That actually seems to be just the opposite of what he was saying. He stated that he believes this mechanism is broken, to the point that after two years of inactivity, the votes he receives his old answers have kept him in the top 3% of scorers.
He's not looking for votes, he's saying it's silly how trivial it is to get them, and also how many points he gets off of a simple LMGTFY answer (your quote), vs how few he gets off a well thought out and explained one (the kernel answer, I believe).
> and also how many points he gets off of a simple LMGTFY answer (your quote), vs how few he gets off a well thought out and explained one (the kernel answer, I believe).
I don't contribute much to SO, though I do a fair bit to some other SE sites (SF, SU, DBA) and it is the same on those but there is a fairly logical explanation most of the time.
A question that requires a more detailed answer is often more specific than one that doesn't, and that more general question is going to get a wider audience (both at the time and afterwards with people finding it in searches) so will attract more votes both for itself and the responses.
The points awarded to an answer are only really relevant within the context of question it is in response to (i.e. compared to the points awarded to other responses to that question). So if you care about your total score just answer simple general questions (this is perfectly acceptable behaviour, any useful answer is helpful to the site as a whole), if on the other hand you want a little mental stimulation answer some of the more involved questions instead.
True but nobody is refuting the logic of how it works. They're refuting the reasoning behind why it works that way. As is, you get more points and labeled as an expert of a language if you choose to answer the easy, low hanging fruit questions. On the other hand, if you actually are an expert of a language and tackle those questions that only experts can answer, you get 10x-100x less points.
But aren't the problems which only experts can answer by their very nature both problems that most people won't encounter and problems that most passers-by are not likely to feel confident passing judgement on possible solutions for? There is the "bounty" system which I think tries to account for that a bit but I don't see it often used, other than that the only way around the expert requiring problem problem is some form of manual curation by domain experts, which would potentially introduce a small shipment of other worm cans.
The people in charge of where the site "goes" via moderator tools are the people who play the game to accumulate points to get mod powers.
What you reward, you get more of. Therefore the site will move in the direction of point collecting game players.
Doesn't particularly matter what they "should" do, what the site is designed to do, intentionally or otherwise, rightly or wrongly, is what the site will do.
Telling everyone including the people in charge not to do what they are designed to enjoy doing is basically abstinence based sex ed. "Here's something you haven't seen, it's a lot of fun, now don't do it" Good luck with that.
Lets say HN karma points were rewarded on the basis of using the F word in posts. I don't think advising people the moral high ground would be to abstain would clean the place up, if the whole purpose of the design is to encourage it. This might actually be a funny April fools joke to think about...
I agree with that. Whenever I use the site, the 'description' from "Whose Line is it Anyway?" plays in my head.[0] However, it's the same as any website where there is a "karma" system (like this one for instance ;) ). It feel good getting points, it feels bad losing points. It feels good knowing you have tons, and are in the "Top x% of answerers" or whatever.
Do I think that's necessarily the right way to get people to come to your site and answer programming questions? Maybe not (no, I don't really), but it certainly does keep people coming back to the site. That and the fact that it's probably the biggest answer repository on the net.
Oh, and here's an upvote for you to show no hard feelings. I believe your general statement is correct, I'm just not sure that's what the author is going for.
It doesn't matter how silly you think it is. You don't create a system that reinforces bad behavior and then say "oh, but you should magically turn off your human nature and do the opposite of the what the system teaches you to do". Systems need to be designed to reinforce good behavior, otherwise we get reddit and HN and wikipedia and SO.
He's not looking for votes, he's saying it's silly how trivial it is to get them, and also how many points he gets off of a simple LMGTFY answer (your quote), vs how few he gets off a well thought out and explained one (the kernel answer, I believe).