
An elegant mathematical solution against fluff on News.YC - andreyf
Make user's voting power a function of their submission karma, or their account age, or post length and score. How about a formula like:<p>voting power = log_a(submit karma) + log_b(account age) + log_c(avg[log_d(length)*score])<p>With bases a, b, c, and d picked appropriately. It would seem a &#62; b &#62; c would make sense.<p>The first term rewards those with good judgment as to what others find interesting, the second stops one group of think-alikes from dominating opinion, the third rewards long+insightful posts and "punishes" shorter posts (but not too much, with appropriate d). And by rewards, I mean trusts to know what is fluff and what is not.<p>This also gives a clear incentive for people to write thought-out posts, which is important - this is, at heart, a psychological problem more than a sorting problem.<p>Of course, the real hacker spirited solution would be to let people make/share their own such formulas to make their own front pages, but I'm not sure if Paul has the time to implement that.
======
mixmax
A few notes:

1) Users with an old account do not necessarily write better comments or post
better stories than recent arrivals.

2) Length doesn't equal insightfulness. There might be some correlation, but
not a lot. This comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110034> is three
characters and has a vote of 57.

I like the idea of people being able to write their own formulas and share
them. Especially in a forum like this :-)

~~~
bayareaguy
_I like the idea of people being able to write their own formulas and share
them._

I don't know how flexible YC News is but it would be great if each user could
express their own individual ordering preference relations in their profile.

~~~
mixmax
maybe even a modding system for the modding systems...

------
bculler
The MetaForum messageboard software has been doing this for years. Everyone
gets to vote, but people's voting power is determined in turn by how valuable
to the community they are. It removes the need for moderators entirely, and
completely eliminates the ability for spammers to thrive.

Their formula bases a large amount of worth simply on how their posts have
been modded in the past, but then also include things like post count and a
decaying value on length of time.

------
fiaz
News.YC is a community. Our individual behaviour taken as a collective is what
constitutes the dynamics that emerge. There are benefits to both maintaining
an organic element of letting the community choose for themselves and to
having some mathematical/code-based governance.

At the same time, there are a number of assumptions in both the formula above
(as well as the title mind you) and its description that are more in favor of
eliminating the diversity. This could detract from the whole user experience.
While I personally don't like the fluff, the diversity it affords us all more
valuable than having our contributions be governed by an equation...

------
Raphael
> Of course, the real hacker spirited solution would be to let people
> make/share their own such formulas to make their own front pages, but I'm
> not sure if Paul has the time to implement that.

I have this in my roadmap for Vortices, see
<http://vortices.appjet.net/node/obj-LBlNDy7Ow>

------
Prrometheus
A simple weighting equation? Where's the "elegance"?

~~~
Hexstream
Elegant in the sense that you apply one general formula instead of hacks
(managing things manually is a hack, yes?).

------
paulgb
I think ideally, karma should just be there for feedback for the poster and
the reader. Paradoxically, the only reason karma is meaningful is that it is
useless - there is no incentive to game the system. If more karma means more
power, there is an incentive to post to get karma instead of posting to help
the community.

If you don't believe that incentivising karma is a bad thing, try this thought
experiment: if you gave away $1.00 for each karma point earned, would the
quality of the content go up or down? You can add some conditions if you think
the experiment is unfair, but I think you would still find that the quality
would be reduced with incentives.

Ultimately, 99% of the users are just like you and I and do not want to see
news.yc turn into another digg/reddit. Why not take advantage of that, instead
of treating it like a technical problem when it is really a community issue.

~~~
mightybyte
> If more karma means more power, there is an incentive to post to get karma
> instead of posting to help the community.

One could argue that in the current community, posting to get karma and
posting to help the community are one and the same. Reddit's downfall came
more because of a change in the composition of the community than because of
karma incentives. At the same time, you're right about the problems of people
trying to get karma for karma's sake. I think the best way to reduce this
problem is to make it harder to gain karma than just by posting popular links.

> Ultimately, 99% of the users are just like you and I and do not want to see
> news.yc turn into another digg/reddit. Why not take advantage of that,
> instead of treating it like a technical problem when it is really a
> community issue.

You're right. It is a community issue. But as soon as the "hordes of 14-year-
olds" invade, the 99% you cite will drop. The current technical solution
doesn't prevent that from happening. We're trying to find one that does.

------
tim2
No. But, weigh comment karma a lot more than submit karma and it might be
alright.

~~~
ghiotion
Is comment karma tracked differently than submit karma?

------
kajecounterhack
How about forcing new users who want to contribute to go through a bit of a
logic test? Perhaps answer some simple questions before signing up, to ensure
they're at least a little alive where it counts?

------
yters
It'd be interesting if the weighting algorithm was somehow exposed to your
account so you could mess with it.

------
yters
Another thought: I think the karma score should also represent rate, instead
of just weight. Otherwise the first people here become entrenched in the
leader board. A static hierarchy seems pretty unhackerish.

~~~
rms
PG responded to this thought previously, saying that karma inflation takes
care of it.

~~~
yters
What is karma inflation?

~~~
rms
Over time karma is worth less, because a popular story will get 20 or 50 or
100 points when it might have only gotten 7 points when this site was just
getting started

~~~
yters
The problem with this is that Hacker News isn't supposed to grow very big.

~~~
mightybyte
Bingo. I think that's the key. And therein lies the problem. How does one keep
a community small and high-quality without losing diversity.

------
chez17
Good idea. There is a 'conflict of interests' when you give the length of the
comment a value. It will give people incentive to write longer comments for
unnecessary reasons, which is the definition of fluff.

------
edw519
c.disagree : concise > ramble

------
aggieben
Where's the MathML? =P

------
ArcticCelt
The everybody will put: date of birth = 1800

