
Is YC "Karma" hurting the relevancy of stories?  - transburgh

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transburgh
I keep seeing more stories that are not relevant to startup news (like this,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30270)> and users that will post 10
stories in a row that are pointless. Is the 'Karma' devaluing the YC news
feature? I think it is a great resources and hate to see the stories become
less and less relevant.

~~~
far33d
The example you state is both relevant AND has NO karma upvotes. How does this
support your thesis?

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transburgh
No karma up votes because it is not relevant.

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far33d
If it has no karma, then how does it support your thesis that karma is hurting
the quality of YC news?

~~~
transburgh
It goes back to members posting 7 stories at once just to gain karma points
and pushing real stories off the limited new page. (that story linked to a
group of stories submitted by the same person in a span of a couple minutes.)

~~~
gibsonf1
I guess I am the "guilty" party in your complaint here. The reason I submit
all in a row as I do is when I'm reading my daily news (typically in the
morning) and see something relevant for YC, I submit it. This is why you'll
get several from me in a row, especially since there aren't that many up at
5am or so posting. This is also typical of a few others.

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sethjohn
That's pretty much the point of voting, only the relevant stories appear on
the front page.

Good voting practices are probably more important than good posting practices.
Unless, I suppose, the number of stories posted gets so large that people stop
looking through the "new" page occasionally to vote up the good stuff.

If you want to be a good samaritan, you can routinely check the new stories to
up-mod (sp?) the good stories.

~~~
transburgh
The problem is when some post 7 stories in a row and you only have 50 slots
before you fall off the site, good stories don't even get a chance to collect
votes.

~~~
migpwr
Limit the number of new stories you can submit per day... the other stories
you would have submitted will likely get posted by someone else if they're
really worth the time.

~~~
gyro_robo
That won't stop people who are trying to generate traffic; they'll just make
more than one account.

~~~
transburgh
Also a good point. Then moderate by IP address.

~~~
willarson
I've been writing web analytics software for the last couple of weeks, that
tracks users statistics, etc. Safe to say that there is no foolproof way to
track users who don't want to be tracked.

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willarson
I can understand how this might eventually become an issue, but this is less
unlikely because of the nature of YC (people here are trying to represent
themselves well to the yc 'crew', and to others who they might work with one
day). The size of the community is small enough that it is difficult to hide
in the crowd.

If the community became much larger I think the most effective solution would
be to require a minimum of X karma before you can submit. (To prevent 'gaming'
you would have to couple this with preventing users with less than X karma
from upvoting posts...)

As it is I think a exponential delay before posting (they would sit in a
publication queue) would be reasonable, but probably unneeded.

------
ralph
Yes. My earlier reply to pg's question:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22499>

