

Show HN: I got tired of stressing about my karma, so I wrote this. - anthonyb
https://bitbucket.org/anthonyb/nohnkarma/overview

======
jaysonelliot
I like the karma system overall, and I think the general quality of discussion
on HN is evidence that things are mostly working well.

The only thing I find off about it is the average karma on profile pages.
Personally, I find that it subconsciously dissuades me from commenting
anywhere that is likely to result in few/no upvotes. My first comment on a
story might get 20, 40, 80 upvotes, but any extended discussion is going to be
rather nested, and so you're essentially burning through your average as each
comment sits with only one or two votes. Similarly, commenting on "unpopular"
articles means few people will see your comment, so you're pulling your
average down again.

Should karma matter to me? Probably not. But I will confess to looking at
people's profiles to see their average karma and time on HN as a way of
knowing a bit more about them. I don't think it's unreasonable to feel that
the average should be more representative than a straight average of all
comment votes.

I don't like to complain without offering a solution, so this would be mine:
weight the comment average as a function of the overall points on an article,
to allow for more conversation around niche topics. Weight comments according
to how deep in a thread they are, to allow more in-depth conversations to
occur without a karmic penalty.

Karma can sometimes feel like a superficial way of "keeping score," but I
think it serves a valuable role in promoting quality discussion. It still has
room for improvement, though.

~~~
gnosis
_"The only thing I find off about it is the average karma on profile pages.
Personally, I find that it subconsciously dissuades me from commenting
anywhere that is likely to result in few/no upvotes. My first comment on a
story might get 20, 40, 80 upvotes, but any extended discussion is going to be
rather nested, and so you're essentially burning through your average as each
comment sits with only one or two votes. Similarly, commenting on "unpopular"
articles means few people will see your comment, so you're pulling your
average down again."_

It's not just commenting on unpopular articles and deeply nested discussions
that will pull your average karma down, but commenting on old articles.

By the time I find an interesting article to comment on, it will usually be at
least a day old. Nevertheless, I tend to comment there anyway, in full
knowledge that very few people will ever read my comment or upvote it, because
most of the action on HN happens within the first day, and most people move on
to the newest articles very quickly.

The way HN handles average karma calculation in such circumstances is pretty
sad because of the disincentive it places on people to comment on good older
articles, which are often much more interesting and worthwhile than your
typical new article.

This problem is compounded by HN's attempts to disallow duplicate article
postings (though there are ways around that), and lack of automatic linking to
previous discussions on the same article (though manual linking is
occasionally done by HN users themselves).

In short, there should be a way to keep productive discussions going, rather
than effectively placing a limit of about 1 day on any given discussion.

I hate to praise web forums in any way, but I do think one thing they get
right is to usually bring any threads which have been recently commented on
back to the top. HN would benefit from a similar approach.

~~~
anthonyb
This is one of the downsides to the karma game - people tend to be reluctant
to do anything which will hurt their score. Stories are dead after about 12
hours, and almost nobody checks their comments unless they're in a flame war.

------
chris_wot
I actually quite like the Karma system. I think that the way that it's
implemented on Hacker News is pretty awesome - it has certainly made me be
more careful in the comments I've made. I have actually made one or two snarky
comments, but I immediately went back and deleted them before anyone replied.
Other times it's been a misunderstanding, and being downvoted helped me
understand that something wasn't quite right.

Certainly it's doing its job, which is to keep the signal to noise ratio high.

The only disturbing aspect of Hacker News is the way that valuable
contributors can be hellbanned even after only a few comments. For instance, I
saw an individual hell banned for commenting on a controversial story: they
weren't trolling (which I assume is the purpose of the facility), only
engaging in a debate. I suspect that the one who did the hellbanning did it
because they didn't agree with what was being said. As there is no review
mechanism, this is purely speculation on my behalf - I will never know why
this was done!

~~~
ot
> it has certainly made me be more careful in the comments I've made.

Isn't this the ultimate form of groupthink?

~~~
jasonlotito
Often times the people complaining about groupthink are also the ones acting
immature. If you inject in your comment the feel of someone trying to rebel
("I know I'm going to get down voted..." or "I hate to be that guy..."),
you're already starting off wrong. Act the part of an adult and you'll be
treated like one.

I've found that if I spend a few minutes to justify my belief, and approach
the discussion as that of peers rather than assuming my opinion is all that
matters, things go very well, even when we disagree.

So yeah, HN does have an element of groupthink: that those who are
disrespectful are not welcome here, regardless of their opinion. Most likely,
their opinion can be found in other comments but written by someone that is
looking to engage in an adult conversation and not out to belittle or insult
the rest of us.

~~~
recoiledsnake
>Often times the people complaining about groupthink are also the ones acting
immature.

Not everytime though. Especially in topics like Microsoft/Apple/Google, the
moderation is brutal if you don't fit in the groupthink.

A big example: <http://winsupersite.com> is hellbanned on HN from being
submitted as a story(if you do it will show up for you, but actually it's
killed so won't show up for others at all). What crime could the site have
possibly committed to deserve such an extreme banning(there are no instances
of other tech sites that I know of getting banned, can you give me any?).

Post complaining about the banning:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408883>

The answer is simple, the site is of Microsoft watcher, insider and enthusiast
Paul Thurrott who posts breaking news, analysis and reviews with a sometimes
positive slant. That is enough for some "enthusiasts" of other platforms here
to flag it to death and ultimately to hellbanning. I am guessing someone who
innocently submits stories from there regularly will get their account
hellbanned to, for not conforming to the groupthink on here.

This is just the visible tip of the iceberg of the groupthink which downvotes
comments and flags any legitimate news that doesn't conform.

You think the point in this post is just a figment of the author's
imagination? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3663447>

Another example of legitimate news getting flagged to death:

<http://i.imgur.com/fSJqq.png>

How long before Winbeta is hellbanned from ever appearing on HN for being a
Windows-centric news site?

Just because you haven't experienced this does not mean that others have not
constantly been downvoted for their (non disrespectful) opinions. I believe
that's behind their defensive "I know I am going to get downvoted..." lines.

