
Ask HN: How exactly does Hacker News 'points' work? - sunilkumarc
I wanted to know how many upvotes should a post get to get 1 point here. Because as i have noticed 1 upvote != 1 point.
======
jacquesm
There is no way to exactly know what it means when an article or comment has
'x' points. Some votes are counted, others are not, nobody (except for dang)
knows.

For instance, I could 'upvote' this article but it would not be counted (I
know, because if I refresh the page the count has not changed). Similar vote
suppression mechanisms exist for articles, article submissions and for
flagging content and users.

It's a crappy situation, but it works, don't sweat the points and enjoy the
content.

~~~
minimaxir
All votes are _counted_ , but there are some votes which will not affect the
position/ranking of the submission.

~~~
nkozyra
"Some votes are more equal than others," if you will.

------
maurits
Counting up and down votes is a surprisingly interesting problem.

If you are interested, have a look at chapter 4 of _Probabilistic Programming
and Bayesian Methods for Hackers_ [1].

[1]:
[http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabil...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic-
Programming-and-Bayesian-Methods-for-
Hackers/blob/master/Chapter4_TheGreatestTheoremNeverTold/LawOfLargeNumbers.ipynb)

------
DanielBMarkham
I've come to the conclusion that HN voting/ranking is like Google search
engine ranking: you're not supposed to know how it works. If you did, people
would game the system.

So it's a magic act. As a programmer, this frustrates me terribly. I just
emailed dang yesterday because I had submitted something that shot up, got a
lot of attention, then died just as suddenly. Hell, I didn't know, I thought
the system was broken or something. Turns out I was flagged.

The upvote thing you mention is especially annoying. You click the little
button, you're expecting something to happen. That's the nature of clicking
little buttons on computer interfaces.

Hell-banning also drives me nuts, for similar reasons. Computers should serve
us, not the other way around. [insert long discussion here about having to
manage a site with a zillion users, and how it's easy for me to rant about
this but I should walk a mile in dang's shoes, etc.]

~~~
was_hellbanned
_Hell-banning also drives me nuts, for similar reasons._

Hell-banning is for spammers and the mentally-ill. The way HN uses it is
utterly despicable.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Flagging was supposed to be for articles that were so bad they didn't belong
on the site, not just articles you didn't like.

But not anymore. If I had to bet, I'd say folks are using flagging as a tool
to both get payback and game the rankings.

~~~
jacquesm
'flagging as downvoting' has been going on for a very long time, and this is
logical because they have the exact same effect, in fact, a flag counts for
roughly 10 downvotes by my estimates.

If a flag was unjust the flagger should get penalized, or alternatively a flag
should simply cost you 10 points. That way it might be used sparingly and for
its intended purpose.

~~~
stcredzero
_flagging as downvoting ' has been going on for a very long time, and this is
logical because they have the exact same effect, in fact, a flag counts for
roughly 10 downvotes by my estimates._

I wonder exactly how common this behavior is? It's basically data for a
"douchebag census."

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yeah, it's basically a royal F-U from some bozo. It doesn't fit the word
"flagging", at least not in any sense that I understand it.

------
NathanKP
I believe that a large factor in how it works has to do with the average karma
score of the voters. (Visible on your profile page). From what I have been
able to determine the higher your average score the more weight your votes
have, and the longer it takes for your comments and/or submissions to fall
down the page.

This seems to be designed to reward people who make consistently good
submissions and comments, although it also has the bad effect on making it
quite penalizing to make a comment that goes against the groupthink.

I think that other factors that may have an impact are age of your HN account,
and your total karma count. So long story short votes by older accounts that
make quality submissions and comments are worth more.

~~~
thomasz
It makes it quite rewarding to quickly post conformist opinions in typical
circle jerk threads, at the same time it punishes participating in smaller and
older threads.

~~~
jordigh
Yeah, I really hate this. I have some relatively unpopular opinions (e.g. I
believe that porn, strip clubs, and prostitution are the core problem holding
back equality of women) but trying to express these opinion penalises me. The
downvotes eventually hide my opinion.

I don't know if there is a better model for human discourse on the internet.
Maybe it's a good thing that unpopular opinions get silenced, unless they're
phrased in very careful, smart-sounding ways. I have to go through great
lengths to convince my voters that I'm not a complete idiot for believing some
things, and it's a lot of work. It's just easier to express unpopular opinions
very selectively.

edit: Wow, there's a very good-looking response to this by lostcoyote which is
marked as dead and will probably disappear. What a weird coincidence, very à
propos.

~~~
eevilspock
> _I believe that porn, strip clubs, and prostitution are the core problem
> holding back equality of women) but trying to express these opinion
> penalizes me_

It's particularly bad because of the dominance of males on this site, who
unsurprisingly are on the whole far less sensitive to the issues of equality
of women. How HN tends to respond to women's treatment in tech is a good
example of this. HN is far more apt to attack Apple than attack
misogyny[1][2].

