bother posting. 8. Don't get involved in a long discussion! This will only end with a bunch of 1 point posts that drag your average down. Let me say in closing that HN is one of the best discussions on the net and I’ve been privileged to be here with you all. pg, thanks for all the work you put in. Still, we should be realistic about the behavior that we are promoting. Goodnight and good luck!

swombat 18y ago
Well, I don't actually care about orange names. I think the far more useful change recently introduced is the -8 karma limit, which will prevent lynch mob behaviour when someone makes a comment which a significant number of people disagree with strongly. As for the orange name stuff, who cares. Karma is not an objective, it's a side-effect. If you do care about having an orange name, though, I agree that the algorithm is a bit dubious...
- jacquesm 18y ago
  Some form of meta moderation would be a good fix for that, modding down when you disagree with someone is simply cheap. If you disagree then say so (and why!), don't mod down. You can have your name in pink, purple or green for all I care it will not matter one little bit, the only thing that matters is what you have to say.
- angstrom 18y ago
  He's trying to avoid a redditer/digger reincarnation.
- ovi256 18y ago
  If a recent problem was, as I recall, downgrading of civil standards and generally, of intelligent discourse, I cannot see how downward karma capping can help. It will only encourage trolls and flamers.
  - philh 18y ago
    I don't think trolls and flamers care about karma. As long as their individual posts get low enough to be out of sight, whether they're at -8 or -50 doesn't matter. Presumably users will still get banned for the same extent of trolling and flaming.
- trjordan 18y ago
  Karma might not be the objective, but since it determines the ordering of comments, it has a big effect on how the comments of a particular article come off. Even if nobody initially posts with an eye towards gaining karma, the most visible posts will be those with the highest karma, and they will shape the discussion. That said, karma alone cannot preserve whatever culture and social norms exist here. I like the orange names because they highlight (for better or for worse) the people that shape the discussions the most. Since it seems to be generally agreed upon that the current discussions are good, it makes sense to point out those people that have the most influence. As a way to shape social norms, it seems pretty effective.
- tptacek 18y ago
  You know, I think the opposite: who cares about the score on one comment? But the orange name thing follows you around. But there is way too much drama about this stuff now, so the thing to do is probably to let it go and see how it plays out over a few months.
lionhearted 18y ago
Some really great points. Couple very quick thoughts, and then ideas about your points. First, you only need to average 3.5 to be oranage if that's a concern, meaning posts around 2 or 3 don't set you back much, and just a few +10 or +20 comments here and there means you can comment totally freely and stay orange. 2. Don’t post on a front page post that already has more than a full page of text.... You’re just yelling into the void. --> I actually think this is GREAT. People won't post into an already largely full thread unless they have real insight that's bursting to get out, instead of rehashing some obvious observation. 3. When possible, reply to a highly rated comment that doesn’t already have replies. Particularly focus on getting your comment to appear "above the fold" when it is posted. This will ensure that your comment is read and enjoyed. --> If it gets abused for gamesmanship, that's ugly. However, an insightful follow-on or dissent from the top comment IS more read, and thus does create more value, and thus, more karma. But we should be vigilant as a community to these karma-jackers. 4. Don't post against the prevailing mood of a post. If the mood of that article is pro-libertarian, beware critiquing that philosophy! On the other hand, when the population is more balanced in that individual thread, feel free. In general someone who agrees is more likely to upvote than someone who disagrees, so you should get be ahead on balance. --> At first, this really upset me. I've seen a lot of warm'n'happy comments get upvoted more than an insightful point I made that I assume took heat from people with a different opinion based on the voting patterns around it. Then I realized - if you're on something controversial, it's got to either be balanced, or really good to get community respect. If people reflect for a minute before spouting talking points, that could be a good thing. 5. As soon as you make a comment, upvote the article and all of the parents to your comment. This will put your article closer to the public eye. If you want to truly join the dark side, vote down the other comments on the thread or other replies. I’ve never done this, but it’s an option. --> Yeah, could be a big problem - will be interesting to see how it plays out. 6. Say something interesting. Without this, you’ve got nothing! --> This is awesome. 7. If you’re trying to be funny or sarcastic, make it incredibly obvious. If it’s not incredibly obvious what you’re trying to say, don’t bother posting. --> I'm not everyone, but I HATE online sarcasm. It's cheap and easy to get that ANYWHERE. The internet is overflowing with sarcasm. I like that Hacker News is really an intelligent discussion place, and humor is used less frequently and more judiciously than elsewhere. 8. Don't get involved in a long discussion! This will only end with a bunch of 1 point posts that drag your average down. --> Finally, I just realized something. I try to check my comments later and see if anyone replied to me. I'm going to make more of an effort to upvote 1-karma posts that were late to the party if they offer even a bit of insight, as a way of saying thanks for keeping the discussion going. Cheers Gavin!
