
Ask HN: Does karma affect what you write? - quellhorst
I find myself sometimes thinking about... Hmm will this be unpopular and ding my karma. In my case it seems like HN Karma encourages group think.
======
jncraton
I rarely think about karma before posting, but I used to think about it a lot
more. It was never about following the HN group think, though. There is some
of that here, but it really isn't comparatively that bad. In general, it just
makes me think twice before posting a comment that isn't well thought out,
adds nothing to the discussion, or is actually outside of my knowledge. It
also encourages people to simply post more respectfully.

As I said though, it doesn't really matter much to me anymore.

~~~
ntoshev
And groupthink we have.

It would be a fun experiment if pg turns off for a while displaying the
current karma of comments and/or posts. Ranking would still give some hint
what is popular, but that would be much more subtle and I think groupthink
would be discouraged as a result.

Even funnier, he can split the users in two random groups (one seeing the
karma, the other not) and actually _measure_ how groupthink affects voting.

~~~
tokenadult
_Even funnier, he can split the users in two random groups (one seeing the
karma, the other not) and actually measure how groupthink affects voting._

Experiments are helpful for gaining knowledge.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

------
ericb
Absolutely. It makes it better--usually.

Karma, the way it is used here, kills off some normal parts of human
conversation, such as the making friends-by-agreeing and making mundane
conversation part of socialization. From the perspective of a reader, though,
those parts of conversation are very dull if I'm not the poster or respondee.

On the other hand, it encourages conformity. You "win" psychologically and
karmically by saying things you know everyone will agree with, and you are
rewarded with a tangible boost in your score. Granted, many of us try to
upvote good arguments regardless, but there's a natural human tendency to
regard opinions you disagree with as flawed.

~~~
jwesley
I agree it makes my comments better. It leads me to be more polite and try my
best to explain my points so comment raters understand the argument.

By the way, this is the only site that I comment on and come back multiple
times to see how people respond. Smartest, most sincere community I have
found.

------
fredBuddemeyer
good question. recently there was a "capitalism as a ponzi scheme" article and
i wrote that ponzi had better insight into nature than malthus. i can't see
anything objectionable here - just an expression of opinion and an implicit
comparison between tim o'reilly's thinking and that of thomas malthus. i got
dinged 2 points for this and i just can't understand why. if there was a
reason so be it but i dont understand why anonymous negativity like this is
part of the system. it has made me hold back from further commenting... till
now :)

~~~
graywh
Some people just down-vote anything they disagree with despite any merits the
comment may have.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Exactly. I think every time you downvote, you owe it to every one else to
explain why.

~~~
Xichekolas
There was a thread long ago about this for those that are interested:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147098>

(And rokhayakebe, I agree, responding is infinitely more useful than anonymous
downmodding, provided the response is civil.)

------
rsheridan6
Sort of. I don't make smartass reddit or Digg-style comments here because they
seem not to be appreciated. But if you say something relevant and interesting
at a website like HN, reddit, or Digg, and you get downmodded, that either
means that you were wrong or that the site is full of idiots and you shouldn't
be wasting your time there. Either way it's just as well to know about it.

------
ars
I do think about it, but I never let it stop me.

But a few times I've been surprised (both ways) by the karma score, so either
I don't fully know the "group think" here - or there isn't one.

~~~
mikeyur
I don't think there is a 'group think'

I've been knocked down quite hard with a karma score and had someone reply to
my comment with what I had just said, and get voted up like crazy. And some
days I'll get negative karma for something that got positive the day before.

HN is filled with Bipolar people.

~~~
anthonyrubin
Why do people feel the need to continue voting down a comment like this that
is below 0? Clearly mikeyur made a mistake (HN could very easily prevent these
types of mistakes). Voting it down to 0 seems sufficient.

~~~
yason
How do you vote down? Or does that require enough karma? I only see the vote
up arrow.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Just like changing your top bar color, it is a reward when your karma goes up.

~~~
tome
The level to receive down-vote ability is around 50, I believe.

~~~
CalmQuiet
Changed to 100 by February 2009.

------
Prrometheus
It sometimes affects what I write, but not in a bad way. If I see a comment
that I wrote has poor karma, or a critical response to a comment I wrote has
high karma, I will often go back and flesh out my argument better.

At least on Hacker News, it seems to be a sign that my comment was poorly
written rather than against popular wisdom.