Recently I've made some posts questioning the morality of advertising[3]. But,
as Upton Sinclair said so well, "It's difficult to get a man to understand
something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." My comments
were quickly down-voted.

I expect this comment itself to get down-voted quite a bit.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6357317#up_6359738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6357317#up_6359738)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601572#up_4601807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601572#up_4601807)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733713)

------
RossM
From the FAQ:

How is a user's karma calculated?

Roughly, the number of upvotes on their submissions and comments, minus the
number of downvotes. (The numbers won't exactly match up, because some votes
aren't counted to prevent various types of abuse.)

~~~
sunilkumarc
I'm asking about a particular post. If a post has got say 10 points, how many
people should have upvoted it?

~~~
jonlucc
Roughly ten more people than downvoted it.

~~~
jessaustin
I thought we were discussing a "top-level" post rather than a comment. Do
super-high-karma people get to downvote posts?

~~~
sunilkumarc
Yes. you need a minimum of 500 karma to downvote posts or comments.

~~~
RossM
Not quite, I have >500 karma but only see downvote links for comments. I've
never come across a post with a negative score.

~~~
ctdonath
Exactly. Comments can be down voted; articles/links cannot.

------
mattmanser
One of the things I've noticed recently is that I'll say something
controversial, stupid or ill considered, lose a bunch of karma, and then it'll
gradually come back over the next day or so.

No idea what's going on, whether it's voting changes or what, but something
seems to have changed.

~~~
maaaats
I think it's only possible to up vote comments after a day or so, and no
longer down vote. So when you say something controversial, the first hours you
get a lot of both up- and down votes. But after a while, you only get the up
votes.

------
lostInTheWoods3
Obfuscation of the rules is clearly a key component of the voting system on
HN. The less we know about the rules, the less we can game the system.

~~~
moonlighter
Sounds somewhat like security by obscurity...

------
tgrass
[http://amix.dk/blog/post/19574](http://amix.dk/blog/post/19574)

~~~
tgallant
the only real answer. idk why people think the voting system is a magical
black box. to add, the top comment in the following link is paul graham
showing the code for the voting system
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417)

~~~
aspidistra
People think it is a magical black box because the code in the parent comment,
and in the thread you linked, is three and a half years old, and HN does not
run these days on exactly the same code that was open-sourced in news.arc.

------
chrisBob
Also note that when a comment gets downvoted it will max out at -4 even as you
continue to loose karma.

------
NicoJuicy
This is how i think it works. The ammount of points you get, has nothing to do
with the average vote count of a user (the avg. vote points / total vote count
could influence when you appear on the front, but it doesn't influence the
points you receive).

When you create a post you automaticly upvote it, this upvote doesn't count
for your profile score, if anyone else upvotes you, you get 1 profile point.
If anyone downvotes you, you get -1 profile point.

Someone with > 500 profile score can downvote you.

Edit: The one downvoting me, could you elaborate what isn't good about my
answer?

~~~
colanderman
You can't downvote posts, only comments.

~~~
NicoJuicy
In a way, both are items. But posts are level 0 and comments are level > 0.

Look at when you link to an item / post :)

------
sz4kerto
I've had an avg karma of ~7, then submitted an article that got ~200 upvotes,
then my avg karma decreased to 3.9. So for the OP: I have no idea :)

~~~
yaur
Average Karma is based on a window of comments. Something like the last 60
IIRC, so if you have highly rated comments that are moving out of the window
because you are posting new comments it will decrease your score. I also
suspect it is weighted towards comments (perhaps even 0 weight on posts) as my
own 60some point submission had almost no impact on my average.

------
pessimizer
Here's some inside: I looked at my average yesterday and it was 3.77, and
today it's 4.16. Suspecting that it's either a short term moving average, or
something even more complicated.

------
gnopgnip
Does the number and length of comments affect points?

~~~
mkempe
It would be interesting to multiply points for comments that are well-written
(readable [1], good grammar & rich vocabulary [2], with a couple of footnotes
or references), neither too short nor too long.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunning_fog_index](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunning_fog_index)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264806/how-to-
automatica...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264806/how-to-
automatically-determine-text-quality)

------
metaphorm
its a deliberately opaque system designed to reward group think conformity and
insider quid-pro-quo vote manipulation.

------
paulhauggis
Downvoting shouldn't be used to silence opposing view points, but it is
regularly used this way here on HN.

~~~
BrainInAJar
How does downvoting even happen, I don't have a button for it

~~~
mschuster91
You need >=501 karma points, then another arrow will appear below the upvote
arrow.

