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Ask HN: What are the HN karmic privileges/penalties?
Quoth "jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ":
"You can only downvote comments once you have sufficient karma. The required level rises over time to account for the karma inflation caused by an increasing userbase."
"high average score on your comments will give your comments preference in the search order (this is part of the ‘secret sauce’)."
"If there are no real big benefits to having a good or even excellent karma you might want to conclude that it doesn’t matter at all, but that is definitely not the case, since having ‘bad’ karma (< 0) will negatively impact your ability to interact with the site."
The italics in the last one are mine since I'm not entirely sure what that means.
I have also heard that at some karma level HNers get to change the colour of their topbar. How jolly!
Do we have a comprehensive list? If the levels are subject to inflation then perhaps a correspondingly definitive "price guide" can't accompany it, but any information would be interesting, out of date or not.
- UnoriginalGuy 13y agoNobody could make a list since as you yourself said it changes day by day. A few months ago downvoting seems to have appeared at around 1000~ for me.
- JDGM 13y ago"Nobody could make a list since as you yourself said it changes day by day." Not quite. I'm asking what the privileges/penalties are, which I believe can be listed. An additional second column for the accompanying thresholds, sure, they change so maybe not.
- UnoriginalGuy 13y agoNo way the admins will release that. It would be a goldmine for spammers. Just get their account up to X karma and it is worth twice as much for resale.
- mschuster91 13y agoThe problem will just be to get enough karma. Imagine 1000 karma as target, which 'd require to create quite a lot of different users to not trigger any automated spam filters; also the to-be-upvoted account would need to post good, relevant content so that those with enough karma don't flag or downvote it.
- JDGM 13y agoRight. I feel we're talking past each other a bit here. The topic is titled "Ask HN: What are the HN karmic privileges/penalties?" - this question is reasonably answered by returning a list akin to the following: "Comment Downvote, Poll Creation, Topbar Colour Choice, ..." The topic as stated does not ask for the thresholds. I mention in the body "correspondingly definitive "price guide"", but that's a separate afterthought.
- Toshio 13y ago> "No way the admins will release that. It would be a goldmine for spammers." Or microsoft sycophants - a growing problem on HN (just ask @cooldeal, @recoiledsnake and @fekberg).
- jtheory 13y agoYou're overstating this, I think. How much would a downvoting HN account be worth, really? Sure, a spammer could sneak in a few messages at a more visible level, or presumably down-vote their competitors, but the suddenly-abusive account would get shut down pretty swiftly. On other hand, the work required to get an account up to a significant level (say, 500+) is non-trivial, cannot be outsourced to a minimally-trained mouse-clicker, and wouldn't run cheap. It's not clear to me how it would help a spammer to know what the limit it, given that it's high enough that the work is not worthwhile.
- jordn 13y agoDownvoting appeared at 500 for me a few days ago. (502 was the first time I noticed it.)
- zerr 13y agoCan anyone(PG?) comment what's the point of non-disclosing e.g. how that search ordering is calculated? Or any other aspect of this site (if there are any other)... So far, it looks to me like the secrecy for the sake of secrecy.
- mschuster91 13y agoMaybe it is hidden deep in the source code (https://github.com/wting/hackernews https://github.com/wting/hackernews), the problem is that Arc is basically unreadable if you're used to stuff like C/C++/Java/PHP/Assembler.
- JDGM 13y agoIs that the latest source? I didn't realise it was available but when searching HN before posting the topic I did find https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=853964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=853964 ("Tell HN: How to find karma thresholds in the HN source code") so perhaps if things haven't changed much in the intervening 1298 days it'll still work.
- jrajav 13y agoIt might be the meat of it, but IIRC pg has said that he tweaks key algorithms like comment ranking on his own.
- tokenadult 13y agoThe core concepts are in the Arc source code (which I can read, with effort, even though I'm not a programmer, because it is well commented) but as another reply has already correctly pointed out, some of the current implementation on Hacker News includes "secret sauce" algorithms that don't appear to have any public documentation. The ongoing effort here http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html is "making a conscious effort to resist decline," so that participants "don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."
- ecaron 13y ago
- jrajav 13y agoAs for "negatively impacting your ability to interact with the site", that refers to the practice of slowbanning and hellbanning. Slowbanning is what it sounds like - the site will be slower for you, sometimes just a little and sometimes a lot. The idea there is to subconsciously encourage you to visit the site less and to contribute less when you do. Hellbanning is more extreme. When you're hellbanned, nothing you contribute will be visible to anyone else, but it won't look like anything's wrong to you. (However, people with enough karma can elect to see your contributions regardless. This is why you'll sometimes see people kindly pointing out someone's hellbanned state.)
- JDGM 13y ago"Slowbanning is what it sounds like - the site will be slower for you, sometimes just a little and sometimes a lot. The idea there is to subconsciously encourage you to visit the site less and to contribute less when you do." That's hysterical. Hellbanning I'd heard of, but that...that's brilliant. Thanks very much too for directly addressing that specific bit of my OP :)
- kmfrk 13y agoIt might be, up until the point where you're on the receiving end of it.