------
vaksel
Not me, karma affects nothing, even if you get downvoted -1000 so what? It
won't change anything.

If you are worried about karma so much you have a few options.

A) diversify: post more, that way if you "screw up" and say something people
won't like, it'll be made up with points from your other comments.

B) deletion: monitor your comments, if you suddenly see that its at 0, quickly
delete it. Because it really is a bandwagon, and people will downvote a
comment just because it has been downvoted before.

------
jerf
I look more at replies. My goal over the past few years is to learn how to
post a controversial argument without getting a ton of replies arguing with
something that was _not_ in my message. You can't avoid getting arguments
about what was _in_ the message, of course, but it's just wearing when you get
tons of flames about something you didn't actually say.

I have found that on a good site, that argument will also tend to be voted up,
even if it's against the local dominant opinion, but that's just a side-
effect.

I left Slashdot when I could no longer do that, and I felt it was because I'd
plumbed the depths of idiocy rather than failing to write my arguments
correctly. (You can never reach perfection, of course, but assuming I didn't
become radically worse at it over the course of a year, the fact that it
become virtually impossible implicates the community.)

Write well, ignore karma. If you're getting consistently downvoted after that,
consider that you may not be a match for the community. (And I do mean
"consider"; it's not proof, but it's worth considering.)

And yes, karma _encourages_ groupthink, though it doesn't _create_ it. A
strong community can overcome that, but the pull is inexorable and continuous.
Compared to other karma-based communities I've been in, this is still a ways
away from group-think dominance, though.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I try to make a point of upvoting well-written contentious posts which I
disagree with. I actually end up upvoting many of the posts I respond to
contrarily which seem to get unfair downvotes.

As for the effect of karma on my own actions, I know that I've refrained from
posting poorly-reasoned or hasty posts even after I've written them. I try to
get citations and other supporting evidence too, rather than just posting an
unsupported opinion.

------
1gor
There is a great tradition of elitism and disdain for banality among
intellectuals. Think of impressionists circle in the early XXs century, most
of these guys' paintings are fetching millions today, but during their
lifetime they were poor bastards most of the time. Influential - yes, popular
- not. At least not immediately.

It is almost by definition that any fresh and promising idea meets hostility
from the masses. But the thinking minority is always ecstatic about it. Good
ideas and views are like a breath of fresh air.

HN has been a refuge for new and controversial ideas from the start. Which is
understandable, given that pg himself created quite a stir with his view on
'hackers' as artists and on lisp as an abstract essence of any programming
language (making it a superweapon in right hands). So people escaped from
reddit and digg and came to HN to share controversial or complicated ideas. At
that time karma points were a badge of honour.

But then of course in came the masses and HN has changed. Now arguments don't
win on their merit. Banalities are repeated ad nauseam and the winner is the
one who can capture the crowd's lowest common denominator. HN is not that much
about ideas anymore. It is more about commercial promotion and quite a lot
about entertainment.

In this environment positive karma should make you worried. I actually quite
enjoy getting negative karma nowadays. Of course there is a huge risk of being
labeled a 'troll'. It has happened a couple of times. Which I think is as
honorable as being labeled a dissident in communist Russia or a non-believer
in fundamentalist Iran. Just make sure you are 'trolling' by challenging a
consensus while having sound arguments and facts at hand. <sigh> But not many
people cannot even read your arguments after they fade to gray under merciless
and mindless downvoting.

------
russell
I think it encourages civility, which is sorely missing on other sites. There
is almost no mudslinging and very few comments of the "Great post" variety, no
"profit" or "in Soviet Union" memes. It encourages me to think clearer,
especially if I have a negative opinion. OTOH it probably discourages the
pithy but on target remark.

~~~
critic
In Soviet Union, WRITING affects your karma!

------
tokenadult
I don't mind checking karma results of my individual postings to see which
ones fit best into the site culture.

I've been considering karma systems, and I guess I think a two-dimensional
system might be a useful improvement. One dimension would be

1) agree or disagree (factually) with this post,

with no impact on the user's cumulative score but display by each post

and the other would be

2) this post is a significant contribution to the community or not,

with the same cumulative scoring by user that now occurs on HN.

Sometimes people want to register disagreement with posts that are good posts
for getting other people to think and bringing new ideas into the discussion.

~~~
atestu
If the disagreement is justified, the user can simply reply to the post to
make his point, no?

