
Ask PG: What have I done wrong? - RiderOfGiraffes
tl;dr: Now my votes are broken, and I'm sad. (edited: "dl;dr" -&#62; "tl;dr" - sorry.)<p>================<p>I've seen this complaint made several times before, with people finding that their votes are apparently not having any effect.  I've watched the discussions, not feeling I have anything to contribute, wondering what they may have done to trigger the secretive "vote-ignoring" logic that you tinker with.<p>I understand that you need to stay on top of the problem of people gaming the system, and that being too open just makes it easier for people to screw around and make the voting system less valuable.<p>But generally I rely on high-quality items bubbling to the top, so when I see a comment I think is valuable and yet which is low down in the pecking order, I upvote it.  I take care, I try to add value, I invest time.<p>And now I've found that some of my recent votes haven't made a difference. The comments I thought were worth boosting continue to languish.  The people I thought were worth rewarding haven't got the karma.<p>I've wasted my time trying to make the site more valuable.<p>So, while I'll continue to believe that things are partially random, but biased to having better stuff near the top, I'm no longer as confident as I was.  I'll continue to scan the new submissions to see if there's anything interesting, and maybe I'll click on an up arrow, but I'm pretty disincentivized about bothering to spend time trying to add value.<p>The message is that my time isn't valued.  You've encouraged me into taking without giving back.  You've encouraged me to react without thinking.<p>If that's the message you intended, I think that's sad.<p>Here are two links to earlier discussions - there are more.<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871202<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=233460
======
pg
A few months ago, because of the mob feel that voting was starting to have now
that the site has grown so big, I started experimenting with thresholds for
which votes got counted (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871202>). The
best test I could think of was the average score of a user's recent comments,
so I used that. Currently the threshold is 2. The reason your votes stopped
counting is that you dropped just below that. Your average is currently 1.88.
(Ironically, it's much higher now because of the comments on this thread, but
comment averages are calculated asynchronously, so there will be a lag before
yours is recalculated.)

I'm probably going to do away with the display of point totals on comments
entirely, because thresholds haven't fixed the problem. In that case I'll just
use points internally, e.g. to sort threads, and then I'll probably go back to
counting most votes.

Edit: Since I was planning to toss the threshold when I stopped displaying
comment scores, I just reset it to 1. Also, since users asked to see their avg
comment scores in their profile pages, I just added that.

~~~
jacquesm
To use the voting average is a _really_ bad way of doing this. I answer a lot
of 'Ask HN' style threads, these are hardly ever voted up and they are a ton
of work.

If the effect of this change is that doing work like that gets punished then
that is really putting the horse behind the cart.

For instance:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049551>

Essentially you are punishing people for being nice to others.

~~~
pg
There are always going to be outlying cases, whatever strategy you use. I
suppose I could fix this one by making the threshold depend on either average
comment karma or total karma. But as I said, my inclination now is just to
stop displaying points on comment threads.

~~~
tptacek
These aren't outlier cases.

If I wanted to boost my comment score average, I would very deliberately
formulate _even more_ bogus opinions about popular "controversies". Oh, I sure
would come up with a lot of crap to say about Zynga, the Apple Tablet, and
Websprockets.

It would work, because haunting the less popular topics has been a surefire
way to get my average to drop.

~~~
pg
Good point about the orphan threads. I should somehow normalize for that.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Dividing comment votes by article votes (or comment votes by parent votes)
would be a start.

------
zachbeane
My guess is you got flagged by possible-sockpuppet. See news.arc in arc3.tar
for why some stuff gets ignored.

    
    
        (def possible-sockpuppet (user)
          (or (ignored user)
              (< (uvar user weight) .5)
              (and (< (user-age user) new-age-threshold*)
                   (< (karma user) new-karma-threshold*))))
    

Since your age and karma don't seem to be a problem, I'd guess an admin or
editor marked you as ignored, or an admin reduced your weight.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Interesting - thanks. I wish I could upvote you.

------
ErrantX
I've had my voting stopped on a couple of occasions. The last one was because
I downvoted someone 3-4 times in a row in the same thread (all their comments
needed a downvote :) it wasn't anything nasty) and my voting stopped working
for a week or so.

