

Ask YC/PG: Can we call our points system 'karma'? - shafqat

At NewsCred, we're about to implement a points/leader board system and were thinking of various terminology to use for 'points.' But we keep coming back to 'karma' and I was wondering if PG or the community here would mind?<p>Basically, we would do it as an homage to YC and would attribute it to PH and Hacker News on our help/faq pages.Plus, people from HN would know right away that it's a nod to the community here ;-)<p>I wanted to get some sort of an OK before going ahead with it. If it's not cool, we'll definitely try and come up with another term. Suggestions welcome!
======
msg
Slashdot has had karma for a long time. This FAQ refers to it, and it was last
updated almost ten years ago.

<http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml>

Good artists borrow, great artists steal.

~~~
shafqat
Wow, I didn't know that. So if we use it, we'll give a double nod - one to HN
for our inspiration, and one to SlashDot for being the original. Is that cool?

~~~
Protophore
I don't think you need to keep asking for the OK to use "karma". Just go for
it.

~~~
msg
I'll add too that you don't need to credit all your ideas in general. There
are three factors I can think of that play into this.

The first is the genre you're writing/idea-using within. Academic scholarship
has pretty stringent standards for citation, Dave Barry's humor columns, not
so much.

The second is the degree to which you depend on the idea. If some idea is at
the heart of your work, you should acknowledge it gratefully (and possibly pay
license fees for it, depending on the idea's status in your jurisdiction).

The third is the degree of obviousness in your genre. You don't have to cite
anyone to prove that 1+1 is 2, unless your name is Peano or Russell and you're
working on mathematical meta-logic. Nobody owns common knowledge.

Because karma has been floating around as an idea on moderated-discussion
forums on the Internet for a long time (since the Bronze Age of the Internet,
if you will), it's pretty obvious. There are also pretty low standards for
citation in the webapp world.

And if you want to go further back, who's to say Slashdot didn't steal "karma"
after hearing "Karma Police" one too many times, and Radiohead had "Instant
Karma" in the back of their head? And John Lennon there is obviously referring
to a Hindu system of beliefs that was thousands of years old and will probably
outlast all of us.

My point is that there is no way to be completely original. We are all
subjugated by the tyranny of profound ideas. You just have to learn to stop
worrying and love the bomb.

------
r7000
Why don't you call the point total of a user their "CredRank" too? Your users
should already be familiar with the term from its use with your news sources.
And you are ranking their "credibility" as well. Or, to soften the association
(if you only want news sources to have "official CredRank"), call them
"CredPoints".

~~~
rms
Maybe just call it "Cred"? or Creds? Credits? Also, you should allow users to
transfer them back and forth! I keep waiting for one of these karma systems to
actually become a reputational economy.

------
noodle
the usage of karma here in HN/YC is most likely a nod to slashdot, who's
called its points karma for forever.

------
greyhat
I don't understand the question, its "karma", its a word, used all the time,
informally to mean built up good fortune or bad fortune... you don't need to
cite anything...

Honestly I'm a little freaked out by how eagerly over gracious to YC this
question is...

~~~
shafqat
Dude, I know its sounds eager but I've been burned many times before over tiny
things like this. Some people take it very seriously, and I'd rather tread
safely than piss people off.

------
MaysonL
Why not ask the Dalai Lama? He probably knows a bit more about karma than
anyone around here.

------
froo
I like the term Karma, I always thought Mojo would have made a good phrase
aswell.

