
Ask HN: Do you like HN's karma system? - tictoc
I really think they do a good job of enforcing a certain style of communication. I like how I know very little about the benefits more karma gets me. I think it&#x27;s really an under-appreciated aspect of modern day forums.<p>This is speaking from someone that does a poor job of following the rules of the place.
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Someone1234
I think downvotes are fundamentally broken.

If upvotes are agree/approval and downvotes are disagree/disapproval then why
are downvotes used for automatic moderation too? It is a problem in this site
and other sites that double-use downvote to mean two different, contradictory,
things.

The strange thing about HK in particular is that they already offer a "flag"
button. If the flag was dedicated to moderation and the downvote dedicated to
discussion, the site would be fine, but downvote will auto-hide comments, grey
them, shadowban people in certain cases (like green accounts), and is weighed
during flagging/dead-ing (e.g. one flag for a grey comment Vs. multiple flags
for others).

I think it has a chilling effect. People are hesitant to post controversial
opinions no matter how well written because the consequences (via simple
downvotes) can be problematic to even accounts in otherwise good standing.

In an ideal world a site should have an upvote/downvote and flag button. The
first two should be dedicated to discussion only, and having a controversial
viewpoint should be noteable but not punishable. The latter (flag) should be
for comments thats that violate the site's guidelines or community standards
(e.g. -isms, trolling, insulting, etc).

PS - Part of the problem right now is that for comments the flag button is
hidden below the fold. Many new users may never see it.

~~~
i_cant_speel
Do you really feel that people here don't allow opposing viewpoints? IMO that
is an area where Hacker News shines, especially in comparison to sites like
Reddit. I rarely see, respectful, well thought out counter-viewpoints
downvoted simply for disagreeing.

~~~
brokenmachine
I have showdead on, and often see dead comments where I don't understand what
the problem is with them.

I'd say it's about 10% of dead comments where I would understand if they were
just dimmed, but they're dead so you can't upvote to help resurrect them, and
you can't reply.

~~~
dang
> they're dead so you can't upvote to help resurrect them

That's why we added the vouching feature. If there's a comment that's [dead]
that shouldn't be, you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp and then
clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. When enough users vouch for a
comment, it is restored to visibility. (There's a small karma threshold before
vouch links appear.)

~~~
brokenmachine
Oh, thanks. I'll look for it next time.

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open-source-ux
One thing I notice sometimes is that insightful, well-written comments will
sink to the bottom of a thread (presumably from posters without a high karma),
leaving less interesting comments percolating at the top of the discussion
(presumably from posters with high karma). That's a shame and I don't really
know how it could be resolved. But it's also a problem on many discussion
sites (Reddit, Slashdot etc)

In long threads, I suspect many posters will never scroll towards the bottom
of the discussion. Thus, the comments at the top of the discussion continue to
accumulate upvotes while good quality comments further down never get a chance
to rise up. But I guess that is more due to user behaviour rather than some
algorithmic logic.

~~~
nullwasamistake
Like yours? :) .

With no evidence I blame downvotes, which seems to be a common thread with
other users on this thread.

I don't think it's about high karma. I've got a few comments that gave me like
1/3 of my karma. It doesn't appear to bias towards established users. More
likely, a few downvotes (luck) is what sinks you

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karmakaze
I don't think the karma system is the important part. Once I had enough karma
to post/comment/downvote I've always had more than I ever needed.

I do wonder though if a few users are posting a large volume of stories (even
automatically) adding to the general mainstreamness of content. Is there a per
user daily post limit? I think there ought to be.

What's important is the rules by which we act. This is of varying
consistencies. In particular downvotes shouldn't be used for disagreement or
dislike but rather identifying clearly incorrect statements or
noncondusive/worthless comments--an opposing view well presented shouldn't be
downvoted.

Instead of the karma system, I wish there was an update to the story points.
HN now has so many users that unexceptional stories of general interest get
far too many points.

I would be great if posts could be tagged (e.g. 36 point 'physics' label) and
the reader could vary weights of labels to surface or partially bury some
categories.

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nullwasamistake
I like upvotes of course, and flagging is fine. IMO downvotes tend to greatly
increase the echo chamber effect and should either be removed or less
weighted.

The least controversial comments usually bubble to the top, even when they're
not the most informative or constructive, due to downvotes.

Controversial but otherwise fine comments should not be punished by downvotes
if they don't violate site policy (flagging). IMO a site that promotes good
discussion shouldn't allow users to tank comments they don't agree with

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p1esk
1\. Separate submissions karma and comments karma. It's very easy to
accumulate a lot of karma by submitting an article on some hot topic. This
karma should be a lot less valuable than karma earned through writing high
quality comments.

2\. Limited number of upvotes/downvotes, or downvotes substracting your own
karma (perhaps not 1:1).

3\. Mandatory justifications for downvotes (e.g. choose from dropdown menu),
with this information publicly visible for each comment.