I also _think_ in the past I have had it removed for:

\- upvoting different stories in quick succession (came back to the page to
vote stories I liked....)

\- downvoting the same person 2-3 times in the space of about 20 minutes in
different threads (without realising I must stress!) with no other votes in
between

It comes back after X amount of time.

> but I'm pretty disincentivized about bothering to spend time trying to add
> value.

Yeh I feel that; I read now but dont bother to contribute many votes.

~~~
ErrantX
from pg's comments elsewhere my thoughts on what behaviour limits your voting
might be incorrect - simply circumstances of coincidence (and more related to
volume of posting_

------
revorad
Chill out man. First, it could be a bug. Second, no doubt HN is a special
place, but _it's still just a news forum_. Get back to work, go out to play,
don't make this your life.

</patronising>

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
First of all, yes, I am fully aware that this is just a news forum, and that
there's this thing called "real life."

Secondly, this is a great resource of both contacts and information. It's made
great because of the quality of people here, and the time they take to submit,
comment, _and vote._ Without that time from people with busy lives, HN will
become rather non-special.

I'm pointing out that at least one person here now feels, because of a stated
policy, that their time is undervalued, so I'm thinking of taking it
elsewhere. I do have an outside life, I was investing time here because I
thought it might be valued. I'm re-evaluating that decision

I'm not going to walk away without explanation. When people stop being my
customers I'd like to know why. I'm giving PG the courtesy to let him know my
reactions to his policies. It's his site and he can and will do as he chooses.
So far he's done an extraordinary job.

Think of this as customer feedback.

~~~
plinkplonk
Fwiw I think people who downvote you are reacting to the tone of your writing

Sentences like "I'm not going to walk away without explanation." sound
(mildly) pompous and priggish.

You could cut all the dramatics and posturing from your post, state the facts
(as you see them) plainly, provide any supporting data and ask a polite
question about the effect you want and what you can do to help.

Sentences like "When people stop being my customers I'd like to know why." and
"Think of this as customer feedback." have an assumption built in which may
not hold.

"user" != "customer".

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Thanks for the feedback - appreciated.

I could've taken more time to explain that more clearly, and it probably
would've sounded better, but I really _do_ have other things to do.

The simple facts are that my votes don't count, I don't know why, I thought I
was a useful contributor, I resent the implicit message that my votes aren't
valued, and I think it's rude to walk away from a service because of a
perceived flaw without giving feedback.

I'd be interested to know what people think the difference is between "user"
and "customer." Perhaps a "user" simply doesn't pay in any way, whereas a
"customer" does. I prefer to be a "customer." In return for the contacts I've
made and information gained, I'm happy to repay by taking time to add value.

Most companies try to turn users into customers. I'm just pointing out that
the current situation has turned a customer into a user, and that might not be
what was intended.

~~~
lutorm
Maybe it's your presumption of malice that's rubbing people the wrong way.
Instead of immediately thinking that you are under attack, perhaps a
presumption of malfunction would have shown higher regard for people's
intentions.

(But then again, given that this is HN, maybe assuming their code isn't bug
free is a worse insult? ;-)

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
As I tried to point out (and obviously failed - you're not the first person to
suggest this) the fact that others have in the past said that they have lost
the right to vote, and the fact that PG says he tinkers with the question of
whether specific votes count, make me believe it's not a bug or other
unintended feature.

(ADDED IN EDIT: PG has said: "I'm experimenting with changes to the code that
decides which votes count.")

And in some sense I'm content that for some reason and in some way my votes
have been deemed irrelevant. I'd just like to know why. More than that, I
spend time thinking before I vote. If my vote has no effect, I won't waste
that time.

~~~
scott_s
I don't think the intention is "specific votes" as in an editor cherry-picked
particular users to ignore. Rather, I think they are trying to code logic that
will recognize patterns of behavior and ignore users that exhibit that
behavior. That is tricky stuff, and it's going to get a lot of false positives
until they settle on an acceptable set of rules.