~~~
jasonlotito
> Not everytime though.

No doubt. Hence my careful phrasing. =)

> Just because you haven't experienced this...

I have. But even then, if I take an honest look at what I wrote, I find I
could easily discern how it comes off as me acting the part of an asshole.

You post several examples (of which many are merely people complaining about
downvotes which aren't contributing anything meaningful and should not be
encouraged), but really, they mean anything. There will always be exceptions,
but they only prove their is no groupthink beyond being respectful,
intelligent, and contributing to the discussion.

> I believe that's behind their defensive "I know I am going to get
> downvoted..." lines.

Honestly, if someone spends more time writing "I know I'm going to get
downvoted... HN groupthink... go ahead downvote me but you know I'm right..."
then they do putting thought into their comment, I will down vote. Stop
worrying about little arrows, and just be polite, post intelligently, and
contribute.

~~~
chris_wot
_Stop worrying about little arrows, and just be polite, post intelligently,
and contribute._

I think that's what he's trying to do!

------
n9com
If any of you are 'stressing' about a pointless number next to your username,
then I think you need to take a step back and put things into perspective.

~~~
hackermom
I think that's good advice, and I would like to send it along also to the
tiny-minded portion of users here on HN who campaign personal, pityful battles
on others by systematically downvoting their posts for no apparent reason, as
well as those who just can't seem to let things fly, but rather just _have to_
hammer down on users with opinions they simply don't agree with.

I think the karma system as it stands now is problematic because of how it
simply enables the generally grumpy crowd of HN to fuel their own overgrown
negativity.

~~~
Flow
Who can down-vote? Not me. Seems to me that it's people who have written lots
of good comments that can down-vote. And of course, people running scripts
that help them achieve high karma that they can abuse.

A simple "I Like This" without any count would be enough IMHO.

Or at least a simple rule that you can only down-vote if you write a
positively karma'd comment to the post you down-vote.

~~~
DanBC
I think you need maybe 500 or 750 karma before you can downvote.

In theory this means that people only downvote for "doesn't belong on HN" or
perhaps "blatantly factually incorrect" posts, rather than "I do not agree
with this posts".

HN does have some protection against "voting rings" - so a script or a bunch
of friends that all vote for each other probably would be caught. I don't know
any of the internals.

I like your idea about only allowing downvoting if you can create a coherent
post about why you're downvoting. But the most blatant trolls don't deserve
any comment.

~~~
Flow
> In theory this means that people only downvote for "doesn't belong on HN" or
> perhaps "blatantly factually incorrect" posts, rather than "I do not agree
> with this posts".

The intention was that maybe, but is it true in practice?

> But the most blatant trolls don't deserve any comment.

Old-school individual "killfiles" would do. As it is now some people seem to
be locked out of HN by a crowd of anonymous people. It seems to me that the
current system is a bit naive about the goodness of how high-karmas act.

------
Karunamon
Something I'd like to see is a "HN Enhancement Suite", kind of like Reddit. I
don't at this time have the JS chops to pull something like this off, but what
I'd add:

    
    
        * User tagging
        * Un-hellbanning per user (Find someone who has legitimate contributions yet is hellbanned? Restores their posts to a normal color and moves their post closer to the top in a thread)
        * Ignore text lightening for downvoted posts
        * Hide post on flag or downvote
        * Popups on username mouseover with profile page info
        * Custom CSS (why not?)
        * An "ignore karma" switch. Hides comment thread vote arrows, ignores hellbans and text coloring, hides all mention of points anywhere on the site.
        * Ignore option, hides all posts by a given user

------
kenrikm
I follow this simple rule when dealing with trolls online.

"Don't argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with
experience"

It's better not to engage in the first place.

~~~
pge
Your rule reminds me of Mark Twain's line, "never argue with a fool; a
bystander may not be able to tell the difference."

------
Tomis02
You'll still get banned by the cabal running HN when you inevitably bump into
the guy who can't accept an opinion different from his.

Add a "you've been banned, try again" notifier.

~~~
hackermom
Couldn't have said it any better. Just look at how your post was downvoted for
simply pointing this sensitive fact out. The action speaks so loud and clear.
In every social construct and gathering you always find that group of
"socially immechanical" people who, with every means possible, try to assert
some kind of status or rank over others. In the case of HN, it's done by
downvoting posts of users holding a different opinion than your own.

------
Monotoko
The iPhone app I use to access HN when I'm on the move goes one further. It
removes the name from everyone, still lets me reply... but doesn't show me the
username.

Now in all honesty I think something broke it last year because it used to
show, but I've forgotten about karma and it just lets me focus on the content
and context of the post.

------
andrewcooke
earlier work using greasemonkey (no idea if it still works) -
<http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html>

~~~
anthonyb
I'd forgotten about [dead] comments. I'll add that in - thanks!

~~~
julienc
For something as straightforward as this, I think you shouldn't load jQuery
and use native JS instead.

------
driverdan
I noticed you're loading jQuery before testing the page's URL. You'd be better
off testing the URL first to prevent unnecessarily loading jQuery.

~~~
julienc
Or better, get rid of jQuery completely.

~~~
anthonyb
What do you have against jquery?

------
endlessvoid94
I can safely say I've never been stressed about my karma.

