
Show Total User Karma in Hacker News Posts - sillysaurus3
https://kishanbagaria.com/userscripts/show-hn-karma/
======
danso
I'm almost tempted to install this just to see how much it hinders the
experience of using HN. User identity isn't something I look at before judging
a comment, and total user karma has an even smaller correlation to value of
any specific comment or submission. Anecdotally speaking, I have high user
karma but I know most of my comments and submissions are pretty middlebrow. As
another anecdote, on the front page is a very interesting submission about
Mega Man on Temple OS [0], but the creator of that program only joined after
seeing his work linked to from HN (i.e. he didn't submit it himself). And the
most interesting comment I've seen today is from this user with <200 karma
[1].

I typically only look at the _username_ when a commenter uses a personal
pronoun and the submission involves a major company/organization/person;
here's one in which karma score wouldn't have indicated as being particularly
noteworthy [2]. It'd be kind of cool to see a plugin that used NLP to
highlight these kinds of comments but I find that they are already
"highlighted" by upvote count anyway.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971627)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966080)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8736450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8736450)

~~~
lifthrasiir
I have a hybrid approach. After having an unsatisfactory conversation or
reading a comment I cannot agree at all, I quit but nevertheless look at that
user's comment history to see why this happened. Occasionally, I realize who
was wrong was I, or that user had a good reason to say so in spite of other
arguments. I try to use the history only to learn more, so I ensure that I'm
no longer a part of the discussion (that has failed anyway).

------
darkkindness
As a lurker, I tend to spend time on the few comments I write, rather than
post my thoughts on every topic that needs further discussion.

Unfortunately, it's the latter behavior that nets more karma, more often than
not. Those with high karma tend to be those who post or comment more,
separating the frequent contributors from the lurkers.

If you intend to use this userscript, please do so knowing that the numbers
you're looking at have little (if any) correlation with the quality of their
corresponding comments. And reconsider. Thank you.

~~~
soVeryTired
HN needs some sort of h-index

------
itchyjunk
I find the idea that more information can actually hinder you to be pretty
fascinating. This is not something I consider everyday. I wonder what other
situation/ scenario would this be applicable to?

I also notice people getting upset over down votes once in a while. High karma
users definitely command a certain respect.

All in all, I like how HN down votes comments from even high karma users if
it's out of touch with the topic or is a meaningless vent. Hope that
continues.

~~~
danso
I believe information-filtering/overload to be the core challenge and driver
of inspiration when it comes to how humans understand the world. The amount of
information in the world (particularly, that we store and transmit) has
increased exponentially, but our attention spans have not.

`More information != Better` is evident in contemporary web design, not just
the seemingly retro-because-why-change aesthetic of HN (I say "seemingly"
because I don't think HN's design motivation is out of curmudgeonly inertia).
Look at the single-column experiences of Facebook and Medium versus what
existed in the early 2000. Hell, look at the latest startup unicorn, Snap, in
which information is mostly vertical photos and videos, and in which it is
impossible to even review a history of past content.

The entire premise of data visualization is to simplify information. I'd argue
that data, in general, is predicated of simplifying the world. Think of how
many times you've read a survey or poll or study and thought that it was wrong
because you, personally, aren't anything like those in your age group. Or, if
you've ever applied to college or a job, how your GPA/SAT/ACT score, or
previous salary, doesn't reflect the depth of your knowledge.

The benefits of reducing information seems to also be inherent in our current
biological state. The vast majority of what the human eye can see, in terms of
total _area_ , is relatively low resolution (i.e peripheral vision). The
psychological tendency to rely on first impressions has been posited to have
positive implications for survival. The perceived spottiness in human memory
is also thought to be not just a physical limitation, but actual _feature_ :
[http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/29/opinion/la-oe-bar-
me...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/29/opinion/la-oe-bar-
memory-20110529)

\----

On a sidenote, I'll admit to paying attention when I'm downvoted. But that's a
reflection of how rarely I get downvoted and how little I downvote other
people. And I think that in itself is a reflection of HN's moderation and
decorum (don't use downvotes just because you disagree). OTOH, I don't get
_angry_. When I get downvoted on HN. I have a general faith that it was
because I screwed up -- e.g. I'm not as funny/witty as I think I am, or I was
unnecessarily rude to someone else. And generally, that's the case and I've
felt that that feedback has made me a more considerate writer over time.

~~~
onion2k
_I have a general faith that it was because I screwed up -- e.g. I 'm not as
funny/witty as I think I am, or I was unnecessarily rude to someone else._

Karma on HN and my fear of getting downvotes has had a chilling effect on my
willingness to post humorous remarks.

This is probably a good thing.

------
trishume
What I want is a way to flag comments, and threads on the homepage with
comments, by users I have marked as interesting. This may be an okay proxy,
but I have no idea how noisy it is since I normally don't see karma.

There's certain users that (often due to them being experts in a certain area)
very often post interesting comments that I learn a lot from. I mainly find
them by occasionally reading their comment history, but it would be nice to
see them while the discussion is still ongoing.

A few examples: pcwalton, patio11, jblow, WalterBright

~~~
chipperyman573
Something like this? You could just package this as an extension or something.

var likedUsers = ['pcwalton', 'patio11', 'jblow', 'WalterBright'];

var users = document.getElementsByClassName("hnuser");

for (var i = 0; i < users.length; i++) {

    
    
        if (likedUsers.indexOf(users[i].innerHTML) != -1) {
    
              users[i].setAttribute("style", "font-weight: bold;"); //Or whatever
    
        }
    
    }

~~~
thesmallestcat
Wait, not like this?