casta 18y ago
Orange names? I'm almost color blind and my LCD screen doesn't display the color in the right way, I never noticed the colors. :°(
- nihilocrat 18y ago
  Apparently they're a very, very recent addition. I of course can't speak for you, but you might be able to tell them apart because the orange ones are very dark. Compare a comment made by pg to most of the comments in this thread.
coderrr 18y ago
Something that would probably help is using javascript to track how many people have actually had your comment viewable in their browser. Then take the ratio of views to votes. Eventually you might also find that you can determine the average # of views of your comment purely based on the location of it on the page, in which case the javascript tracking would no longer be necessary. Although it's also possible that the characteristics of comment viewing are too complex to be able to simplify it to that. Also, maybe instead of a fixed score required to be orange, take a distribution of all users and only make the top X percent qualify.
nihilocrat 18y ago
At least #6 is true. Unfortunately, #7 is also true. I've noticed too many comments downvoted where the sarcasm was just too heavy for people to pick up on, apparently. Maybe it's just my personality and background, but I think HN veers too much on the side of serious.
deleted 18y ago
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Alex3917 18y ago
My name isn't in orange, and yet I'm actually pretty happy with the quality of my comments when I look back through my threads page. I have a bunch of comments that I posted either to thank someone or to encourage someone or whatever, that clearly have no value to anyone else but the person I'm responding to. Certainly eliminating those would up my average comment score, and yet I'm not entirely convinced it would make the community a more pleasant place to spend time in.
jraines 18y ago
I see this as evidence that no matter what change you make to a community website, some people are going to react against it. I half expect to see a facebook group: "One Million Strong Against The New HN!"
josefresco 18y ago
1, 2, 3 and 8 are harmful to the community. There should be some sort of reward for deep conversations, commenting on unpopular stories (which would then promote them) and not simply replying to a highly rated comment so it will be "above the fold". None of this is rocket science, so I don't fault tptaceck but I hope most of this advice is not taken (except for 6+7). I always thought Digg needed a new category called "Stories that get no respect" which are picked by editors or highly rated members as quality stories and put on a special page to promote going deep on HN.
deleted 18y ago
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biohacker42 18y ago
Isn't Slashdot's whole karma system designed specifically because us hackers find it irresistible to play games.
icey 18y ago
Meh. I think it's time to take an HN break for a few days until all the "Oh the humanity!" hand-wringing about the community bursting into flames has blown over.
pbrown 18y ago
I have to agree that the "orange names" are ripe for potential abuse. As someone who has read HN for over a year now, and just signed up to actively participate, the "orange names" somehow feels like encouragement for me to not participate. Maybe it's a self esteem issue (I blame my mother) but I suspect that some people will skip the "gray name" comments and only read the "orange name" comments. I know because I did, and I didn't even know what the orange was for until I dug. If I make a comment in the forest, and no one is there to hear me.... I understand what the goal was but, ultimately, I find myself longing for the old days. By the way, I upvoted the OP, and I tried to post above the fold, but the OP was too darn long. <== Sarcasm there. How'd I do?
- dhouston 18y ago
  and to preserve your "orangeness", you might as well fire off smartass comments as they occur to you even if they don't contribute to the conversation. it's the HN equivalent of rewarding thats-what-she-said jokes, and it'll just be a different kind of karma whoring. slashdot got this particular issue right (at least in the early 2000s, before their digg-envy took hold) by not awarding karma for anything modded up "Funny". while these "funny" comments -- usually brief and snarky or perverted -- would still appear +5, there was otherwise no long-term incentive. unfortunately there's no analogous control mechanism here (and copping slashdot's mod system altogether seems too heavyweight.) there was also a karma cap (+50?) above which your comments would start out at 2 points instead of 1; otherwise there's little point in accumulating more karma than that. their moderation faq is worth a read (skip about a third of the way down to "will you delete my comment?"): http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml also, some winding threads are really interesting (and vacuous ones are easy to skip) -- i don't know if it's worth the tradeoff to cull them. (yes, i'm replying to the top-modded post so my comment goes above the fold.)
