

What if Hacker News Has Badges? Who'd Get What? - toisanji
http://socmetrics.com/blog/hacker_new_badges

======
m0th87
Please no! HN should be about the content, not the people. Badges don't
contribute to the community, rather they enforce ad hominem biases.

~~~
patrickk
I was just thinking the same thing. Keeping the design minimalist and
'blingless' keeps HN from suffering a MySpace-like decline. People here are
attracted to the content, not the eye candy (there is none).

I recall a game developer saying that badges for achievement (Xbox Live! etc)
are a sign that games are becoming less imaginative and less fun, and sticking
badges in there is a way of getting the users to keep playing. Badge for
reaching 100% completion in GTA 4? Screw that. My time is too precious.

~~~
sesqu
Over the past few years, I've tentatively decided to not play any game that
has achievements. I used to scour regular games thoroughly, but have found
that games with achievements tend to become endless grinding slogs for no
satisfying reward.

It's hard to quit, though.

~~~
patrickk
Yeah, like searching for all the 'flying rats' (pigeons) in GTA and shooting
them. Utterly pointless.

For the life of me I don't know how people do endless, repetitive bullshit on
World of Warcraft either - I keep away from those that do. Seems like an utter
waste of time, and I immediately think of the South Park episode 'World of
Warcrack'.

~~~
sesqu
Great, I was just looking for something to watch.

Probably this (I get a redirect, so can't verify): Season 10 Episode 8 "Make
Love, Not Warcraft". <http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103797/>

~~~
patrickk
You will never look at WoW players again, if you have never seen it before!

------
dminor
"Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"

~~~
msurel
ditto

~~~
msurel
There's no way you folks got the joke if my reply got voted down that quickly.
You guys obviously need to watch blazing saddles again. :-)

~~~
code_duck
Joking is tolerated here only under very strict circumstances, including where
your joke can be interpreted as a serious comment.

------
epochwolf
No thanks. Hacker news does not need badges.

Edit as requested:

Hacker news does not need badges because hacker news is about content.
(Discussion and articles) Badges will do nothing to add to this and would risk
ruining the experience.

~~~
beccax
Why not? Would be very helpful if you could elaborate, so we can all learn
something.

~~~
jbail
I don't think hackers see value in fake awards. I for one don't see the point,
except for the desire to compete to see who's got more badges on their sash.
Until these badges can buy me a sandwich, pay my rent, etc, I'll leave them
for the kiddies to collect.

~~~
beccax
Makes good sense. What if instead there're badges for hackers based on their
coding ability? What would you think of that? (Not that it's easy to compute
of course.)

~~~
davidw
There could be a badge for people who create successful startups. It might
look something like this:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/New100fro...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/New100front.jpg)

You would collect a lot of them from your customers or via an acquisition.

------
ryanelkins
I don't really like badges the way the article's system is designed (this
coming form a guy whose startup is about helping sites gives users points and
badges). A big part of the kickback that I see from people on here has to do
with turning Hacker News into something that gets "played". I prefer a system
where you can recognize and reward users for their individual participation.
For it to avoid gaminess (in the bad sense of the term) it needs to be about
milestones that are meaningful and further the goals of the site.

In other words, a badge for 10 submissions, 50 submissions, 100 submissions,
etc., etc., would not be a good system as it could encourage people to spam. A
reward for 10 submissions, each with at least 15 up votes, while not perfect,
is a little better.

All of this belies the point that HN is not really a great candidate for a
badge system. There just isn't enough to do. A user can submit, comment, vote,
and flag. That just isn't enough actions to build a compelling system around.
I do think that contextual reputation could be a good thing - if reading
comments on an article about scalability, knowing that a user has posted
quality comments or articles about the topic in the past helps me to weigh the
value of the current comment. HN isn't really set up for this though. So, as
much as I'd love pg to call me up and ask about integrating IActionable into
HN, I don't think it would really be a great idea at this time.

~~~
alextp
What you describe is the h-index ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index> ).
It is one of the fairest ways of measuring merit, but for most social sites it
has the problem of being too fair.

If you're maintaining a site like stackoverflow or reddit, you want lots of
comments, and it is better to reward lots of marginally interesting comments
than a few really insightful ones (since a lot of marginally interesting
comments will make people come all the time to check for more and find new
things to entertain themselves, keeping them at the site looking at ads, etc).

Maybe HN could display the h index of a user instead of his/her karma.

~~~
ryanelkins
While that might work on a small scale, I think at larger scales it starts to
just turn into excessive noise. It also becomes hard to distinguish between
"marginally interesting" and "karma whoring". I think long term its much
better to encourage the behaviors you want. Besides, you can always lower the
threshold for "interesting". The point is to encourage the creation of good
content and ignore (as far as rewards go) the creation of bad content. The
h-index stuff is interesting, though, and I'll definitely be looking in to it
some more.

------
nostrademons
It's funny that zedshaw is listed under "Ruby Fans".

------
anamax
How about just giving badges to those folks who want them?

That would provide a useful social signal.

Oh, so you want badges to distinguish you from other folks? Fine - each
interested person gets to define one or more badges and pass them out as she
sees fit. Your badges will be recognized as marks of quality and good breeding
while "those badges" will be seen as, well, best to not say.

I'm reminded of Jerry Rice. When he scored a touchdown, he calmly threw the
ball to the ref.

When you've really made it, you act like you belong and don't need some token.

------
MartinCron
I don't know what other people would get, but I'm pretty sure I would get
nauseated by the whole thing.

------
anigbrowl
This is essentially the function of the various lists for leaders, best
comments/submissions and so on - though, like badges, they should be taken
with a big pinch of salt.

~~~
Groxx
> _a big pinch of salt_

Or you could just use bcrypt.

(kidding, kidding. couldn't resist :)

------
toisanji
why do sites like foursquare flourish with badges, but not be a good fit for
HN? Is it strictly a culture issue?

~~~
protomyth
FourSquare is a game, a contest, and doesn't really have any content
associated with the badges. Games and contests have prizes. HN is all about
content and badges would be a distraction. The voting on HN is to surface
content not populate a trophy case.

------
code_duck
I'm getting rreeaaalllly tired of voting, reputation scores, and badges.

------
rick_2047
Its fun to see your page about badges to HN users. A badge I would like to see
would be "Philosopher". It should be given to the person who gives the most
insightful comments about how things are supposed to work. There are in
essence two kind of posters on HN. First are those who give technical
comments. They can debate you about many concepts of CS/Management (or
whatever is it they are talking about technically). The second class is, the
once who give comments about how things are actually supposed to work in real
life. I can scale my app whenever I want. There are plethora of comments about
how to scale on HN. But there are few who advice you on when to scale and why
to scale and how much to scale. I think these people deserve a badge.

