

Ask HN: Should links from popular blogs be excluded from karma pts? - dannyr

I believe posting links from popular blogs (e.g. Techcrunch, Mashable) almost guarantee a lot of karma points that it becomes a race among HNers to post them.<p>My suggestion is that Karma points should only be awarded for HNers who discovered and contributed links that the community might not easily find.
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jacquesm
It's only a race if you feel that you are losing it, simply don't assign too
much weight to karma. Treat it like an odometer, it's more a function of how
much time you spend on HN than anything else.

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rokhayakebe
Correction if I may. It's more a function of how much the community values
your contribution.

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tom_rath
Not really.

If one throws an hojillion low-quality posts up in a day, a few of those will
be ranked +1. That grants frequent posters a ludicrously high karma score for
what amounts to little overall contribution to the 'community'.

In a way, it's almost an MMORPG -- the longer you stick around and 'grind',
the higher your score gets.

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andreyf
In my experience, spamming low-quality posts, not counting the bottom [-8,1]
and top [30, inf] gets me an average of about +10 each. The trick is to keep
posting comments small (readable at a glance), intriguing (just enough to
warrant an upvote), and non-controversial points early on in a popular thread.

If you can't be one of the first commentators, it's best to reply in a way
that puts your reply as close to the top as possible - replying to anything
"below the fold" is a terrible investment.

[Aside: yes, I'm ashamed to care about karma enough to think these things
through, but somehow, I just can't help it]

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YuriNiyazov
And then you publically complain about being downvoted?

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andreyf
Only if I think it'll get me more upvotes ;)

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icey
Karma is just a sign that someone spends too much time here.

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greyman
I don't feel this karma issue decreases the overall quality of the frontpage.

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pg
Exactly.

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Banzai10
And how will you define popular blogs? By visits, by registered users?

If they are popular its popularity comes from good content, that should be
shared here in HN. Sorry, but I disagree with your idea.

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aichcon
It just doesn't matter. If it's bad enough it'll be flagged. Adding arbitrary
and reactive rules to the system is only going to hurt it.

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olefoo
If karma matters that much to someone let them have it.

And not everything by techcrunch or mashable garners karma either; it has more
to do with the currency and importance of the story.

#adjusted for local definitions of what is important, obviously.

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shabda
My suggestion: Make Karma (and other points) COMPLETELY invisible in the
system. Make them invisible in the UI, the system uses them behind the scenes
to rank and order data, but never display them.

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dbz
I like seeing the individual karma points on links, if I see an interesting
link with a lot of karma, it shows that a lot of individuals found it
interesting, as with the opposite. I find it helpful.

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FreeRadical
don't worry about it

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onreact-com
Yeah, this is a good idea, that's why Digg has become a main stream place
where just a few well known URLs get submitted and front page all the time
while the little guy gets no attention.

We shouldn't penalize such submissions though, that's wrong as well. They
should just count less. Like 50% or only the points above 20 should count.

Or something like this:

if url already popular 10 times this week

karma = karma - 10

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jpwagner
Whoa, this is possibly the first post complaining about opportunity-negative-
karma, which, in my opinion, violates the guidelines by technically
complaining about being down-voted.

    
    
      FLAG