  - jacquesm 18y ago
    There must be some way to get a 'best of breed' without going through all the growing pains and frustration that come with setting up a community and then to see the inmates take over the asylum. I also like to think that /. and HN appeal to a completely different audience, and the whole 'points' thing may be detrimental to that. As far as I'm concerned it could be completely under water (as in invisible to users of the site) and just used as a way to give/remove functionality and to influence sort orders and things like that.
jacquesm 18y ago
is this the shortlist on how not to behave on HN ?
- GavinB 18y ago
  Well, are any of the individual activities by themselves bad things to do? Most of them don't actively detract from the discussion, they're just a bit selfish and egotistical in aggregate.
  - jacquesm 18y ago
    They make the 'score' the goal, whereas the goal is to have meaninful discussion about stuff interesting to hackers (unless I got that wrong). It's an inherent risk in any situation where a number is brought in to play, there will be people that are going to focus on maximizing that number, not on the original goal the number was supposed to help achieve.
pg 18y ago
Hmm. If people take number 6 seriously enough we may be net ahead.
- Goladus 18y ago
  And maybe not net ahead, if people take #1, #4, and #8 seriously enough. 2, 3, 5 and 7 are all fairly minor, I think. But 1 and 4 are all about popularity, and number 8 leads to shallow discussion. It seems wrong to me, to assume that anything valuable must be stated within the first two or three exchanges.
- GavinB 18y ago
  That's a fair point. It wouldn't be much of a hacker site if we didn't run the experiment just to see what happens. Sadly, I'm betting on "no measurable change."
  - unalone 18y ago
    Somebody in the first thread mentioned that he suspected an influx of witty one-liners, since they're easy to read and quickly upvoted. I'm afraid that'll be the case: we'll see a decline in good posts in favor of easily digested posts.
    - kalvin 18y ago
      I'm much more likely to read and upvote longer comments, especially when there's lots of comments in a thread, because my eye catches on them and I generally think that if someone wrote a long comment they must have put in some effort. So if enough people are like me, it won't be the one-liners that benefit.
- light3 18y ago
  1- Checked 2- Checked 3- Checked 4- Checked 5- Done 6- Did you know Bill Gates is smelly and likes hamburgers 7. Checked 8. Checked Bring forth the karma!
KaiP 18y ago
I enjoy reading interesting (#6), serious (#7), and succinct (#8) comments. Hopefully this new system will encourage such behavior.
bdfh42 18y ago
Spot On! Perhaps we should esteem those without Orange Names as (perhaps) frequent contributors to the more start-up/software related posts rather than the more generalised new items.
sam_in_nyc 18y ago
Opting out. I'd rather speak my mind then play games. You've suggested how to do both, but I can't help it if sometimes I want to reply to non-popular threads.
giles_bowkett 18y ago
orange name == massive design flaw
GHFigs 18y ago
In every case, the behavior that is encouraged is one that benefits the reader rather than the writer. I think this is a good thing. 1-3: Comments that few people ever read are inherently less valuable to the vitality of the site than comments that many people read. 4: If people are encouraged to pick their battles rather than voicing their opinion any time they have a comment box in front of them, so much the better. It means less time wasted with the same stale arguments, and perhaps fewer one-sided submissions. I concede that this relies on the fragile notion that people will be willing to acknowledge (by voting) when a comment they disagree with has merit, but I suspect this would be easier if people had more experience with higher-quality disagreement--say a 4, 5, or 6 on pg's hierarchy. 5: If a submission and thread was worth commenting in at all, it is presumably interesting enough to deserve the up voting. Not a problem. If people are discouraged from commenting on threads that they themselves do not find worth voting up, that's a good thing. If a significant number of people start commenting on and voting up stories that they themselves don't find interesting--well, at that point I'd start fearing for the survival of the human race. 6-7: Well, duh. 8: See 1-3. Long 1-on-1 discussions can be valuable to the individuals involved, but they don't provide much benefit to the site as a whole. Think about it this way: all you need to do to maintain a 3 point average is to write comments that at least two people find interesting. Just two people. All that the orange name signifies is that on average your comments are interesting to more than one other person on the site. I think that's worth rewarding.