You're really not giving PG and whoever else develops the HN code the benefit
of the doubt.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes

      > I don't think the intention is "specific votes" as in an
      > editor cherry-picked particular users to ignore.
    

I'm sure that's true. They write complex code that tries to identify
deprecated behaviours, and then take action based on that. No doubt I could've
expressed that point to better reflect what I think. I will look at going back
and editing the phrasing - thank you.

    
    
      > Rather, I think they are trying to code logic that will
      > recognize patterns of behavior and ignore users that
      > exhibit that behavior.
    

Most likely, yes.

    
    
      > That is tricky stuff, and it's going to get a lot of false
      > positives until they settle on an acceptable set of rules.
    

Yes, and no. Yes it's tricky, and yes there will be false positives, but the
rate depends on how aggressive they try to be.

    
    
      > You're really not giving PG and whoever else develops the
      > HN code the benefit of the doubt.
    

I suspect I'm giving them more credit than you give me credit for. This is the
sort of thing at which I earn my living, and I really do know how hard
automated behavioural analysis can be. I also know that behaviour modification
works best when the reinforcement is strongly attached to the behaviour. The
problem here is that I have no idea what I've done to have my voting
privileges revoked, and that is counter-productive.

------
thirdusername
It's the same for me and has been like that for weeks, months(?). Having your
votes on hacker news isn't exactly important to life as others have pointed
out but it's slightly demoralizing whenever I forget myself and vote on
something only to realize the system just ignores me. I'm useless and valued
less than even a new user. :(

I'm considering creating a new user because of that as I've tried to just wait
for it to work again hoping it's temporary. I have no idea what caused me to
loose my voting rights in the first place and there's no way for me to change
my behavior if it's undesirable. I've for the record never voted maliciously
and this is my username because I've lost my password twice before not because
I have several users to vote with.

------
thaumaturgy
Considering that pg a while back mentioned you specifically on a short list of
people whose comments he tends to find interesting, I doubt this was
intentional.

It also might've been better handled by a short email to him.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes

      > pg a while back mentioned you specifically on a
      > short list of people whose comments he tends to
      > find interesting ...
    

Really? I didn't know. Do you have a reference?

    
    
      > It also might've been better handled by a short
      > email to him.
    

To be honest, I never actually thought of that.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I thought it was here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=845938>

...but it's not. Might've been somewhere else, or I might be mistaken.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
That's the reference I found, and I found no others. Never mind, it was a nice
thought while it lasted. 8-)

------
icey
I know this may not be the same situation as yours, and it may not be entirely
helpful to you; but whenever I've had a problem with my account I've just sent
a note to PG and it's gotten taken care of within a day or so.

(I have had voting problems previously.)

------
idlewords
I think what it boils down to is that the devoting logic is easy to trigger
and permanent. I haven't had the ability to up or downvote in about six
months.

~~~
ErrantX
I've not heard of the automatic bans lasting that long???

The longest I ever had was about 2 months (give or take - I was away for part
of it). The longest ever someone has mentioned to me has been about 3 1/2
months

~~~
idlewords
Then I am your new record! Just checked it and it happily fails.

------
Quarrelsome
Is it not safer to assume it is a bug first of all before claiming that pg is
wasting your time and not valuing you?

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Often yes, but in this case probably not. PG has stated publically that he
tinkers with whether or not to count votes:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871458>

