
Hacking the Hivemind: Predicting Comment Karma on Internet Forums (2014) [pdf] - lainon
http://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2014/Daria%20Lamberson,Leo%20Martel,%20Simon%20Zheng,Hacking%20the%20Hivemind.pdf
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lacampbell
I think karma mechanisms have had a net negative effect on online discussion.
I don't want to have preconceived notion on how I should feel about a post - I
want to make my own decisions. There's no escaping it now though, which is
sad.

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a1studmuffin
I'd love to see an automated karma system that scored posts on correct
grammar, spelling and readability. I guess that would discourage non-native
speakers of a language from participating though.

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slau
I don't think we should be overly PC. If someone doesn't understand the
English language well enough to not write all of their thoughts in a single,
unpunctuated wall of text, and doesn't rely on the red squiggly lines to
indicate that something was misspelt... How exactly will they contribute to
the discussion in a way that will be constructive and positive?

I'm not saying that their ideas aren't worthwhile, but simply that the medium
won't allow for those ideas to be presented in an engaging manner.

There's a huge difference between the wall-of-text full of typos and
misspellings (which seem to become the weapon of choice of native speakers as
well), and the misuse of pronouns, or forgetting which word is an irregular
preterit. I, for one, would be in favour of seeing the former ranked lower.

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mrlyc
That article reminds me of The Auditors in Terry Pratchett's "The Thief of
Time" who try to analyse a painting by reducing it to its component molecules.

There is no mention of tailoring comments and replies to the target audience.
Once I adopted the mindset of a senior high school or college student and
posted accordingly, I was able to increase my karma on Reddit from 1,000 per
year to 1,000 per month.

I still haven't managed to crack Hacker News, though. Tough audience.

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rosalinekarr
> I still haven't managed to crack Hacker News, though. Tough audience.

Just link a bunch of studies to anything you say.[^1] It doesn't actually
matter if they're related.[^2] No one really checks the sources anyway.[^3]

[^1]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.02876](https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.02876)

[^2]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02728](https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02728)

[^3]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.03799](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.03799)

~~~
Xcelerate
Haha no way. My highest rated posts have all been some vapid feel-good thing
that I posted shortly after an article was submitted to HN. My detailed
explanations that link to studies rarely get more than 10 points (same
phenomenon occurs on Quora as well actually...)

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3131s
I always wonder how much these factors affect a comment's score:

* Proximity to the top of the page

* Time of day posted

* Number of sibling comments and the score of those comments

On reddit, for example, it seems impossible to get noticed once there are
already a few highly-upvoted replies to the comment you're replying to.

~~~
fudged71
I've been kicking myself that I didn't take sociology in university to study
conversational dynamics on threaded internet forums. It continues to fascinate
me

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crispytx
"one could optimize karma by posting a long, pessimistic reply to a brand-new
article."

I knew it! Everybody on the internet is an asshole!

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chrisallick
This seems like a really fun project to try and reproduce!

~~~
minimaxir
I wrote a blog post along similar lines around when the orignal paper was
published: [http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-
comments/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/)

Unfortunately, since comment scores are _still_ omitted from the API, it would
be hard to modernize this analysis. (and the algorithms have _definitely_
changed over the years)

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Etheryte
Needs a [2014] in the title.

