
Ask HN: Avg. replaced Karma in top bar? - olalonde
Is this a bug or feature? Am I the only one getting this?
======
raganwald
I'm not crazy about average points per comment. If you make a good comment
very early on a popular post, you get a lot more karma for your comment than
if you make the exact same comment late in the posts's life or worse still on
an unpopular post. That's fine, exposing good things to fewer eyeballs is less
valuable, and that's why you get less karma for it. But if it gets a few
upvotes it's still helping someone, somewhere.

However, average karma per post gently nudges us towards avoiding
circumstances where a comment might get low karma, such as on a post that is
less popular.

Whereas, total karma encourages users to let a thousand flowers bloom. There's
a disincentive to post anything that might get downvoted, and that's fine, but
otherwise there's no harm in making a comment anywhere and not worrying about
whether your seed has fallen on fertile ground.

You could "fix' things by weighting karma per post by eyeballs, or disregard
average karma per post. I choose the latter course as I'm not a moderator and
even if I were I'm unsure how the number relates to behaviour HN is trying to
encourage.

~~~
smiler
Or you could not just worry about your karma score, or your average and just
post when you think you've got something to say and say it. I don't get the
obsession with karma and people getting annoyed when they get down voted. Be
yourself and if people disagree so be it

~~~
mkr-hn
HN is based on karma--you only get access to certain features at given
thresholds. It's something you have to care about if you ever want to be able
to make full use of the site.

I think a time-based system might go along with karma well. If you stay above
a certain level for long enough, you get access to the next feature level.

You still have to work your way up the karma tree, but you're not doing it for
the features.

~~~
grandalf
wait, what are these levels? I don't know if I have ever been aware of this
other than just the downvote privilege based on average comment score.

~~~
mkr-hn
I don't know of any others aside from the poll privilege, but it works whether
there's one or 100 levels.

------
pg
Don't worry, it's just an experiment.

Since this may cause people to care about comment averages, here's how they're
calculated:

    
    
        ; Ignore the most recent 5 comments since they may still be gaining votes.
        ; Also ignore the highest-scoring comment, since possibly a fluff outlier.
    
        (def comment-score (user)
          (aif (check (nthcdr 5 (comments user 50)) [len> _ 10])
               (avg (cdr (sort > (map !score (rem !deleted it)))))
               nil))
    

Comment averages are updated asynchronously.

~~~
sorbus
As part of your experiments, have you also changed the downvote threshold, or
modified it to be based on average karma, not total karma? I ask because I
notice that I've lost the ability to downvote - not that I'm especially
irritated, as I'm of the opinion that downvotes are generally not an
especially good thing, as they can encourage negative behaviors, but just
wondering.

~~~
ximeng
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853529>

Downvote threshold now 500. Glad I got to the old threshold (201) in time to
see how it worked.

Think my possible upvote demographic for this comment is the set of all Hacker
News users between 201 and 500 karma.

~~~
ElliotH
I'm dissapointed its been increased. I try and only speak when I have
something especially interesting to say. But I regularly vote and in my
opinion, vote sensibly. Its a shame to be penalised for quietness.

------
alexandros
Here's how avg. karma has affected my behaviour (including its before the
latest change, moreso now):

My average at this moment is 7.64. By giving all this weight to avg. karma,
the message from the site to the users is clear: "higher avg. karma is better,
work to improve yours". In my case, this means I should make a comment only if
I expect it to get 8 upvotes or more. This in turn means that I should not
respond to replies to my comments, as they rarely get to 8+. I should also not
reply to articles late in the game as it's unlikely to get to the threshold
also. So what will I respond to? Early threads where I feel I can make a
contribution. It is also unlikely that I will make 'eccentric' comments that
are a risk in terms of votes, but may help break the echo chamber as this
behaviour is not encouraged. The only other case I may make a comment is when
I feel strongly enough about something that I am willing to take the hit, as
in the case of this comment.

Now, many will say that I should ignore karma altogether and that I should
just participate in the community as if it didn't exist. For one thing, this
is orthogonal to the discussion here. pg has made this change to alter the
community's behaviour, therefore he expects it to have an impact. Even if I
chose to disregard it, nothing will change in the general case. Secondly,
poster avg. karma affects ordering of comments and therefore the impact that
your comments have. So it materially affects your experience in this
community, and when I have something to say that I feel needs to be said, I
benefit from it having the highest possible impact. This makes me care about
avg. karma in all other situations.

On the other hand, submitting articles is not subject to such pressures, so I
will happily continue doing that.