It appears that in this case, as in others before mine, he's decided that he's
not going to count my votes. I have no idea why. As I say, it makes me
inclined not to bother giving much back to the site, even though it's a great
resource.

~~~
lutorm
No, that thread states that he tinkers with "changes to _the code_ that
decides which votes count". I don't see why you would jump to the conclusion
that it's intentional and not a bug when he's publicly said he's
experimenting.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
False positives in complex code designed to detect behaviour are not bugs. I'm
not saying I've been singled out and that some editor has said - Ooh, that
RiderOfGiraffes, we need to remove voting privileges. I'm not saying that at
all. I'm saying that as a result of the system they have, I've lost my voting
privileges, and I think it's a false positive.

And I'm asking - what have I done to trigger the mechanism?

I doubt I'll get an answer, no one else ever seems to have, and given that the
site seems largely to work pretty well, I'm not going to campaign actively for
it to be run differently.

But I'm not the only one, and I'm disappointed that despite trying to stay
within the guidelines, despite submitting stuff I think the community will
find interesting, and despite thinking carefully about how I vote and why I
vote, somehow I've fallen foul of the system.

Sufficiently disappointed that I don't think I'll take so much care in the
future.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
There's a really interesting subtext about web-apps here. So much so that I
think it deserves more follow-up.

Yes, you are correct: you will not take so much care in the future.

People are wonderful pattern recognizers. Show them a system where you vote up
and things go up and you vote down and things go down? They grok it. Where you
punish people by down-voting them and reward them by up=voting? Makes sense.

But start mucking around so sometimes when you vote up the article goes down?
Or sometimes you can vote and sometimes you can't? Or you can't vote now, but
you can vote in 12 hours? Or you can vote for this guy, but not this other?

Eventually they just say "Screw it. It's effectively either random or designed
especially to piss me off. Therefore I will not take it seriously"

Oddly enough, the more attached people are to the gaming/karma aspects of the
site, the more this will annoy them. Also the more annoyed they are, the more
likely they are to start gaming the system -- since in their minds the system
isn't giving them a "fair shake" to begin with.

Lots of interesting insights into human behavior with complex systems here. Of
course I'm just speculating, but it's important stuff for anybody running a
public site.

------
allenbrunson
Okay, so this topic comes up pretty frequently, so I'm going to go at it
again. I, for one, completely support what pg is doing.

The overall goal here is not to make any one person feel like a special
snowflake. It's to keep conversation at the absolute highest possible quality.
To that end, pg and and the editors curb a lot of behavior they find contrary
to that goal. They kill spam. They kill articles that are too far away from
our core topics. They ban trolls. They ban people who aren't quite trolls, but
still have a negative effect on conversation. At the low end of the penalty
scale, they sometimes take away your voting privileges, for awhile, or
potentially forever. I'm guessing that means: we like what you have to say
just fine, but we think your voting patterns are harming the site.

I've noticed this happening to a lot of people, so I've used that feedback to
modify my own behavior. I try to make about four or five comment upvotes for
every downvote, at least. I don't downvote anything into negative points
unless I think it is _really_ harsh and goes very much against the grain. The
details don't matter, but the overall outcome does: I try to behave in a
manner that I think is good for the site.

If it turns out that pg disagrees with what I'm doing, I'm perfectly fine with
that. If he takes away my voting rights or bans me outright, I will _still_
think he's doing a good job.

Here's why I think so: just _look_ at this place! Have you _ever_ seen an
internet hangout that got this old and/or this big, yet remained as civil and
valuable as this one? I certainly haven't.

That says to me that pg isn't just doing something right, he's doing something
_incredibly_ right. I am frankly a lot less impressed by the community-
building track record of any of the complainers.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Largely speaking I agree with you. My problem here is that I don't know what
I've done wrong. If those responsible (PG and his editors) want to communicate
a message to me, they've failed.

I haven't gone around upvoting and downvoting excessively. I've upvoted a few
things I think are of value, and I don't remember downvoting anything
recently.

I'm just confused.

Feedback works best when it's consistent in direction (but not in frequency)
and clearly attached to the action that provoked it. I think PG and friends do
a great job on this. I think this is something they get wrong.

~~~
allenbrunson
Yeah, it looks to me like pg is a lot more subtle than most of the techie-
types who come here. He is not loud or brash or confrontational. He expects
people to observe and figure things out, rather than being told explicitly.
That goes against many people's expectations.

On the positive side, he is very responsive to people with problems who are
sincere about working with him. Almost everybody who has ever been banned and
made a good-faith effort to work with him has gotten unbanned. From what I've
seen, this pretty much always happens via email. As others have mentioned,
that's the go-to communication method for people with problems.

------
pclark
I can't believe you made a new submission about this. Seriously. Why can't you
email him?

