

Ask HN: How about a word ration economy for brevity/value/time saving? - brendonjason

My personal model for clear and concise communication is Stephen Hawking; perhaps his proficiency at getting to the point is based on the fact that it takes a lot of effort for him to communicate, and so he, unlike most people, is forced to think about what is worth saying and the best way to say it.<p>Having said that, perhaps it's time to entertain the idea of a word economy on Hacker News, ie, some sort of daily/weekly "word count account" ... perhaps based on seniority/points ... that would counterbalance the compulsive counter-comment inspiring nature of this service.<p>Debate is sometimes good; scrolling down and down and down to get past endless trails of points/counter-points of exponentially decreasing marginal value to the original post seems like an exercise in obsessive-compulsive disorder reinforcement.<p>Surely having a set amount of words one can use in any given day for comments/responses would inspire more "on-point" and brief commentary that would make numerous editing features of this site redundant?<p>It's still free speech, just limited, self-edited free speech.<p>Flame away ...
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rewind
I'd rather not read something that's too long and/or off-topic than take away
someone's ability to post it. This type of system sounds way too complicated.
I've read some AMAZING long responses here. And I've read total crap where the
main point could have been made in 20 words.

And basing it on seniority/points is pointless. There are people who have been
here for ages who have more karma than I'll have in the next 20 years. Some of
them post a lot, and some of them go on-and-on. Just because they have karma
doesn't mean they don't sometimes post long-winded junk. But that's no
different than people with fewer points. Some content is good; some isn't.

Every community has its strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't mean we have
obsess over eliminating the weaknesses. As you become more active in the
community, you just learn to change your behavior accordingly.

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DanielStraight
It seems like it would also inspire a lot of pointless, "I agree!" comments.