~~~
follower
> This in turn means that I should not respond to replies to my comments, as
> they rarely get to 8+.

To me this is the biggest negative. A useful but non-controversial threadlet
between members towards the end of a submission's life is IMO beneficial to
the community overall but will be worse for average karma for participants.

I'll live with the lower average karma if it means still benefitting from the
community in a way average-karma-targeting replies don't.

------
pg
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853658>

~~~
olalonde
Would it be possible to include both karma and avg. on the top bar or simply
chose which one to display. I like the karma on top for 2 reasons:

1\. When your karma goes up/down, it's a good indication that you might have
replies to your most recent comments.

2\. Karma seems to be updated not so frequently.

I like the idea though of encouraging a good ratio vs total karma.

~~~
pg
Ok, now both are displayed.

~~~
plinkplonk
Now, if we could only see other peoples average karma .

Total Karma of a user can be seen on his profile page. Afaik there is no way
to see another users average karma, unless he is on the leaderboard, which
uses total karma as the ranking metric.

~~~
pg
Ok, now everyone's comment avg is visible in their profile.

~~~
dwwoelfel
This discourages people from posting helpful comments that aren't likely to
get many upvotes. For example,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741408>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485254>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1349459>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1349455>

Those are all comments by me that were helpful to the parent, but which are
"punished" by the public display of avg.

~~~
techbio
More is not necessarily better though is it?

~~~
dwwoelfel
"More is better" is implicit. If the number has no meaning, then why calculate
and display it?

~~~
techbio
I don't get that more is implicitly better. It is pretty clear from a naive
glance at the list of leaders that there are diverse average points that
correlate to diverse posting styles.

If you want it scaled to fit a continuum of "bigger is always implicitly
better", a more reasonable number would be: average of (comment points/parent
points)

Even if a number has no [absolute cardinal, > x] meaning, there is still a
nominal information value to the datum.

------
sachinag
I like it - I'd really be interested in knowing what the mean and median are
for the HN community so I know if I'm contributing a lot or not pulling my
weight. Maybe a (+0.65) next to it in the top nav or something to that effect?

------
ashleyw
The current version ("741, 2.41") is nicer. I'm not a karma-whore, but it's
nice to know where I'm at.

One feature I'd love to see also, is the # of direct replies to my comments in
the head bar. Also, while we're at it, a page listing them all too. That way,
I'll know if somebody replies to a comment I made last week/month/year. For
example, in 'My dalliance with smart drugs - and the lesson I learned'
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1850750>), a few people have ordered
some of the drugs mentioned, but the story will be dead soon, so in a few
weeks, when the drugs arrive, nobody will be able to share their experiences.

~~~
sprout
One thing I _like_ a lot about HN's lack of comment replies is that a direct
reply to one person is an indirect reply to the parent, and I think that's a
valuable thing to keep. It saves re-hashing arguments in separate threads.

------
Silhouette
For what it's worth, I hope this gets changed back. Differences in karma tend
to alert me to older discussions where something is still happening. Without
either that or a Reddit-style notification when replies are made, it's going
to be even more difficult to identify the interesting threads and come back to
them after the first visit.

~~~
jamesteow
That I think is one of the more odd user experiences on the site. The envelope
indicator on Reddit is very tiny but extremely useful feature.

As of now, I have to re-read my threads in order to notice any updates.

~~~
citricsquid
I came here from reddit (I mainly browse here so it isn't as much of an issue)
and was surprised that we don't have reply notification. I spent a few weeks
ignoring replies because I wasn't notified of them, now my first port of call
is my comments page to see if anything has been added as a reply.

------
frederickcook
I think this is definitely an improvement. Putting any kind of number up there
is a game mechanic that will affect people's behavior. My eyes inadvertently
go there every time I open the page.

An average does more to encourage the desired behavior than a total does. Even
as I am about to press enter here, I can't help but think of whether this post
will make that number go up or down.