I can't believe you assume there is some kind of conspiracy to render your
votes irrelevant. Seriously. It's just the internet.

~~~
ErrantX
> Why can't you email him?

That would probably be impolite :)

> I can't believe you assume there is some kind of conspiracy to render your
> votes irrelevant

Please read Riders explanation. There are automatic triggers which stop your
votes counting for an unknown period of time if you trigger them. Not a
conspiracy; requests for information on this have been posted a couple of
times before.

~~~
pclark
It'd be impolite to email someone something when it only concerns them, and
yet it's fine to post on an online news group where _everyone will see it_?

~~~
ErrantX
What emailing out of the blue on a low priority issue and for which a wider
group of people are interested in the answer anyway?

I certainly wouldn't bother him.

~~~
scott_s
There is a history at HN of people who encountered problems emailing PG and
having the problem solved.

------
Slashed
The same here. I had started a topic on this before and some people assured me
that it will probably get back working, as they had this issue before as well.

Personally, I don't care much about this. Though when I start a topic here
asking for help, I feel that I should thank those who helped me by upvoting
their comments.

------
wensing
I had no idea HN's defense mechanisms were this sophisticated.

------
garply
While we're talking about the voting system - could you please specify more
clearly in the guidelines in what circumstances downmodding is appropriate?

~~~
logicalmind
One example of downmodding that I've seen personally is that someone will post
a reference of a link or a book that I had never heard about. When it is
particularly valuable to me I like to respond thanking them for posting it. I
don't expect karma from this, I simply want to convey my thanks to the person
who provided the information and to encourage other people to do the same. I
also upvote them, but I think the personal thanks is more valuable. I've had
these "that you" comments downvoted consistently, to the point where I no
longer thank people and ultimately delete the comment. I find this behavior
strange in a "community".

~~~
allenbrunson
what you're describing there is a pretty information-free response, not
terribly different from just saying 'me too'. that's what upvotes are for.

~~~
logicalmind
I see your point, but I don't believe we have the same definition of
"information-free". Unless I'm mistaken, upvotes are anonymous. A comment of
"thank you" or appreciation is essentially a publicly identifiable upvote. The
information being conveyed is to the commenter and that information is the
appreciation of the comment from an identifiable individual.

In just about every situation you could say that greetings, salutations, etc.
convey no obvious information. But I'm not sure how far we'd get without them.
I personally believe that things like this are what maintain and bond a
community. But that is simply my opinion. I'd take a thoughtful comment reply,
even if in disagreement, than an upvote any day.

------
DanielBMarkham
I've got a better one for you: I submitted an article yesterday. Quickly 3 or
4 people upvoted it -- it was basically an "Ask HN" piece. Nothing special.

But the odd thing was that even though the score increased dramatically from 1
to 5 in just 10-15 minutes, the ranking didn't change that much. Used to be
that an increase of that much would get you near the top of the front page, if
even for a little bit.

I'm not complaining, just figured somebody somewhere was tinkering or it was
some kind of effect of karma inflation. However it does bring up an
interesting point about UI design and large groups of users -- any non-obvious
new system behavior can easily be interpreted in lots of ways, some of which
aren't so flattering to the board owners.

FWIW, I've always thought this behavior was a bug. If I thought my vote was
being taken and then returned to me at random times depending on the "smarts"
of the system without notifying me why, I'd be pretty mad. I understand that
it's already happening with deep threads and the first time I stumbled across
it I was so mad I was ready to just throw in the towel on HN.

Not exactly a happy user experience, but yes, the needs of the many outweigh
the needs of the few, or the one. Just a better job of communicating would
salve a lot of these hurt feelings, in my opinion.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Apparently submissions with text as opposed to URLs don't get ranked as
highly. Two items submitted at the same time and with the same votes, one with
URL, the other as text, the text one will rank significantly lower.

That might explain your observation.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thanks!

But that's my point -- there's all kinds of little nuances and "if X, then Y"
in the system and hell if I have time to keep on top of all of it. To my mind,
it seems a reasonable assumption that there is a mad sysadmin somewhere just
screwing around with me. After all, in the past for most boards limiting
voting or tweaking ranking or turning on or off features was traditionally
handled by a person, not an algorithm. Maybe it's some super-duper cool
collaborative voting checker that's working wrong or maybe somebody just had a
bad day. As a user, beats me -- and once I have to start second-guessing who
is doing what to me and why the site is totally screwed. In my opinion.

You shouldn't have to be on HN everyday and read all the pages to understand
how the site works. That's an idiotic expectation.

By the way, I'm commenting on all user sites with non-intuitive behavior, not
just the peculiarities of HN.