~~~
nullwasamistake
I agree with #1. It's super easy to write a blog post that gets more upvotes
than any comment ever will. If most HN readers are like me, I immediately go
to comments before checking out the article. The current karma system
encourages posts over comments, while comments are actually the vast majority
of reason we visit HN. Comments are the community, especially in recent years
where ask and show hn posts rarely breach first page :'( . Weighting non-
article posts higher would achieve similar, bringing back importance of
community over posting stuff.

I also agree with #2, a single unpopular comment can ruin your karma, and
seems to rapidly contribute to a rate limiter that impedes your ability to
interact with the site. I tend to comment on spurts when I've got a bunch of
free time. It's common to have a comment downvoted below 0 and end up with
"you're doing that too fast" rate limiting. I'm not 100% that downvoted
comments are the cause, but it seems likely.

I disagree with #3. The few mods HN has already work hard. I don't think we
should give them more to read. I would rather remove downvotes, I don't see a
point besides encouraging echo chamber mentality

~~~
Fjolsvith
> If most HN readers are like me, I immediately go to comments before checking
> out the article.

And what do you do if most HN readers aren't like you?

But seriously, for number 3, what if the tallies for the reasons for downvotes
are visible to the comment poster, as a form of feedback for that person?

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zzo38computer
No. I think is good to have communications without it. I would like to be able
to disable it, so that when displaying messages to me, the karma is not taken
into account. (Even if other people want to keep it enabled for displaying
messages to them.)

~~~
tlb
AFAIK, a user's total karma isn't used to sort comments. Only the score on the
individual comment is. Do you mean you want to see the comments sorted only by
time?

To help convince people that your idea works, perhaps you could take a popular
comment page and mock it up the way you think it should be and post it
somewhere.

~~~
zzo38computer
Yes, I would like to see it sorted only by time and by what comment it is in
reply to. Possibly I could try to use GreaseMonkey to reorder them by ID
number, maybe. (Are the order of ID numbers the same as the order by time?)

However, I am not saying that it should be sorted only by time for everyone,
but only by the user who has changed their account options to specify that as
the default sort order.

~~~
tlb
Yes, IDs are monotonically increasing over time. So you could write a script
that, within each comment nesting level, extracts the ID and sorts.

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SkyPuncher
I think HN has one of the better systems. The waiting period means you kind of
have to learn the norma before you can apply them.

Sometimes people can using voting for the wrong purpose. In general, it seems
to work well.

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autisticmind
If karma is a prinicple, then only the one person know why its reciveig bad
karma. And when its given from a system, admins, users or an AI, then its
worthless. Only makes me think, who the f. you are, to judging (my) other
peopels thoughts, words, meaning or intentions, life. Better go 5 stars system
wit 1-2 Extra points. helpful or not, funny and bad behaveiour, or maybe
toxic, whatever. Just read about a better definition, so wich sort of karma
this system think its used? ?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma)

