
Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when? - frisco
I've just been a little curious about this recently, since I've noticed things appearing that weren't there before.  I now have a "flag" link under the title on comments pages, and can set a topcolor in my profile.  What becomes unlockable, and what are the milestones to each?
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brandonkm
At 250 apparently you can change the color of the bar on the top.

6 more points to go!

*Thanks to everyone who voted this up. I can now confirm that this is indeed legit. On your settings page you can enter a six digit hexadecimal number that will change the color of the top bar. I'm going to try some of these out! <http://www.somacon.com/cgi/colorchart.pl>

~~~
maxwell
<http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors>

~~~
bd
Cool, it looks like these are actual live topcolors from HN database (distinct
colors set in preferences by all users).

I made a color map sorted on hues and lightness:
<http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/hn/colors.png>

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cdibona
This is pretty interesting to me. When karma was implemented at /. we used to
expose the number, but then the number became why people did things on /. Then
we obscured the number by replacing it with english words like "excellent" for
the top karma scores, then we started paying off in terms of allow people to
moderate and meta-moderate. It was pretty neat at the time, but I have to
admit I like HNs system. It seems like it embraces the karma rather than
obscuring it as some kind of necessary but lamentable side effect, which is
how it sometimes felt at /.

~~~
nailer
I always, always, wanted /. to announce the 'excellent' in the Mortal Kombat
voice.

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bouncingsoul
20 karma – downvote comments.

200 karma – make polls (<http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll>).

250 karma – customize the top bar background color.

??? karma – flag posts and comments (on their individual page).

~~~
frisco
Flagging is much lower; somewhere in the 100s.

~~~
gravitycop
_Flagging is much lower; somewhere in the 100s._

It's 51, the same as downvote.

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CalmQuiet
My question would be: why the secrecy? HN worried that transparency about the
processes of ratings & their "rewards" (which (plus + $5.00) will buy you a
cappuccino) would lead to abuse of the system? I think openness system would
allow for HN viewers to discuss the value of different site-karma processes --
enabling the site designers (and all of us) to benefit more from the
community's collective genius and experience (on this issue the way it does on
others).

~~~
pg
It's simpler than you think. As moderately dangerous new features got added, I
gave them karma thresholds to avoid abuse. Since there's no man page there's
nowhere to list them all. Most got explained individually in News News though.

~~~
CalmQuiet
Thanks for the reply. That leads me rather automatically to rephrase my
question: "Why no man page?" And (sorry to be such a newb) what is News News?
Do you mean just <http://news.ycombinator.com/news> ? If so the SEARCH
button/form is proving hard for me to find !?¿?!

~~~
frisco
There is no search. See: searchyc.com

~~~
CalmQuiet
Great lead, frisco. Perhaps if they eventually get stable and maybe offers
some "advanced search" YC will want to incorporate it into HN site. [or at
least put a link to it atop HN page - why should visitors have to ask a
question to know where to go for a search feature?] It's speed seems excellent
(early on a Monday morning).

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lani0
your destiny unlocks with karma. it ensures that in your next re-incarnation,
you do not come back as a Digg user

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sanj
This reminds me of a band that gave out stamps when you came to their
concerts.

The top levels were awesome:

30 Stamps: Special Date #1 Dinner and dancing with Dave.

36 Stamps: Special Date #2. Dinner and dancing with either Jean, Mike, or
Murray.

50 Stamps: Ass Brand. The Frühead gets the Früvous budgie-dog (Larry Boniface
Clebdon) branded on their ass. This is administered by a member of the band.

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rms
You've won everything you're going to get. Congratulations.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
No, I believe there's a higher threshold yet to post polls.

~~~
robertk
How do you post polls?

I'm in like...the top 250...I should be able to.

~~~
frisco
<http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll>

~~~
jyothi
Thanks! I wanted this so many times earlier. Never figured how to post a poll.

This should have been exposed from the submit link.

~~~
SwellJoe
_This should have been exposed from the submit link._

I believe this is a not so subtle way to discourage gratuitous use of polls.
I, for one, think that having it be an invisible feature is a great win for
human decency--the knowledge that it is there prevents people from "vote up
if" posts, but having it hidden doesn't remind people constantly that they can
run polls to their heart's content. Since polls are almost universally free of
useful content, but people _still_ love to create them, this is, perhaps, the
best that can be done.

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walterk
I have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect
the score. Which is to say, I click on the downvote, and the points go down by
one, but upon reloading the page, the score is the same as before.

(And yes, it's happened enough times that I know it isn't just someone voting
the comment back up in the intervening period.)