~~~
yason
In that case you are prefiltering yourself in mere anticipation of potential
acceptance from others. If everyone did that, no genuine posts would ever
appear: everybody would be too concerned about how much others would like
them.

~~~
frederickcook
I'd argue that in this community, there is a better correlation between up-
votes and the quality of a comment than between up-votes and how much one user
likes another user.

I'd also argue that there are only a few topics that are so polarizing that
people up-vote or down-vote based on the position the author takes, and that
the majority of discussions here aren't as opinionated, and that the number of
up-votes a post receives is based on how interesting and thought-provoking it
is.

However, it appears that how to display karma is one of the more polarizing
ones :)

------
gvb
Going to the leader board and sorting the first 20 by average:

    
    
      Order	Who		Total	Ave
    
      2	edw519		44607	22.29
    
      39	grellas		11208	19
    
      45	wheels		10752	12.15
    
      4	patio11		37809	11.23
    
      42	mixmax		11064	10.45
    
      66	timr		8632	9.78
    
      78	chaosmachine	7829	8.8
    
      93	niyazpk		6885	8.28
    
      70	alexandros	8353	7.98
    
      53	jerf		9873	7.8
    
      1	tptacek		45718	7.49
    
      16	mechanical_fish	16598	7.4
    
      17	raganwald	16421	7.27
    
      97	maxklein	6751	6.68
    
      34	ryanwaggoner	11976	6.63
    
      76	_delirium	7895	6.56
    
      49	lionhearted	10137	6.49
    
      87	acangiano	7001	6.39
    
      22	Anon84		14263	6.24
    
      9	swombat		21933	6.09
    
      75	abstractbill	7910	6.09

------
olalonde
While we're at it with the feature requests, why not add a down vote option to
submitted stories? Wouldn't it help get a better signal-to-noise ratio in the
"new" section? It would also prevent "throw spaghetti at the wall, and see
what sticks" behavior. If this was debated in the past, I'd be curious to hear
why it was not implemented.

------
bbulkow
Management of "karma" in systems like Hacker News is critical to long term
success. Watching the community, and the flow articles, in Reddit shows that
minor changes in algorithms make a big difference.

One further thought: your "karma" in a site like HN is a very serious asset.
Access to a post which reaches the front page can make or break a company. I
would easily pay $100 for someone to post a choice blog post reference that
would hit the front page, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

We also know about Digg's kabal of a few high-karma individuals who tilted the
entire news site to the political right.

People don't game a site until it's important, and you don't find out the
effects of your site's algorithms until the site becomes popular.

The owners of a site must be diligent, continue to understand how articles are
floating to the front page, and be willing to make changes. We as users need
to be supportive of the changes & experiments they make - even at the cost of
our own "karma" (ie, real-world-dollars).

~~~
toast76
I think there are to distinct issues here. The first is how articles find
their way to the front page, and the second is how individuals are rewarded
(or punished) for their involvement in those stories.

The reality is that the earlier you post in a story, the more karma you're
likely to collect. To me, that just encourages "first!" type posts. A poorly
thought out comment in a story that makes the front page will inevitably earn
more karma than a well thought out comment that doesn't.

So is this about getting better stories to the front page, or about rewarding
users for their participation?

------
erikstarck
I first thought it was some sort of geek joke since the top bar had my
username with the number 3.14 after it. :)

"Ah, the karma point system is broken and they're showing the number pi
instead, very funny."

~~~
3pt14159
If that happened to me, I would be thoroughly confused. (see my handle)

------
GHFigs
The thing where you can suggest something and find that pg, slaving over a hot
REPL, has implemented it by the time you reload the front page is definitely a
_feature_ of HN.

------
random42
Would it make sense to show average karma on profile page of a user too?

(This is question, NOT a feature request, as I presume that Karma at HN serves
the purpose of moderating the quality of content, rather than being a
redditesque user-stickiness game)

------
steveklabnik
I'm not sure that this will fix anything, but it'll be helpful to me.

I think those of us that care, but occasionally say something bad will be
helped a lot by this. I'm always trying to ask myself "will this be upvoted"
when posting things, as I'm trying to be as helpful as possible.

However, people that are actually trying to troll or can't tell that they're
trolling won't really stop because of this change. I don't really have an
answer, either: this is a Hard Problem.

Edit: I should also say that any of us can easily be in the "can't tell we're
trolling" camp at any time; it's a per-comment thing, not an "I'm a good
poster, what shall we do about those terrible bad ones!" deal.

------
robryan
Another aspect to the average is probably timezone, as this post for example
which is being written after what would be the prime time hours when most of
the discussion has already occurred. I'm sure over time this would effect
average.

I don't so much think average is important, possibly a derivative of it would
be average amount of posts to receive down votes. We don't want to discourage
people replying to threads that are falling off the front page, even if the
only person who sees the post is the person that the post was in reply to,
that still sounds like a net gain if it was useful or made a good point.

------
EGreg
I personally will discuss things in the same spirit of information sharing,
genuineness, common sense and helpfulness that I have before and after the
karma change. I'm new to HN so I don't really even know how I'm supposed to
feel about the feedback from the karma. A lot of my posts which I feel are
good or important aren't receiving many points, but that's ok. If I really
need something, I will ask a couple of my friends who are on HN to look at it
and vote it up if they like it.