- gingerlime 13y agoThat's really interesting to know. I'm very curious about the technical aspects of slowbanning - how is this accomplished without "wasting" valuable server resources? I've asked a somehow related question[1] on stackoverflow but got no replies... maybe this can help solve the mystery? [1]http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15131671/throttling-http-api-calls-with-delay http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15131671/throttling-http-...
- brudgers 13y agoMy inference (from hellbanning and rumors of a unique YC alumni topbar) is that there is a closure over each username. If that is the case, then http requests can be assigned various priorities within the queue...or the closure could include something equivalent to: (let ((sleep 1000)... Closures would certainly be a lispy way of doing things.
- pooriaazimi 13y agoAnother factor in ranking of comments (apart from "average karma" of the poster, and of course the points it's received) is simply its length! The longer, the more it counts. I think it's there to promote deep and lengthy discourse, not one-line, "Stupid article. I stopped reading at [x]" kind of comment. Source: experience.
- jahewson 13y agoDownvotes currently require > 500 karma. Topbar color change is maybe 250.. I don't remember exactly.
- JDGM 13y agoAha! I think it is 250. I recently passed that, and after your post clicked my username to check...voila it's there. This will keep me amused for the next 2~20 minutes.
- Achshar 13y agoHow can the top bar color change be of any use?
- JDGM 13y agoI just set mine to 212121 and, rather topically, now I can't make out from the top right corner how much karma I have. I suppose that could be used to remind a person that they've got work to do instead of checking if anyone has upvoted their stuff.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jtheory 13y agoI didn't realize changing the color of the top bar was a karma-sensitive bonus -- when I first heard about it, I checked and it was already in my profile. So: it's not for super-high karma users only! I got comment downvoting at 500 karma, I think; and my karma is still < 1K, but note that the downvote limit may now be 1K (I'm assuming they don't revoke the ability from users in the gap every time they bump the level). AFAIK there's nothing special waiting for me at 1K (or any other level), though I admit I'd be slightly encouraged to participate more if there were.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoIf your karma is high enough, you can downvote stories.
- elliottcarlson 13y agoMust be a pretty high up privilege then.
- StavrosK 13y agoNot that high up; I'm able to downvote stories. The ability to spread misinformation requires > 10K, though, I think.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoHaha, nice one! @elliott: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#downvotearticle http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#downvoteart...
- elliottcarlson 13y agoThat's what I figured, thanks ;)
- DanBC 13y ago> AFAIK there's nothing special waiting for me at 1K (or any other level), though I admit I'd be slightly encouraged to participate more if there were. I know what you mean. I'm mostly glad there isn't because karma-farming is probably harmful for HN. There are a few people who submit a lot of articles from mid-quality sources. Sometimes they get lucky and those articles get many upvotes; mostly those articles just get a few votes. But it only takes a few people doing this to flood (https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) and that's a shame, because it means I miss the great articles from obscure sources. Someone had a show HN recently which removed all the dross. It was called something like 'lessmeme'. Maybe some filter so that all the traditional blog sites get aged quicker than other sources might help?
- mikecane 13y agoI don't understand this obsession with how this site works. You shouldn't be worrying about karma or why things are made [dead]. Just contribute the most interesting stuff and things will take care of themselves naturally.
- klez 13y ago> I don't understand this obsession with how this site works Isn't this hacker news? If we don't obsess about how things work, who will?
- mikecane 13y agoHahaha. OK, point taken!
- JDGM 13y agoI thought that sounded reasonable until I considered "You shouldn't be worrying about X or why Y. Just contribute Z and things will take care of themselves naturally". I agree with the X and Z parts for some values, but think I disagree with the Y part outright. Always question why!
- GHFigs 13y agoAt 400 you get to downvote. At 401 you get to apologize for accidentally downvoting someone. At 419 you get lucrative business opportunities. At 420 you get baked. At 451 you get [deleted]. At 777 you get lucky. At 1337 "they" teach you the Secret Handshake Deal Protocol. At 1999 you have to update a million lines of COBOL in order to advance. At 2010 you get to complain that Hacker News is turning into Reddit. At 2600 you get to make free long distance calls. At 3003 you get your TI-83 taken away and returned to you at the end of class. At 4352 you get to get to post a jokey self-referential comment without anybody complaining that Hacker News is turning into Reddit.
- StavrosK 13y agoThis is inaccurate, and just the sort of post you would expect nowadays on HN. It's turning into reddit.
- TillE 13y agoWhile I strongly object to jokes and mindless comments on serious topics, there's really not a lot to say or any interesting discussion to be had on this particular subject. Lightly mocking that doesn't really detract from anything, not on this post.
- StavrosK 13y agoThat was my thinking as well, this post is light enough that we can all unwind and joke around.
- JDGM 13y agoCompletely agreed. Tenuously on topic, if Hacker News had - shudder - badges, then today I would have earned something like "Lightweight: posted something of sufficient triviality to attract a joker".
- milkshakes 13y agoTo be fair, it's not exactly a new trend: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=439129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=439129
- AndrewDucker 13y agoI'm not sure what level you have to be at to get the ability to Flag stories. I do know that using it too much will get it turned off for you (as that happened to me). I had been assuming that Flagging stories was the right thing to do (as they don't have downvotes, and we're told not to comment negatively on them), but apparently you can have too much of a good thing!