64 points by GavinB 18y ago

swombat 18y ago

Well, I don't actually care about orange names. I think the far more useful change recently introduced is the -8 karma limit, which will prevent lynch mob behaviour when someone makes a comment which a significant number of people disagree with strongly. As for the orange name stuff, who cares. Karma is not an objective, it's a side-effect. If you do care about having an orange name, though, I agree that the algorithm is a bit dubious...

jacquesm 18y ago
Some form of meta moderation would be a good fix for that, modding down when you disagree with someone is simply cheap. If you disagree then say so (and why!), don't mod down. You can have your name in pink, purple or green for all I care it will not matter one little bit, the only thing that matters is what you have to say.
angstrom 18y ago
He's trying to avoid a redditer/digger reincarnation.
ovi256 18y ago
If a recent problem was, as I recall, downgrading of civil standards and generally, of intelligent discourse, I cannot see how downward karma capping can help. It will only encourage trolls and flamers.
- philh 18y ago
  I don't think trolls and flamers care about karma. As long as their individual posts get low enough to be out of sight, whether they're at -8 or -50 doesn't matter. Presumably users will still get banned for the same extent of trolling and flaming.
trjordan 18y ago
Karma might not be the objective, but since it determines the ordering of comments, it has a big effect on how the comments of a particular article come off. Even if nobody initially posts with an eye towards gaining karma, the most visible posts will be those with the highest karma, and they will shape the discussion. That said, karma alone cannot preserve whatever culture and social norms exist here. I like the orange names because they highlight (for better or for worse) the people that shape the discussions the most. Since it seems to be generally agreed upon that the current discussions are good, it makes sense to point out those people that have the most influence. As a way to shape social norms, it seems pretty effective.
tptacek 18y ago
You know, I think the opposite: who cares about the score on one comment? But the orange name thing follows you around. But there is way too much drama about this stuff now, so the thing to do is probably to let it go and see how it plays out over a few months.

lionhearted 18y ago

Some really great points. Couple very quick thoughts, and then ideas about your points. First, you only need to average 3.5 to be oranage if that's a concern, meaning posts around 2 or 3 don't set you back much, and just a few +10 or +20 comments here and there means you can comment totally freely and stay orange. 2. Don’t post on a front page post that already has more than a full page of text.... You’re just yelling into the void. --> I actually think this is GREAT. People won't post into an already largely full thread unless they have real insight that's bursting to get out, instead of rehashing some obvious observation. 3. When possible, reply to a highly rated comment that doesn’t already have replies. Particularly focus on getting your comment to appear "above the fold" when it is posted. This will ensure that your comment is read and enjoyed. --> If it gets abused for gamesmanship, that's ugly. However, an insightful follow-on or dissent from the top comment IS more read, and thus does create more value, and thus, more karma. But we should be vigilant as a community to these karma-jackers. 4. Don't post against the prevailing mood of a post. If the mood of that article is pro-libertarian, beware critiquing that philosophy! On the other hand, when the population is more balanced in that individual thread, feel free. In general someone who agrees is more likely to upvote than someone who disagrees, so you should get be ahead on balance. --> At first, this really upset me. I've seen a lot of warm'n'happy comments get upvoted more than an insightful point I made that I assume took heat from people with a different opinion based on the voting patterns around it. Then I realized - if you're on something controversial, it's got to either be balanced, or really good to get community respect. If people reflect for a minute before spouting talking points, that could be a good thing. 5. As soon as you make a comment, upvote the article and all of the parents to your comment. This will put your article closer to the public eye. If you want to truly join the dark side, vote down the other comments on the thread or other replies. I’ve never done this, but it’s an option. --> Yeah, could be a big problem - will be interesting to see how it plays out. 6. Say something interesting. Without this, you’ve got nothing! --> This is awesome. 7. If you’re trying to be funny or sarcastic, make it incredibly obvious. If it’s not incredibly obvious what you’re trying to say, don’t bother posting. --> I'm not everyone, but I HATE online sarcasm. It's cheap and easy to get that ANYWHERE. The internet is overflowing with sarcasm. I like that Hacker News is really an intelligent discussion place, and humor is used less frequently and more judiciously than elsewhere. 8. Don't get involved in a long discussion! This will only end with a bunch of 1 point posts that drag your average down. --> Finally, I just realized something. I try to check my comments later and see if anyone replied to me. I'm going to make more of an effort to upvote 1-karma posts that were late to the party if they offer even a bit of insight, as a way of saying thanks for keeping the discussion going. Cheers Gavin!