~~~
EGreg
okay I got my first downvote. Maybe I care a little. Was this to see if I care
about my karma? Okay Mr. Downvoter, tell me ... what was wrong in what I said?
:)

------
charlesju
I feel that if the avg is important, user profiles should have the average in
addition to the total.

------
melling
Adjusting the game? Trying to reduce comments and posts? I once posted a story
that got 80 points. Unfortunately, the points went to the guy who posted the
same story 10 minute later.

------
gsivil
I am sorry for my ignorance but Avg. of what?

~~~
spicyj
Average karma per post. (Total karma divided by number of posts.)

------
cperciva
I'm sure it's deliberate; whether it's an improvement or not is open to
debate. Personally I prefer seeing the total.

~~~
jamesteow
Same. I'm a bit more aware of my karma now than before.

Karma doesn't matter as much to me because I come to the site for content, but
I like to comment on a lot of new links (especially entrepreneurs wanting some
design critiques) which doesn't get nearly as much participation as the front
page and thus has a much lower chance of gaining a lot of karma per comment. A
total karma score doesn't discriminate against that but an average score does.

------
noarchy
I wonder if this is going to kill the willingness of some people to
participate in discussions on less popular postings. Here I also mean the ones
that don't necessarily make it to the front page. I'm not sure that everyone
even checks to see the new posts. Sometimes small discussions will pop up on
those posts.

------
benologist
Can we also get thread collapsing ala reddit? Even just on the first level
would be awesome.

~~~
danieldk
Well, hopefully not as insane as Slashdot, where I end up showing all
comments, since filtering completely messes up flow of messages (content-
wise).

------
gxti
Anyone have a greasemonkey script to hide karma? I started writing one but got
stuck on something simple. I'd like to no longer see the score at the top,
because the instant HN loads my eyes gravitate towards that spot, looking for
reassurance.

------
rsheridan6
This reminds me of the past short-lived misfeature in which your username
changed color if you had high enough average karma per comment. The main
difference is that, this time, your average karma is only in your own face,
not everybody's.

------
shalmanese
I've been advocating that sites should try h-index:
[http://www.quora.com/Should-Quora-ever-consider-using-H-
inde...](http://www.quora.com/Should-Quora-ever-consider-using-H-index-for-
reputation)

------
projectileboy
107 comments?!? I can't understand why folks get so wrapped around the axle
about these things, especially on HN. Is there some way to monetize karma that
I'm not aware of?

------
iamjustlooking
If you have a high average are your comments better? Are you bad at commenting
with a low average? What should this number tell me?

------
byoung2
I just noticed that about 30 seconds ago. I'm not sure if this is intentional

~~~
olalonde
I hope it is not. I like to keep track of my karma because it usually
correlates with a discussion below my more recent comments.

~~~
ScotterC
I typically watch it to remind me to check my threads for any responses. If my
karma went up or down, it's likely that someone responded to one of my
comments.

~~~
yason
It would be really helpful to have an icon appear on the top bar when there
are replies to my comments in articles. Clicking on the icon would give a list
of articles/threads where there are replies, easily openable into a set of new
tabs. Re-loading a single article would remove it from the list and when the
list would be empty the icon would disappear.

------
noodle
feature, modified by PG based on another thread (this one, i think:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1852560>)

------
elai
Karma is like the star stickers that children get in kindergarden.

------
jayphelps
Karma's a bitch.

------
zaidf
Be scared. Be really scared.

~~~
sgt
No.

~~~
zaidf
Sorry. Halloween fail :)

