

Ask HN: A Karma API? - jmtame

Anyone else think it would be interesting to carry your YC karma with you to other websites and have it synch?
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mdasen
I'm going to have to say no. One of the largest sources of anxiety in our
society is this belief that we have a dossier following us around. And we do.
New jobs won't hire us without references from our old jobs. We have to fill
in empty spaces in some way. Schools won't let us in unless we have a good
record.

The internet allows some respite from that. We can simply create an account
and go on our merry way. Screw up? Start over!

Yes, it allows trolls to troll, but it also removes the anxiety of failure and
dossiers. It's (one reason) why OpenID hasn't caught on - most people would
rather NOT authenticate beyond reasonable doubt that they are who they say
they are on the internet across sites. They don't want everything they've said
to be traceable to them.

If this is an opt-in system built around a number of sites where you can share
karma OpenID-style, you'll find people creating their own shell sites to boost
their karma. Good for nothing. If it's a mandatory system in a few sites,
you'll find users rebel. We choose our communities because we want to be there
and we recognize that when we go to another community, we need to work to gain
a reputation there.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Couldn't disagree more. Here's my .02:

1\. I don't think the existence of reputation causes a great deal of anxiety
in our society. In fact, until the advent of the Internet, this was largely
how society functioned: you were known for what you had accomplished or failed
to accomplish, for your associations, for your character or lack thereof. This
is still largely the way things are, and I don't think most people think about
it very much at all.

2\. Drawing a corollary between anxiety over damage to your reputation due to
poor performance at a previous job and anxiety because too many people down-
voted you on Hacker News and now your karma score is distributed
is...well...ridiculous. Hacker News isn't real life, and that little number by
your username means pretty much nothing.

3\. The proposed idea would not stop people from creating new accounts, fake
accounts, etc. In no way would this inhibit anonymity, which seems to be what
you're suggesting.

4\. I doubt if most people would resist the idea that if they build a
reputation in one community, it would be transferable to another community.
People are lazy, and generally do not resist anything that makes life easier
or more convenient for them.

Incidentally, I strongly doubt that any of the top 10 reasons why OpenID
hasn't taken off are what you stated; people will give up just about anything
for convenience sake. OpenID hasn't taken off because most people just don't
care enough to try and understand it.

Again, just my .02 :-)

~~~
justindz
One issue with porting karma, rather than just being able to display different
site's karma rankings on your blog or something, would be the ability to gain
tons of karma at the Beenie Babies site where I am a subject matter expert and
then appearing knowledgeable in a commercial banking forum.

On OpenID, I think the main reason it hasn't taken off is because it's
confusing, actually makes a sign-in process take longer and isn't supported
widely enough to be anything but a deviation in the normal UI experience to
date.

I think you're spot on with your points. Have another $0.02.

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mixmax
What gives me karma here might not give me karma at other sites and vice
versa.

A "karma is hard - let's go shopping" comment would get a high rating on
reddit and a negative rating here.

So your karma is tied to the site, and tells very little about how "popular"
you would be elsewhere on the net.

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rms
Let's start by allowing karma transfers between users here...

~~~
gojomo
Or how about transfers just between our own comments?

I'd love to be able to slide surplus karma from dumb-but-popular things I've
said to the underappreciated, more controversial comments I'm more proud of.
:)

~~~
nebula
With a transfer cost of course :) Otherwise you could misuse your karma to
move your comments up all the while.

~~~
Shamiq
And I have a hunch that high ranking comments gain points exponentially, not
linearly.

I'm not sure if that's what I mean -- but some posts seem to get more points
just because they already have a lot of points.

~~~
kragen
Like pop songs in that study where they divided people into groups and had
them rate songs? It seems almost inevitable. That sort of positive feedback
can make a system more sensitive, but it can also make it unstable, amplifying
noise until it overwhelms small signals. My third connection is that, if your
hypothesis is correct (and I'm pretty sure it is) you would tend to expect
comment karma to be distributed according to a Zipf distribution.

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sahaj
isn't this what "open social" is all about? i mean you can't carry your karma
(actually a pretty weird concept to me), but a person that chooses to
associate with you, gets to see your profile, your friends, your pictures, and
whatever other info you choose to share. i think this model closely follows
how real life works. having a rating that describes and follows you, i think,
is fairly useless (i'm sure plenty of you will disagree).

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qhoxie
Interesting thought but I really prefer the isolation we have here.

~~~
SingAlong
right! I too don't want guys to just signup and post here just to show off
their News.YC karma. It's a lot better to be isolated and share stuff rather
than showing off karma.

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presty
tbh i see no use in this karma thing.

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lst
Don't call it Karma.

Call it with its real name: Democratic Dictatorship.

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ram1024
a universal "reputation" tied to your email account might be useful

universally

~~~
JMiao
i believe that's how rapleaf started out.

~~~
dshah
Any initial impressions of RapLeaf? I've come across them a couple of times.