casta 18y ago

Orange names? I'm almost color blind and my LCD screen doesn't display the color in the right way, I never noticed the colors. :°(

nihilocrat 18y ago
Apparently they're a very, very recent addition. I of course can't speak for you, but you might be able to tell them apart because the orange ones are very dark. Compare a comment made by pg to most of the comments in this thread.

coderrr 18y ago

Something that would probably help is using javascript to track how many people have actually had your comment viewable in their browser. Then take the ratio of views to votes. Eventually you might also find that you can determine the average # of views of your comment purely based on the location of it on the page, in which case the javascript tracking would no longer be necessary. Although it's also possible that the characteristics of comment viewing are too complex to be able to simplify it to that. Also, maybe instead of a fixed score required to be orange, take a distribution of all users and only make the top X percent qualify.

nihilocrat 18y ago

At least #6 is true. Unfortunately, #7 is also true. I've noticed too many comments downvoted where the sarcasm was just too heavy for people to pick up on, apparently. Maybe it's just my personality and background, but I think HN veers too much on the side of serious.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

Alex3917 18y ago

My name isn't in orange, and yet I'm actually pretty happy with the quality of my comments when I look back through my threads page. I have a bunch of comments that I posted either to thank someone or to encourage someone or whatever, that clearly have no value to anyone else but the person I'm responding to. Certainly eliminating those would up my average comment score, and yet I'm not entirely convinced it would make the community a more pleasant place to spend time in.

jraines 18y ago

I see this as evidence that no matter what change you make to a community website, some people are going to react against it. I half expect to see a facebook group: "One Million Strong Against The New HN!"

josefresco 18y ago

1, 2, 3 and 8 are harmful to the community. There should be some sort of reward for deep conversations, commenting on unpopular stories (which would then promote them) and not simply replying to a highly rated comment so it will be "above the fold". None of this is rocket science, so I don't fault tptaceck but I hope most of this advice is not taken (except for 6+7). I always thought Digg needed a new category called "Stories that get no respect" which are picked by editors or highly rated members as quality stories and put on a special page to promote going deep on HN.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

biohacker42 18y ago

Isn't Slashdot's whole karma system designed specifically because us hackers find it irresistible to play games.

icey 18y ago

Meh. I think it's time to take an HN break for a few days until all the "Oh the humanity!" hand-wringing about the community bursting into flames has blown over.

pbrown 18y ago

I have to agree that the "orange names" are ripe for potential abuse. As someone who has read HN for over a year now, and just signed up to actively participate, the "orange names" somehow feels like encouragement for me to not participate. Maybe it's a self esteem issue (I blame my mother) but I suspect that some people will skip the "gray name" comments and only read the "orange name" comments. I know because I did, and I didn't even know what the orange was for until I dug. If I make a comment in the forest, and no one is there to hear me.... I understand what the goal was but, ultimately, I find myself longing for the old days. By the way, I upvoted the OP, and I tried to post above the fold, but the OP was too darn long. <== Sarcasm there. How'd I do?

dhouston 18y ago
and to preserve your "orangeness", you might as well fire off smartass comments as they occur to you even if they don't contribute to the conversation. it's the HN equivalent of rewarding thats-what-she-said jokes, and it'll just be a different kind of karma whoring. slashdot got this particular issue right (at least in the early 2000s, before their digg-envy took hold) by not awarding karma for anything modded up "Funny". while these "funny" comments -- usually brief and snarky or perverted -- would still appear +5, there was otherwise no long-term incentive. unfortunately there's no analogous control mechanism here (and copping slashdot's mod system altogether seems too heavyweight.) there was also a karma cap (+50?) above which your comments would start out at 2 points instead of 1; otherwise there's little point in accumulating more karma than that. their moderation faq is worth a read (skip about a third of the way down to "will you delete my comment?"): http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml also, some winding threads are really interesting (and vacuous ones are easy to skip) -- i don't know if it's worth the tradeoff to cull them. (yes, i'm replying to the top-modded post so my comment goes above the fold.)
- jacquesm 18y ago
  There must be some way to get a 'best of breed' without going through all the growing pains and frustration that come with setting up a community and then to see the inmates take over the asylum. I also like to think that /. and HN appeal to a completely different audience, and the whole 'points' thing may be detrimental to that. As far as I'm concerned it could be completely under water (as in invisible to users of the site) and just used as a way to give/remove functionality and to influence sort orders and things like that.

jacquesm 18y ago

is this the shortlist on how not to behave on HN ?