~~~
rms
There are a couple other things that are down-weighted like self-posts...
tweets, unembedded images. PG commented about this at one point.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
_PG commented about this at one point._

(sigh)

------
andrew1
If you haven't done so already, why don't you email Paul Graham privately and
ask him what you have done to cause your comments to be discounted. If it is
for a reason that he wants to keep private then it might be more constructive
than raising the issue in public.

~~~
Tichy
Not that I disagree, however, I found it interesting to hear about this issue.
I wasn't aware it exists before this submission.

------
RyanMcGreal
> I understand that you need to stay on top of the problem of people gaming
> the system, and that being too open just makes it easier for people to screw
> around and make the voting system less valuable.

Is security through obscurity really a good idea in this day and age?

~~~
wizard_2
Its another brick in the wall. As long as you're not fooling yourself into
thinking it's all you need, it aids in not making things easier for people to
figure out and slightly raises the bar against intrusion. "Defense in Depth"
is the only situation where I could consider obscurity a security layer.

Just because I keep my ssh servers up to date (disable passwords, root login,
etc), doesn't mean I don't gain anything by having them listen a high port.
The moment a 0-Day exploit is found (or maybe another Debian key generation
bug) the security of not showing up on every script kiddies initial scans
looking for unpatched ssh servers is worth something.

------
tokenadult
Thanks to everyone for their interesting comments. Some of the forms of site
behavior mentioned here I don't think I have ever observed. I don't read the
code for the site software, so I just use the site empirically. The discussion
of trade-offs involved in different kinds of site voting behavior defaults has
been very helpful to me.

My overall perspective on any online forum's forum rules is that I just deal
with them. I don't take any set of rules personally. I don't assume any kind
of enforcement action or limitation on my own forum participation is directed
at me as an individual, but rather is a forum management response to forum
issues. If I enjoy a forum, I keep right on participating. If I don't enjoy a
forum, I take my participation elsewhere without feeling offended. I happen to
like HN a lot. To each their own.

As to specific observations of voting behavior, to the best of my knowledge
and belief, when I upvote a comment or submission, and when I downvote a
comment, my votes immediately change the score of the item I have just voted
on. I try in my own mind to upvote more often than downvote, but I have no way
to keep track of my actual count of votes up or down. I do like to clean up
the comments, so I definitely downvote from time to time, and sometimes in
bursts of downvotes in one thread. Unless I am wholly mistaken in my
observation, my votes count as ups or downs on those items, in real time. It
has been my observation that my own personal karma score will sometimes be
stable for hours at a time, even if I have made new comments or submitted new
articles, and it may be (I don't know) that I am running into some automated
response of the site software such that my karma score is frozen if I have
just been downvoting repeatedly. But it often seems that overnight, or after a
while, my personal karma score becomes unstuck, and anyway I don't worry about
this too much. I look at my threads view from time to time both to see if
anyone has replied to any of my comments and to see what the aggregate votes
are on those comments. If I am below 1 in aggregate score on some comment I
have made, I try to think why readers would decide to downvote it. If I see
someone else get a conspicuously high net score on a comment in a thread where
I have also commented, I try to figure out what he or she did right to achieve
commendation from other participants. As long as the site in general is worth
reading and interesting to me, I don't especially worry about how its voting
behavior is implemented. It's fun for me to learn from other participants here
what kind of rules are visible in the source code and what kind of incentives
may be designed by management to keep the conversation worthwhile. Since 1992,
I have been a moderator on one or another of a variety of online forums, and
I'm always deeply curious about what makes online communities successful and
valuable to participants. I think HN is doing a good job.