    
    
      document.documentElement.innerHTML =
        document.documentElement.innerHTML.replace(
          new RegExp('(?:' + ['pcwalton', 'patio11', 'jblow', 'WalterBright'].join('|') + ')', 'g'),
          '<B>$&</B>'
        );
    

DHTML!

~~~
chipperyman573
Because regex is costly. Your solution takes 27.1 ms on my machine, and my
script takes 12.4 ms.

~~~
thesmallestcat
(It's a joke, with poor delivery it seems. It also pointlessly replaces things
in <head>. Also, it clobbers every element on the page, attached event
handlers included, so it's expensive _and_ destructive. To be clear, it's
expensive because it treats the page as a string rather than using the DOM and
replaces every element, not because regular expressions are expensive, which
they aren't. As far as string replacements go, it's pretty quick. The
underlying joke is it's a 1997 JS novice/Perl monk's attempt at replacing your
O(n*m) script, which really needs no optimization, hence the dated <B> and
"DHTML!"... I'll see myself out).

------
jasode
Although others object to karma displayed prominently next to a username, I'm
wouldn't be against it --if-- the karma was more meaningful.

The problem is that karma score _combines_ points for submissions _and_
comments. Those are very different activities to combine into a single
mathematical scale. (Yes, I know that's also how other sites like Reddit works
and a single score is "simple".)

Upvotes for _submissions_ is saying something about the userid's curation
and/or the type of topic. Some topics are "hot button" and attract upvotes
even though the actual writing within the article/blog is substandard.

Upvotes for _comments_ is saying something about userid's generative mind.
His/her brain has an opinion and the fingers type it out.

As an analogy, karma combines upvotes for how a disc-jockey selects (curates)
music with the upvotes for how a musician performs live music. This doesn't
invalidate the DJ's effort but combining the scores means we lose more
information than we gain.

I suppose the higher level abstraction we can use to justify a "composite"
score of 2 very different activities is the concept of "participation score".
In that way, karma==participation. In that case, does showing a participation#
add useful information to the posts?

~~~
3131s
Not to mention that submission karma is way easier to acquire. Around a third
of my karma is from one submission, for instance.

------
justrossthings
If you want to determine the value of a user's comment by the community's
knee-jerk reaction to said comment, go back to reddit.

~~~
johncolanduoni
It's showing overall user karma, not individual comment karma, so it's still
far from reddit. Not so sure it's a good thing, all the same.

------
diegorbaquero
Although I believe it is a great add-on to have, I believe it would create
bias.

------
kazagistar
Excellent. All that time grinding a few comment karma for each small, trivial,
mediocre quality post will finally add up to the respect I deserve.

~~~
grabcocque
This is a good post. I hope this was a good comment.

------
huac
the relevant part of the code:

    
    
        function getKarma(userName) {
            get('https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/' + userName + '/karma.json', function(karma) {
                appendKarma(userName, karma);
            });
        }

------
intended
This is a bad idea.

Put a metric and even self aware people get influenced by it.

------
sillysaurus3
Ah, a bit of confusion with the title -- It's literally "Show HN Karma," not a
Show HN.

I've updated the title to clarify, but if a mod can think of a better version,
feel free.

~~~
RickS
"Show user's total karma" would also be a helpful bit of info, since the
assumption (a la reddit) would be "karma for that particular post"

------
dgellow
I took the opposite direction. I have a small chrome extension to remove all
mentions of karma on HN.

I had the same issue on Reddit and with the Github streak counter. My brain
stays focus on the number, even if I don't want to.

------
inimino
Isn't this a feature HN had before and intentionally removed?

~~~
jasonkester
Yes. Comment scores, user points and average per comment.

The last was the most useful.

~~~
danso
FWIW, the reasoning for removing the average karma per comment metric, which
was about 2 years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264220)

> _It 's based on comment scores only. My sense is that it's an irrelevant
> distraction and we should get rid of it. For example, we caught a bunch of
> users who were gaming it by deleting any comments that brought their average
> down. We fixed that by treating deleted comments as comments of score 0 for
> average-computing purposes. It's an example of how, once you publish a
> metric, people start to care about it and do things based on it, regardless
> of how meaningful it is. Comment average used to be used by a few algorithms
> (like comment ranking) but we turned that off as an experiment a while ago
> and nothing seemed to get worse. If anything, I think it may have helped a
> little._

------
koolba
What I'd like is a way to hide the user globally while still tracking locally.
By that I mean not knowing who a commenter is across other pages but knowing
they're the same person replying back to you.

Something like HMAC(username, story_id) would work for this. It's be
consistent on a given page, but not immediately apparent so people would
either judge comments more on their quality or simply click the user more to
see who it is. I'm curious to see which it'd be.

------
csydas
Note for the author if they're reading - Tampermonkey has a Safari release as
well, and the script works as expected in Safari.

------
Jaruzel
I'm not a fan of this. I like HN because we're all shown equally (unless you
actively click on a profile link that is).

The only thing I'd like, as others have said is my own ability to highlight
the names of users I think are interesting (to me) - much in the same way new
users are green, maybe have my own personal list of users who are in, say,
red.

------
brudgers
It would be good to have a direct link to the source.

~~~
ballenf
[https://gist.github.com/KishanBagaria/58617aa6f7bcb5c96dfd/](https://gist.github.com/KishanBagaria/58617aa6f7bcb5c96dfd/)

