

Ask HN: Why do dead posts contribute to karma? - mojuba

One of my posts just got killed but karma I earned is still in effect. I think it should be fixed to reduce karma as well.<p>Edit: a little clarification. I think it's possible to abuse HN by submitting any crap, voting up with a few other accounts and earn karma this way.
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pg
_I think it's possible to abuse HN by submitting any crap, voting up with a
few other accounts and earn karma this way._

There's some software that would start to notice this.

~~~
davidw
If someone were purely after karma, I think the best way to do it would be to
submit not just any old crap, but a broad selection of mainly "off topic"
stories from relatively high quality sites like economist.com, ft.com,
wsj.com, nytimes.com and maybe some stuff like reason.com, which is bound to
get some votes from the libertarian crowd prior to being killed. If you were
steady about submitting lots of these links, a few would be winners, and the
rest cost you nothing.

This is essentially the strategy followed here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=robg>

Lots of material, much of it good. Although plenty of it might be considered
off topic by some, most of it's interesting, and gathers at least a few votes.
And it's certainly not spam.

~~~
robg
I take offense! I follow no "strategy". That's what I read daily outside of
research and coding. I post the most interesting stuff because:

a) I follow a lot of great links and discussions here.

b) I've learned a ton in doing so.

c) I'm trying to give back in some way.

d) To me, that's karma but it has nothing to do with points.

Now, I do feel bad about not contributing to many discussions here. In
general, I don't have much patience for that kind of back and forth.
Furthermore I don't think I have much to add. But I'm certainly not worried
about the "cost".

I'd love to know how many stories I've had killed as compared to other people
and some site average and standard deviation. I see 7 out of my last 120
submissions (one was self-killed) or 6%. That seems okay and certainly not an
outlier. Still, even those fall within my primary interests: brains,
education, business and technology with some cultural stuff. Those interests
may be overly broad to you, but they're simply who I am. If my failure rate
here is only 6% then I have to conclude plenty are interesting (as in the
guidelines) to folks here.

~~~
davidw
I didn't mean any offense, just that posting a lot of interesting material
with a broad scope is a successful strategy. I tend to take a narrow view of
what's hacker news, but that doesn't make your links uninteresting. If I had
to categorize them, I'd say some were definitely on topic, a lot of them are
fuzzy, and some of them definitely aren't, centered around anything with
politics in it.

~~~
robg
I didn't really think you did. But again, I'm just posting what I read and
what I find especially interesting. Yeah, sometimes that includes politics
(like you posting FT's endorsement of Obama). That's where I'm thankful for
the community, and editors, killing things. Fuzzy is okay because, if
necessary, it becomes categorical.

Still, just disagreeing on the facts, I find a 6% failure rate to be
acceptable and much less than "some" or "plenty" imply. It's a small minority
if you recognize your own solipsism. The community says me and my interests
belong!

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spoiledtechie
We are not a degrading culture of hackers. There is a reason why there is very
minimal voting down of items. Its because if you see you have a bad article,
don't submit it.

If your article just died, then grow and learn from it. Don't demoralize your
self over it. If we give you negative points, its demoralizing you.

Also, you should edit your topic with Ask HN:Why do dead posts contribute to
karma?

It gets more notice that way.

~~~
mojuba
What I meant was spam rather than (slightly) irrelevant posts like mine. You
can post any crap, give it a few votes from different accounts and earn karma
that way.

~~~
icey
And then what? Having high karma doesn't get you anything. Each post and
comment seems to be judged on its merits, regardless of who is posting it
(with the exception of pg, I suppose; but I don't think there is much concern
with him turning into a spammer).

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icey
It's not a punitive measure when posts get killed. It may have been a fine
submission, but off-topic for this site. (In this case, I think it's pretty
obvious why it was killed.)

I think for the most part things get killed before they gain much, or any
karma. I'm pretty sure there are accounts out there that are perma-killed
which can't collect any karma anyways.

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davidw
I think dead posts ought to be _subtracted_ from karma:-)

~~~
mojuba
Maths vs. physics view of the world ;)

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tokenadult
Isn't karma lazy-loaded anyway? Sometimes it is hard to spot instantaneous
changes in karma even for forum activity that is documented to change karma.
Obsessing that much about karma probably is counterproductive. Just look for
something better to submit, and learn from the examples of the best
submissions of long-time submitters.

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sidmitra
I love it how everyone here lives in fear of another september.

I would rather keep the site simple as it is now. I don't want any silly karma
:-p

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brk
I think the whole thing would be hardly worth the effort to write something to
manage the karma.

~~~
Herring
"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."

\- Napoleon

~~~
anamax
Only so long as said soldier thinks that said colored bit of ribbon is thought
meaningful by fellow soldiers.

How many of you think that HN karma is meaningful?

