

Ask (meta-)HN: zero points on a submission? - RiderOfGiraffes

At the time of writing this submission : 
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1374169 : 
has 0 points.  I thought submissions:<p>a. started with 1 point, and<p>b. can't be down-voted.<p>I've checked with another post and the votes don't seem to go down when you flag an item (don't worry, it needed to be flagged) so that isn't it.<p>So it appears there's another mechanism at work - does anyone know what it is?<p>Thanks.<p>(edited for typos and added the comment about flagging)
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pg
The process that created the item died before the submitter's vote for it was
registered. This can happen when the server gets restarted or when a temporary
spike in load makes processes time out. I don't make the combination atomic
because correctness doesn't matter super much.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Ah. OK, thanks. An interesting insight into one of the design designs, and
even more interesting that it almost exactly mathces one of mine in our
commercial system.

Nice.

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pmichaud
This gives me an idea actually. What if submissions actually did start at 0,
costing submitters 1 karma to submit?

It would have a chilling effect on submissions that would bias them toward
stories that are obviously suited to HN, since a submitter would want to get
back at least the point he lost.

Also, it would prevent brand new accounts from submitting, and skew
submissions away from newbies and toward veterans of HN, since vets will have
significantly more karma. That means people who know what HN is and have been
around HN for a while would be more likely to submit than the other people who
aren't clear on the guidelines and cultural norms yet.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
My first visit here was in response to PG saying that I should submit
something. Your scheme would prevent that.

Perhaps people should get sponsored, and the sponsor shares the first few
karma points/hits. A newbie submits something, and an old-fart - sorry, long-
standing contributor - can offer to sponsor it.

There are loads of schemes, but all require work, and all will have unintneded
consequences. Yes, things could be better, but they could be worse.

Nostalgia these days is not as good as it was ...

~~~
jules
Just let users start with 2 karma.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Randomly (but related to when a story is submitted) stories sink without
trace, getting no comments, and no upvotes. Your suggestion would amount to "X
strikes and you're out" with no possibility of redemption.

Seems a bit harsh.

~~~
cperciva
_with no possibility of redemption_

As long as this only applies to stories, there is a very easy chance of
redemption: Make a good comment.

If it weren't for the occasional "posting with a throwaway account for the
sake of anonymity" Ask HN submission, I'd say that setting a non-zero karma
threshold for submission would be a very good thing, since it would force new
users to experience the community before they start making noise.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes

        >> ... with no possibility of redemption ...
    
        > As long as this only applies to stories, there
        > is a very easy chance of redemption: Make a good
        > comment.
    

True. However ...

According to PG, in his opinion it's the quality of the comments that's mostly
causing the site to decline. From that point of view the suggestion doesn't
really help.

There are multiple problems, perhaps there should be multiple
solutions/tweaks/features to attack them. Karma is well-known to be a blunt
and faulty instrument, and making loads of minor tweaks to that single
instrument in the hope of fixing all the problems might be the wrong way to
go.

Enculturating newbies is part of the problem - it's no longer happening. Using
crowd-sourcing for assessment of quality is thereby being harmed, because
people are just upvoting, and submitting, things they like and that make them
smile. We want new users with new comments, new interests and new submissions,
but the site needs to retain its focus, otherwise it will become another
"submit this 'cos it's cute" site.

Crowd-sourcing is needed to help the site scale. Newbies are needed to keep
the site fresh. Old hands are needed to keep the site focussed.

What seems to me to be missing is a feedback mechanism for people to learn why
their submission/comments are less valued on this site specifically, and ways
to concentrate that judgement in the hands of those whose judgement matches
what PG wants.

I have ideas, although they are all rather baroque, and I'm sure many others
here have ideas as well. In all liklihood they won't be implemented, because
PG doesn't have the time to evaluate them all sufficiently. Again, what's
needed is for those with the vision that matches PG's to find an easily
implemented, transparent, appropriate, fair and "good enough" solution.