P.S. I like many of RiderOfGiraffes's submissions and comments, and have
certainly upvoted more than a few (and perhaps downvoted none of them). I too
recall some thread in which pg mentioned RiderOfGiraffes favorably, although I
don't have the link at hand. I would regret seeing RiderOfGiraffes leaving the
site or changing his username, because I like to see familiar usernames as a
clue that a comment or submission will be worth a read.

------
elblanco
I've noticed this same effect as well. I thought that it wasn't counted for
some period of time + it wasn't counted unless there was a reply to the
comment or some such.

------
ntoshev
Try Ctrl-F5 on pages where it seems your vote doesn't count. It's most likely
stale cache.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Been there, done that, run experiments, and no, it's not a cacheing issue.
This has been raised before, and it's not a bug. PG has explicitly said he
experiments with not counting some votes. It appears he's decided (perhaps
temporarily) not to count mine. Hence the question.

------
bioweek
What does dl;dr: mean? I couldn't find it in the urban dictionary.

~~~
lt
Not sure if you are sarcastic, but I'm pretty sure he meant tl; dr

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tl;dr>

~~~
ektimo
For some browsers you will need to use:
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tl%3Bdr>

------
tmsh
It's amazing how voting gets pretty complex, pretty fast.

Although, these are more ballot-based, I remember reading about this in my
discrete math class (in high school!):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system>

I second a couple of people's comments about how it's very cool PG is
constantly trying to improve the system. I've sometimes read his comments
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg>), and one can tell he really cares
about the level of discourse (even if he just writes, 'Please stop', etc.).

The idea of preventing 'mob feel' reminds me of America's system of checks and
balances. A democracy/republic with three branches of government is not a
perfect system, but it's been sustainable.

I don't know the right way to do voting, but I'd recommend pg and whoever else
is involved in this discussion -- think about it in terms of time (i.e., too
many processes running in similar time intervals can get out of hand -- exe,
leg and s.ct. are all staggered in terms of their time horizons) and symmetry
(i.e., balanced levels of power).

Arguably, in a majority rule situation, the government's checks are in place
primarily to protect minority rights (from mob rule). This seems a little
different from the 'mob rule' problem being discussed (where people gravitate
into two-sided arguments). But anyway, perhaps I'd try to figure out
fractional voting. People with more karma (maybe 50% weighted by total karma
and 50% weighted by karma velocity over the past couple of weeks) can upvote
with maybe something like 1.5 the votes of everyone else.

But if you ask me, everyone's downvote should be significantly less than 1.
Though, there could be again a 50% total and 50% velocity function for how
each user's posts and comments are treated. I.e, if a user starts posting
really bad stuff, then they should be able to be voted down much more quickly.
But arguably, this part of the system should be tinkered with much less.
Everyone, theoretically, should have a right to say whatever want. Hmm, maybe
they could be forwarded to the rules for discussion and be delayed from
posting (like a Hockey penalty box?)

I don't know. It's a complex issue. Maybe it's good enough the way it is. As
this system moves forward though, it'd probably be smart to build in ways to
vote/approve changes to the system. Not for everything, but big things (analog
is the presidential election. People would probably feel a lot better about it
all. It's strange. Maybe you need a Constitution too.

Update. One last little idea. You could introduce new voting functionality
perhaps as A-B tests. Some posts randomly get flagged for voting with feature
X, some don't. If you could establish some metric to judge 'satisfaction' with
the experience (more good karma in the discussion?), you could, basically,
build 'learning' into your system.

------
yes_its_giles
Just create a new account. I get banned all the time. This is my third
account. You can't take it personally. It's either some person being wrong
about you or some automated system. Who cares?

I love it when I get banned, it means I won't be back for a while, until the
desire for attention overcomes the inertia. This site is kinda like Get
Satisfaction for bloggers. "You don't _have_ to create an account. It's just
that everybody on this one thread is talking about you right now, and they're
all taking your lack of response to mean something."

I hate the karma system. Any site that has one is fundamentally flawed
(detailed rant: [http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-
ope...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door-
heal-or-die.html)). It's an automated, massively parallel abusive
relationship, and I hate to kick somebody when they're down, but this guy,
with all his sad whining about "I don't know what I did wrong, why don't you
love me any more"? That is not the sign of a healthy community. That is the
sign of an automated, massively parallel abusive relationship.