~~~
gravitycop
_I have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect
the score._

It's part of karma-grump protection. One's downvotes do not count, unless he
upvotes first and at least as many times. If you run across something you want
to downvote, first find something else to upvote. If you want to rack up
downvote ammo to spare, upvote often. For example, if you upvote 10 times in a
row, you will have 10 downvotes available. After that, your downvotes will no
longer count, unless and until you do more upvoting.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301>

 _I'm considering adding an additional layer of protection against grumps: to
only allow users as many downvotes as they've made upvotes. That way each
user's net contribution to the global karma would be at least neutral._

~~~
_5y6p
Thanks for pointing this out. I suspect there may be something genuinely
broken with my downvoting, though, because despite having only upvoted for a
good while, my downvotes continue to not count.

Alternatively, HN is keeping a backlog of my uncounted downvotes, and counting
them in order as I make more upvotes. Thus, as long as there's a backlog, any
new downvote I make will initially not count.

Personally, I think the >=0 net karma rule goes too far. I've tended to
downvote more than I upvote because I drift towards policing behavior (not
"grumpness": not all people who downvote more than they upvote can be
classified as grumps, which is a highly subjective notion anyway), and
generally have high standards for what I consider worthy of an upvote. Social
moderation systems have to account for the variety of sociological roles. Not
to mention, the net karma of the _site_ may be negative, but a >=0 rule will
never allow this state to be represented.

It is also impossible to determine what my net karma contribution is, and thus
that the >=0 rule is even in effect. Net karma contribution should appear on a
user's profile page, or at the top menu bar. I shouldn't be expected to track
my karma contribution manually.

~~~
gravitycop
_because despite having only upvoted for a good while, my downvotes continue
to not count. [...] I drift towards policing behavior_

If you have downvoted a single user many times in a row, you might have
triggered an anti-karma-bombing feature.
[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+karma+...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+karma+bombing+%22by+pg%22)
I would email pg at this site to inquire, and be ready to apologize if an
apology seemed called for. Good luck.

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kwamenum86
Every two weeks it seems like someone writes this post and it hits the top 10.
Astounding.

~~~
rms
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404872>

There was one a month ago

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giles_bowkett
At 600+ karma, you get infinite bonus mushrooms and infinite ammo. You have to
beat the game twice on impossible mode in the military suit and max out all
your guns, though, even the stupid one that takes forever to fire and then the
zombie eats your head because you were sitting there trying to warm it up
instead of shooting zombies, which would have been the logical thing to do.

At 1000+ karma, you take off your helmet and guess what you're a chick. If you
win three times in a row on impossible mode with perfect karma without getting
shot once, using nothing but the annoying gun that takes forever, you take off
your armor and guess what you're a hot chick. Then you can play the game again
wearing a bikini.

At 2000+ karma, Paul Graham comes to your house, tells you the meaning of
life, and makes you a sandwich. It is the best sandwich known to man. Only
rich people can make this sandwich.

~~~
pg
These numbers are way too low. I'd have to have gone to 94 people's houses and
made them sandwiches. (I already explained the meaning of life in a footnote
in "Great Hackers.")

~~~
prakash
_[3] I think this is what people mean when they talk about the "meaning of
life." On the face of it, this seems an odd idea. Life isn't an expression;
how could it have meaning? But it can have a quality that feels a lot like
meaning. In a project like a compiler, you have to solve a lot of problems,
but the problems all fall into a pattern, as in a signal. Whereas when the
problems you have to solve are random, they seem like noise._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

~~~
gravitycop
The text linked to the footnote:

 _Nasty Little Problems

It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those
where instead of solving a few big, clear, problems, you have to solve a lot
of nasty little ones. One of the worst kinds of projects is writing an
interface to a piece of software that's full of bugs. Another is when you have
to customize something for an individual client's complex and ill-defined
needs. To hackers these kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts.

The distinguishing feature of nasty little problems is that you don't learn
anything from them. Writing a compiler is interesting because it teaches you
what a compiler is. But writing an interface to a buggy piece of software
doesn't teach you anything, because the bugs are random. [3]_

