
YC.News Lesson: Lose over 50 Karma points in a matter of minutes! - mattjaynes
http://blog.nanobeepers.com/2007/05/11/ycnews-lesson-lose-over-50-karma-points-in-a-matter-of-minutes/
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Sam_Odio
Just clarify what I'm sure some might suspect - Matt, I definitely didn't vote
you down to keep you into second place ;)

I've noticed this happen a couple times to users on the leader board - and
it's definitely not cool. Karma shouldn't be that important...

I'll try & read through your comments to repair the damage.

~~~
mattjaynes
He he, thanks. I have no idea who would be so motivated, but you were
definitely NOT suspect with me!

No worries, just an experiment - new data, even if negative, is good ;)

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pg
I found out who did this and zeroed their karma, which will take away their
down arrow. Will add protections against this. Also fixed your karma.

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Tichy
Is karma for people even useful? Personally I rarely ever look at a person's
profile, and if I do, I'll probably click on their "submissions" overview
anyway.

Therefore for me, points on messages would be sufficient.

That way it would not be possible to frustrate users by depleting their karma
(second time I witness this on news.yc, last time it was juwo).

~~~
Goladus
I've found it relatively useful as feedback. It's sort of fun to see which
posts get points, which don't, and which get tased.

If a solution to problem is necessary, I would first suggest scrambling the
order of the leader board and hiding the Karma. At least, hide the Karma from
the leader board listing itself. That would preserve recognition for the top
contributors but there'd be less competition for the #1 spot.

Oh, and I like being able to downmod a post that was stealth-edited after I
made a response for the sole purpose of saving face at my expense.

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npk
Possible Solution:

Make people lose karma when they click the down arrow.

~~~
brett
Or maybe downmods just don't count toward karma. Or count _way_ less.

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whacked_new
i'm against downmodding. i wrote here about a relative popularity system
before; i'm all for relative-everything.

you don't need to downmod; you just need to be relatively worse. what happens
to new users you ask? that's dealt with by another method; sticks out tongue.

but i think downmodding looks like something tacked on as an afterthought,
being an opposite of "upmodding." when you're broke, you don't have money.
when you're in debt, you still don't have money. if some comment is modded -3,
it's bad. -50 is bad too. but you don't really care that one is 47 _more_ bad
than the other. while there is a case for, say, making a severly bad comment
that just takes away all your credibility, first of all it's unlikely that
would be the doing of a sane user, and thus the second, such a user is
probably something of a troll; if your service is open-registration, there's
nothing to prevent said troll from registering again, receiving zero credit,
essentially excusing themselves of all debt. it just violates common sense.

i would go on but i'm teetering right now. in conclusion, abolish downmodding.

~~~
whacked_new
Apologies for redundancy but I make a contradiction right here.

I'm against downmodding _beyond zero_.

~~~
ecuzzillo
That wouldn't fix the current situation, since if you wanted to reduce
somebody's karma, you just downmod their positive submissions. Almost all
submissions are positive, so nevermind. People with mostly negative
submissions are probably spammers anyway.

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juwo
I am halfway thru writing an unpopular article on karma points. when it's
done, I shall submit it here, so that my karma will remain below zero.

Also see <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15554>

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aquarin
Ok I do it. Just as proof of concept that all the karma system is completely
broken. Now I up voted your comments mattjaynes. It seems to me that all the
karma concept have to be reinvented in new and robust way.

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jkush
I think karma points function a bit like an "efficient market" Your karma
points are what they are. In the long run, everything evens out to what they
should be.

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rokhayakebe
What happened is that someone was offended by one of your comments and they go
around and make sure that you loose points. the worst thing is that some of
them will follow you for a couple of days and keep doing this. The best
solution is to simply write a script that counts how many time we voted down
the same user's comments and do a ratio.

