

Ask YC: Redo the Leaderboard - majimojo

It never resets.  So its utterly meaningless when we're trying to catch the charismatic people with 7000 points.<p>The point system should encourage participation.  If we reset the point system every quarter (3 months) or every YC funding cycle, and then give permanent awards to the leaders, then all of us, leaders or laggards, have more reason to participate positively.<p>Or, instead of awards, we can tack permanent bonus points onto each user.  #1 place gets +20 bonus points.  Starts the next season with an automatic advantage (like racee qualifiers).<p>nickb (100+53) 100 is permanant.. 53 is current quarter.. total 153<p>Keep things fresh.
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pg
I'm planning multiple lists ranked by different criteria. For now it will be
off the Lists link at the bottom of the page.

The problem is not as urgent as you might think, though. In a site that's
growing, you get a de facto karma decay, because a top submission gets more
points than it would have 6 months ago.

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greendestiny
How about just using the same gravity algorithm to rank people as is used to
rank stories. I like keeping absolute points because each point represents a
human's input.

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nickb
I think people put too much importance on karma. Personally, I don't really
care. I check my RSS feeds 3 times a day (when I have breaks) and I post stuff
I find interesting. It literally takes a second to contribute to n.yc (hint:
look into bookmarklet link) so why not help a site that I like? So yes, I've
accumulated a lot of points. I haven't checked the score in weeks but I assume
I'm still in the lead but if pg reset my points, I wouldn't mind at all.

I think people think that pg will look at your YC application differently if
you have a high karma on the site. I have no idea if that's true (never
applied) but some people have said that they had high karma and didn't get
accepted. So YMMV.

I'd worry more about my app, idea, biz plan than to worry about karma when
applying. I doubt pg will accept you just because you contribute to n.yc.

~~~
davidw
I agree... I don't think it's a very important aspect of the site and wouldn't
care if it went away. I have my own mental 'leader board' of people who post
things I like anyway.

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kirubakaran
Karma Decay Function

Everyday everyone's karma gets multiplied by n where 0<n<1\. (0.9 seems good)

~~~
ggrot
I was gonna suggest something like this. Or apply a similar ranking function
to the leaderboards as you do the the articles.

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whacked_new
"The point system should encourage participation. If we reset the point system
every quarter (3 months) or every YC funding cycle, and then give permanent
awards to the leaders, then all of us, leaders or laggards, have more reason
to participate positively."

Just to add a different voice to the matter, I don't subscribe by this
philosophy. I don't care about my karma points and its existence doesn't
affect my motivation to participate. I upvote in appreciation, and post to
share. It's the crowd, and the crowd's ideas, that matter. I don't use the
leaderboard at all, and in that sense, it is "utterly meaningless" to me
whether it disappears or not.

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danielha
I support this idea. I'll make my comeback yet.

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utnick
Perhaps soon I will release my karmaBot (tm), it subscribes to the rss feeds
of programming.reddit.com, techcrunch, and xkcd, and auto reposts all stories
to news.yc

We will soon takeover the world! ! !! ! muahahahahaha

~~~
aston
Had the same idea, but mine on PG's articles, too.

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bayareaguy
I think the problem is the karma score conflates submitting articles and
posting comments. I think the two should be separate.

I'd also like to see a weighted score something like (karma from posts) /
(1+log10(total number of words in posts)).

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DarrenStuart
I agree, not sure how easy it would be and if it would upset the people at the
top.

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majimojo
If they receive permanent awards. They get recognition AND they get motivation
the next season to say interesting things.

~~~
DarrenStuart
fair enough, I have worked hard for my massive 96 score and if I lost it I
would be a little sad :p

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majimojo
good point. i only have 70pts so i feel for this.

maybe the total accumulated points of all time are also kept. YC doesn't erase
any data. its just writing a new database query.

old query: Points = "select count(votes) where user.id = 123"

new method: "select votes, date where user.id = 123" and do some heuristic
magic in the model or results datastructure.

~~~
DarrenStuart
or they could just keep it and add this months top users etc and we are all
happy :P

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nraynaud
what's the point of this voting stuff ?

Kierkegaard did his studies more than 150 years ago, maybe it's time to use
his findings in our life.

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whacked_new
Care to elaborate on what you are talking about?

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nraynaud
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard>

He discovered numerous aspects of crowd thinking, one is that they are
generally less smart than individuals. Groups of people tends to act in the
same way (conformation).

That's why the voting thing on websites doesn't work: leaders becomes
unchallengeable.

(I'm not arguing against democracy, where lists are closed before each
election, election are a discreet events etc.)

Moreover, what is the _aim_ of collecting votes on this websites? If people
vote or bury one of my comments, what does it means about my future or past
comments? It is only a conformity problem.

~~~
whacked_new
You raise an interesting point, since most of what circulates about crowd
wisdom these days is the Surowiecki book citing Galton's study. What you
mention here is more like the Spiral of Silence.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence>

I don't think voting in its current form is good. I am much more fond of a
prediction market-esque, or virtual economy (the specific term eludes me at
the moment) implementation. Nevertheless, here is a possible way to answer
your question about the aim.

A hypothetical case would be, users upvote in appreciation (or to bookmark),
with the side effect that more appreciated items float higher, and receive
greater visibility, acting as a filter. The catch is that it's to the benefit
of other users.

To that, I'm not entirely sure why it works (as in, why it became popular). I
don't click arrows much. I clicked yours because I appreciate your reply, 3
days after :-)

Which shows another glaring problem. Current voting mechanisms let these votes
go stale. I'm upvoting on something 7+ days old. You will receive a point but
not know the context of it. Anyhow, that's another topic.

Thanks again, for following up. Don't agree entirely, but a good point
nonetheless.