GavinB 18y ago
Well, are any of the individual activities by themselves bad things to do? Most of them don't actively detract from the discussion, they're just a bit selfish and egotistical in aggregate.
- jacquesm 18y ago
  They make the 'score' the goal, whereas the goal is to have meaninful discussion about stuff interesting to hackers (unless I got that wrong). It's an inherent risk in any situation where a number is brought in to play, there will be people that are going to focus on maximizing that number, not on the original goal the number was supposed to help achieve.

pg 18y ago

Hmm. If people take number 6 seriously enough we may be net ahead.

Goladus 18y ago
And maybe not net ahead, if people take #1, #4, and #8 seriously enough. 2, 3, 5 and 7 are all fairly minor, I think. But 1 and 4 are all about popularity, and number 8 leads to shallow discussion. It seems wrong to me, to assume that anything valuable must be stated within the first two or three exchanges.
GavinB 18y ago
That's a fair point. It wouldn't be much of a hacker site if we didn't run the experiment just to see what happens. Sadly, I'm betting on "no measurable change."
- unalone 18y ago
  Somebody in the first thread mentioned that he suspected an influx of witty one-liners, since they're easy to read and quickly upvoted. I'm afraid that'll be the case: we'll see a decline in good posts in favor of easily digested posts.
  - kalvin 18y ago
    I'm much more likely to read and upvote longer comments, especially when there's lots of comments in a thread, because my eye catches on them and I generally think that if someone wrote a long comment they must have put in some effort. So if enough people are like me, it won't be the one-liners that benefit.
light3 18y ago
1- Checked 2- Checked 3- Checked 4- Checked 5- Done 6- Did you know Bill Gates is smelly and likes hamburgers 7. Checked 8. Checked Bring forth the karma!

KaiP 18y ago

I enjoy reading interesting (#6), serious (#7), and succinct (#8) comments. Hopefully this new system will encourage such behavior.

bdfh42 18y ago

Spot On! Perhaps we should esteem those without Orange Names as (perhaps) frequent contributors to the more start-up/software related posts rather than the more generalised new items.

sam_in_nyc 18y ago

Opting out. I'd rather speak my mind then play games. You've suggested how to do both, but I can't help it if sometimes I want to reply to non-popular threads.

giles_bowkett 18y ago

orange name == massive design flaw

GHFigs 18y ago

In every case, the behavior that is encouraged is one that benefits the reader rather than the writer. I think this is a good thing. 1-3: Comments that few people ever read are inherently less valuable to the vitality of the site than comments that many people read. 4: If people are encouraged to pick their battles rather than voicing their opinion any time they have a comment box in front of them, so much the better. It means less time wasted with the same stale arguments, and perhaps fewer one-sided submissions. I concede that this relies on the fragile notion that people will be willing to acknowledge (by voting) when a comment they disagree with has merit, but I suspect this would be easier if people had more experience with higher-quality disagreement--say a 4, 5, or 6 on pg's hierarchy. 5: If a submission and thread was worth commenting in at all, it is presumably interesting enough to deserve the up voting. Not a problem. If people are discouraged from commenting on threads that they themselves do not find worth voting up, that's a good thing. If a significant number of people start commenting on and voting up stories that they themselves don't find interesting--well, at that point I'd start fearing for the survival of the human race. 6-7: Well, duh. 8: See 1-3. Long 1-on-1 discussions can be valuable to the individuals involved, but they don't provide much benefit to the site as a whole. Think about it this way: all you need to do to maintain a 3 point average is to write comments that at least two people find interesting. Just two people. All that the orange name signifies is that on average your comments are interesting to more than one other person on the site. I think that's worth rewarding.