I think a two dimensional system would just bring clutter to a good minimalist
site.

~~~
tokenadult
Replying to make clear my disagreement [smile], I'll clarify that what I was
writing about is the case when user 1 posts a new comment, and then various
anonymous users downvote to indicate factual disagreement, rather than
downvoting to indicate that it was a lousy comment. User 1 has nothing further
to reply to, because all user 1 or any onlooker sees is a bunch of downvotes.
(And since the comment's net vote total is shown, sometimes both downvotes and
upvotes are invisible if they cancel each other out.)

I agree with your desire for simplicity. I have the opinion that a voting
system that votes both on agreement with the statement of the post, up or
down, and on the contribution of the post to the community, up or down, is
simple enough to be worth the additional information. Reasonable minds can
differ, of course, and I'd be happy to read replies about why this is a bad
idea.

~~~
atestu
I agree with you that some people downvotes others because they don't agree
with them, and that's a shame. I personaly downvote one-line-and-2-smileys
comments and upvote comments that teach me something.

I really don't feel the need for 2 little arrows, it would just be confusing,
and users would hit the wrong buttons, etc.

Instead, we should just encourage the "new guys" to read the guidelines :
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

------
known
I really don't care about karma. Recently I suggested to regulate market
capitalization of companies so that more opportunities are created for start-
ups.

I know HN won't like it. But still I expressed my opinion.

------
fauigerzigerk
It doesn't affect my writing but it does affect what I think of people here.
The more downvotes to negative values I see, the more I think this community
is becoming less able or willing to communicate.

Intelligent people should be able to use words to disagree. I see how it can
be useful to use upvotes for content filtering, but downvoting to negative
scores actually highlights those posts and therefore defeats the content
filtering purpose.

Greying them out even forces me to take action (highlight the text with the
mouse) in order to be able to read them. It's completely counter-productive.

So what purpose do downvotes have? In my view they are either insults or they
are a very primitve way of expressing opinion. Upvotes are also a very
primitive way of expressing opinion, but they help me filter out interesting
content as well.

Since negative scores serve no purpose at all, why would I want to have those
posts thrust in my face? To learn that there are a bunch of speechless people
who feel good about making a score go from -8 to -9? I already knew that,
thank you very much.

I wish there was an account setting that makes all comment scores go away.

------
trickjarrett
It's definitely curbed my "me too" posts as these seem to get dinged. But if I
have a content related post I will write it and post it.

------
jws
It does not affect what I write. I regularly put in comments that are not "up
worthy", just small factual additions or musings for further thought (or data
responses to questions). Sometimes these get pushed down, I have no idea why,
but I do not care.

It isn't karma that prevents me from posting inflammatory or (intentionally)
idiotic material.

------
Jem
If I have something to say I will say it irrelevant of how I feel it will
perceived and/or affect my karma.

I do find it helps me concentrate on "unstupidifying" what I've got to say
though. Nobody wants to see me explain myself 5 times because I couldn't get
to the point the first time.

------
josefresco
I do think of karma when I post. It helps me keep my comments helpful and not
negative, and forces me to think a little more about each comment then I would
at a site with no karma system. The sense of community/group of peers plays a
part as well.

------
tlrobinson
Yes and no. On one hand, I think it prevents me from saying silly comments
that I might not think twice about saying on Reddit.

On the other hand, Reddit also has karma, but I get far more negative votes
there than here, not because they're mean/nasty comments, but because I enjoy
criticizing some of the stupid that goes on there (uncreative pun threads,
etc).

 _"Hmm will this be unpopular and ding my karma. In my case it seems like HN
Karma encourages group think."_

I don't see a lot of negative karma voting due to people disagreeing with
opinions. Usually it will just hover around 0 if most people disagree. Only
when a comment is clearly wrong, immature, stupid, inappropriate, etc will it
reach negative values.

------
kwamenum86
Downvoting is a way to express oneself without or in addition to a written
comment. More importantly, it is a way to control the culture of the site. If
you end up with a negative score it means both: 1) people thought you should
be downmodded, and 2) not enough people disagreed with the first set of
people.

I say all that to express how irrelevant it is in a larger context unless you
are a Karma Whore (I will likely get downmodded now.) Express yourself.
Period. Most downmodded comments contribute to conversation I think. And that
is really the point of commenting, not to whore yourself out for more points.