Maybe having submissions costing karma will work. I merely offered an aspect
that needs to be considered.

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cperciva
People can obtain a votes-don't-count flag but still submit new stories; if
this happens, stories they submit start at 0 points.

How philh could have obtained this flag, I'm not sure, but I believe PG has
said in the past that there are several automatic spam-detection mechanisms
and they're not all infallible.

~~~
philh
I don't appear to have that flag: votes I've made (both on comments and
articles) still show up using a proxy in incognito mode while logged out.

I noticed yesterday that one of my submissions (I think it was
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1373034>) was on 0 points according to my
"submitted" page, but on 1 from /newest. My first guess is "something to do
with caching", but I don't know.

~~~
cperciva
Yeah, caching is also entirely plausible... there have been a number of
caching-related glitches over the years.

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jacquesm
I've seen a few of those in the last few days.

There was another phenomenon like that:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1369294>

No links at all, you could only upvote it.

~~~
niyazpk
I think everything in the Jobs section work that way -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>

~~~
jacquesm
Ah, that's it! Never looked at the jobs section before. (not much in the mood
for regular employment :) ).

Thanks!

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JoeAltmaier
What if karma was gone? How strange to pursue points that have no intrinsic
value, cannot be spent on anything, and mostly reflect how popular your
opinion is and not its thoughfulness.

~~~
jacquesm
Upvotes on stories are useful, upvotes on comments less so I think.

After all, the homepage is a 'scarce resource', but comment threads can be
long without any real penalty and voting doesn't make them shorter.

~~~
gjm11
Space in a comment thread is also a scarce resource, or rather readers'
attention is. I would find HN a much less pleasant place to be if (say) every
comment thread had exactly its present content plus an equal amount of dross.

So if scarcity on the home page justifies karma for stories, I think scarcity
of reader attention justifies it for comments.

(No, voting doesn't make the threads shorter, but it does make it easier to
identify comments that are more likely to be interesting and to skip ones that
are likely to be rubbish.)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I guess my point was, most often downvoting is used to express disagreement,
not lack of value. Which leads to a uniform, digestible content. But some of
us don't mind thoughtful alternate opinions. Good luck finding them here.

~~~
gjm11
FWIW I've seen here a fair number of opinions I agree with and a fair number I
disagree with, both thoughtful and otherwise. Also FWIW, it seems to me that
comment scores have enough correlation with interestingness to be useful, and
that the sort of discussion in which this is least true is also the sort that
least belongs on HN.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well consider: have you every upvoted a comment you disagreed with? This one
for instance. It was worth responding to, but not worth a vote. This is
exactly my point: karma is a popularity contest only.

~~~
gjm11
I'm a very light upvoter, but I'm pretty sure I have. I have certainly
downvoted comments I agreed with. And for me, at least, karma simply is not "a
popularity contest only".

(Incidentally, even if it were true -- which it isn't -- that no one ever
upvotes a comment unless they agree with it, and that no one ever downvotes a
comment unless they disagree with it, it would not follow that "karma is a
popularity contest". For instance, that's consistent with the following state
of affairs: people upvote comments that (1) are insightful and (2) they agree
with, and they downvote comments that (1) are particularly stupid and (2) they
disagree with. In that case, insightful comments will get lots of upvotes and
no downvotes and stupid comments will get lots of downvotes and no upvotes --
unless it happens that someone posts something insightful and scarcely anyone
agrees, or that someone posts something stupid and scarcely anyone disagrees.
And if either of _those_ happens, I submit that the community is so polarized
that there's little hope of improvement with or without a karma system.)

~~~
gjm11
Incidentally, if whoever's been downvoting my comments in this thread (1) did
it because they think those comments are of poor quality rather than to make
some meta-point or meta-joke about voting, and (2) feels like explaining what
they thought was wrong, then I'm all ears.

