

Notice HN: hey, the average karma score is gone. - petervandijck


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notahacker
If the average karma score was ever going to be perceived as important it
needed to update at regular intervals rather than every few days in a
background process. I don't think mine changed at all during the period it was
up there.

~~~
wyclif
That's true, mine never changed either.

~~~
stcredzero
I think it would have had a reinforcing effect if there was an immediately
visible change. It may not have been reinforcing something so great, however.

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Kilimanjaro
Good riddance. Too much visual noise, too little value.

Once you're a regular, it's hard to change your karma avg that much. OTOH
karma points can go up or down one point and that's an instant visual sign
people agree/disagree with you. Then you go right to the threads to know
where.

~~~
randallsquared
_Once you're a regular, it's hard to change your karma avg that much._

It was only the last 50 comments, I believe. But it did update too slowly, as
other people are saying.

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PostOnce
Random musing: What if karma was kept as a way to sort comments in each
thread, and to maintain a threshold for the ability to downvote, but was
concealed from the user?

i.e. I can upvote or downvote someone, but not see the current score their
comment has, or their overall karma, or my own.

What happens then? Do we stop our subconscious trepidation over whether we
will be downvoted and begin posting whatever pops into our heads, thereby
improving HN, or do we begin posting a bunch of crap because karma no longer
matters, thereby worsening HN?

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harscoat
Average karma triggers one behavior: you can submit a lot to get karma points
(no negative effect), and to keep you average up, you comment only when you
think you'll be upvoted... It reinforces a HN readers cliché conformism (even
if it is the conformism of being contrarian) about what one thinks HNers like.

~~~
blasdel
I think it's solely based on recent comment karma, with at least the high
outliers discarded.

~~~
raganwald
having it be a trailing fifty comments actually increases the incentive to
avoid writing anything that won't get upvotes. Ultimately, you have to step
back and ask whether you're trying to encourage upvotes or not. Upvotes are
useful for helping readers choose what to read in a thread. But just because
voting is useful for guiding the behaviour of readers... Does it automatically
follow that we wish to guide the behaviour of writers?

The current system of total karma encourages people to avoid comments that
will get more downvotes than upvotes. Avoiding more downvotes than upvotes is
not exactly the same thing as avoiding comments that won't get upvotes.

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xentronium
As far as I can understand, it recalculates too slowly (I haven't noticed any
change in my avg since it appeared)

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lucasjung
I can see it on everyone else's profile, but not my own.

I would guess that they found it to be useful information to have about
others, but also wanted to eliminate the incentives created when people try to
push up their averages. It also becomes a much more accurate indicator when
people aren't gaming it. Of course, you could still game it by having a friend
tell you what it is, but that's probably more trouble than most people are
willing to go to.

~~~
steveklabnik
They were talking about the upper right corner of the screen. It's still on
profiles.

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tptacek
Presumably, news.arc just restarted; the average score in the corner was
(IIRC) just a temporary hack punched into a REPL.

~~~
dwwoelfel
I can still see other users' average score in their profiles. That feature was
added at the same time as average score in the corner. If your hypothesis is
correct, wouldn't they both go away?

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oomkiller
You sure? I swear I saw it there before.

~~~
dwwoelfel
I'm positive: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853821>.

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vaksel
i didn't find it that useful, since mine didn't change at all.

but I think it might still have some merit for those with less than 200-500
points, so that they'll try to give better comments

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aitoehigie
Just noticed too. I never really saw the relevance anyway.

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trickjarrett
Rather than average karma, would perhaps recent karma be more valuable? Karma
from just the past X days?

~~~
sorbus
If you want to throw gaming mechanics into HN, sure. But then you get a
situation where the only people who are able to keep up good karma scores are
those who comment really frequently (or, I suppose, irregularly but always get
tons of upvotes).