------
bestes
Isn't the point of karma to make HN a community? Karma is an important way of
demonstrating quickly if a link or comment fits within these norms. Community
does not have to mean groupthink and I think HN has avoided this, as
demonstrated by so many comments arguing both (or all) sides of an issue. So,
yes, I take karma into consideration. Not because I want people to like me,
but because I want to add value to HN. It's funny, but think of adding a
comment on HN the way I would on usenet, back when the warning about how the
post would go all over the world actually meant something.

------
alex_c
Not directly. The only two filters I apply to my comments are: Is this self-
evident? Is this disrespectful of the community? If the answer to either
question is yes, then I try not to post.

I find myself not always using these filters on other websites where the
quality is lower to start with. I suspect that goes a long way towards
explaining the decline in quality on most social sites (an online version of
the broken windows theory?)

------
dan00
No. Or I'm trying to convince me that it's not.

But at the end, I think that's the main reason why I have few friends. Most
people aren't interested in real discussions, they get upset if you argue
against their view. They take it to personally, they aren't interested in new
views, they just want to get their views confirmed.

If you play the game you're inside the group, otherwise you're an outsider.

------
DanielBMarkham
If karma didn't matter to most posters, the board would not work. The whole
philosophy of voting is based on the idea that karma matters, both to the
reader of the article and to the submitter/voter.

Now whether or not the board is "working" -- whether or not a simple up or
down vote means anything more than a herd mentality knee-jerk response -- is a
completely different question.

------
froo
I don't think it really matters - I try to contribute to the great little
community here, provide whatever insight, argument or counter-argument that I
can.

The only times I've put in a "I know I'm going to get downmodded for this" are
when I'm commenting that serves no purpose other than my own personal
amusement. In all honesty, I'm expecting it :)

------
iuguy
Karma does not affect what I write at all. I accept that sometimes I'm full of
shit and move on. I'm counting on the HN community to kindly point it out to
me if I miss it.

------
mhartl
I rarely think about karma except _ex post_ , and then mostly after being
downmodded. It's amazing and distressing how much even one downvote hurts.

------
andreyf
Similar post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222211>

------
tptacek
Choosing what to say so you can rack up karma points is just trolling in
reverse. Nobody you care about cares about karma.

~~~
gravitycop
_Nobody you care about cares about karma._

Karma is used as part of the YC-applicant vetting process.
<http://ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html>

_You can tell a lot about the users of a site like this from the the links
they post and their comments in discussions. There are a number of Reddit
users that I know only by their usernames, but I know must be smart from the
things they've written. We're counting on the same phenomenon to help us
decide who to fund.

In our new online application form, you literally apply through your Y
Combinator account, so we'll recognize usernames that have been thoughtful
contributors to the site. I'm not saying we'll simply fund whoever has the
most karma; that would encourage abuses. But we will be more likely to fund
people we know are smart from their submissions and comments._

<http://ycombinator.com/w2009.html>

 _We're more likely to fund people we know are smart from their submissions
and comments on Hacker News. In fact, that was one of the main reasons we
wrote it: so that we could get to know people before they applied._

~~~
tptacek
You know, I read that before, and all I can say is that I hope that's just a
tactic to get people to be civil and thoughtful on Hacker News, or maybe to
drive a bit of traffic. It seems like a _profoundly_ bad strategy for vetting
startup teams.

------
windsurfer
Of course. I once posted something about free software, and got my karma
completely destroyed. I won't mention it again.

------
Angostura
Yes. If my karma is sufficiently bad, I won't have opposable thumbs anymore.
That makes writing a drag.

------
pclark
25 you can downvote

200 you can post polls

250 you can change colour of top bar

~~~
unalone
But that's not what he asked.

~~~
CalmQuiet
But pointing out these effects shows that certain "rewards" _are_ provided for
achieving certain levels of karma. Isn't it reasonable to guess that providing
rewards was instituted at HN with the hope _to encourage_ people to think
about karma? [ and even more so the reward of improving an application to
YCombinator, as an above link suggested? ]

------
andrewljohnson
Karma effects EVERYTHING I do.

~~~
critic
effects = produces

affects = changes

------
th0ma5
naturally, i want to be interesting to you all ;p

------
time_management
Not directly. Occasionally, after a couple down votes and a rebuttal, I'll
restate my point in a clearer, less confrontational way.

------
giles_bowkett
fuck karma. fuck all of you. nothing personal.

------
andreyf
Yes.

------
tokipin
what good is karma if you dont use it thats what i always say