Any venture capitalist knows that you run a lot of experiments and some things
fail. The karma system is fail. Throw it away.

PS, please ban me.

~~~
mcantelon
There is no shortage of karma-free forums elsewhere full of flames and junk.
The karma system is helpful in providing feedback to people with a lack of
impulse control or respects for others. If you're repeatedly banned, you may
want to examine how you communicate as doing so would probably increase your
ability to affect change.

~~~
yes_its_giles
I said I liked being banned. Why would I want to change something I like? It's
a reminder to avoid getting into arguments with people who pay no attention to
logic and have weird, arbitrary loyalties to systems which present no actual
usefulness.

~~~
mcantelon
>Why would I want to change something I like? It's a reminder to avoid getting
into arguments with people who pay no attention to logic

In other words, you are happy to be rejected by those you consider inferior
because you consider it a validation of your own perceived superiority.

~~~
yes_its_giles
Yeah, exactly. It's a dysfunctional pattern. I enjoy it, but I really think
there's a systemic tendency to dysfunctional patterns here. That's inevitable
with any social software, so you have to plan for your dysfunctions. Look at
Stack Overflow, the dysfunction they get is karma whores answering as many
questions as possible, and competing to be first with the answer. That's a
pretty great dysfunction. The dysfunction we have here is anybody who
polarizes opinions gets banned. The cynical (me) find it amusing and the
sensitive (Giraffes) get their feelings hurt. Either way, it's bad. You don't
want a community which punishes anyone for voicing controversial opinions, but
that's inherent to the design here.

~~~
mcantelon
I think it's more the the way that opinions are expressed than the opinions
themselves which creates blowback (unless one is expressing something truly
polarizing, like singing the praises of racial hierarchy). So, if you pay
attention to the tone of communication you can express controversial opinions
without defensive blowback and have a higher chance of people understanding
your ideas.

~~~
yes_its_giles
you're making the same assumption I disagreed with two comments ago. to me,
getting banned is not the negative part of the experience. the negative part
of the experience is the bad habit of coming back to engage in more fruitless
conversation when I could be off doing stuff. the more offensive my tone is on
this site, the sooner I'll get banned again, the quicker I'll get on with
something actually useful to do, and the better it'll be for me.

I should just follow my own advice and devolve into Tourette's syndrome. fuck
you, you chinchilla rapist. (nothing personal.)

anyway, ALSO, none of this has anything to do with what I'm talking about,
which is that HN's karma system incubates various dysfunctions, and that
anyone who sets up any kind of points system on a social site is going to be
setting up the rules of a game that people will then play and be emotionally
invested in winning.

curious game, the only way to win is not to play. I'm going to throw away my
password to this account, log out, and see how long I can last before starting
account #4.

~~~
mcantelon
I assumed that being banned wouldn't be a positive experience if _not_ being
banned was more of a positive experience, i.e. if you got more value from
communication.

But yeah, communication is often minimally useful. And I get that the
pollution of motivation caused by social app incentives make make it even less
so. It seems that without these incentives things tend to fall down in
different ways, but maybe my experience of qualities communities that don't
rely on social app incentives is limited.

[And chincilla is mischaracterizing what happened between us: it was my
understanding that it was consensual.]

------
numbchuckskills
This is a good example of the power of a karma or rating system on your
website. Personally, I don't give a shit if I'm being rewarded (or penalized)
on websites, and seeing a little number next to my screen name doesn't give me
any sense of pride or validation.

With this little rant about feeling like they're 'wasting time' because a
counter isn't being incremented with an arbitrary points system, it's obvious
there's at least some people out there that absolutely need this add-on to
contribute positively.

------
cmars232
Look at it like voting in America. Yeah, it probably doesn't mean squat,
especially if your views contradict the local majority. But you still do it,
right?

~~~
randallsquared
No.

~~~
Quarrelsome
I think the root here was complaining about the "First Past the Post System".
In that case he has a point, especially when our politicians enjoy engaging in
"jerrymandering".

