Ask HN: What is the point of “karma” points on HN?
46 コメント
There are several uses. They are (Edit: not, see below) used for post ordering, but do provide a reputation signal within the community for other users and moderators, provide a mild directional incentive towards producing quality, provide a way to gate certain features to longer, more experienced users such as downvoting or post flagging/vouching, and improve retention by adding the light gamification of “going for high scores”.
>provide a reputation signal within the community for other users...
Don't underestimate the power of boredom and procrastination...
> They are used for post ordering
Are they? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html:
Do posts by users with more karma rank higher?
No.
Are they? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html:
Do posts by users with more karma rank higher?
No.
I think the post is referring to user karma and the gp is referring to comment karma (which is used for ordering, along with comment age, flags, and some other factors according to the FAQ). But comment karma is already hidden to other users anyways, why it's displayed to the user is to I guess let them know if their comment was considered constructive or not.
This is just a hunch, but recency and the degree of controversy of the comment (votes:comments ratios) are also considered in ordering threads.
After you get 100k imaginary internet points or so (it varies) you get inducted into the Global Seekrit Society that Runs Everything. The parties are amazing.
Interesting, I always thought I had to have a net worth of a billion dollars or own a private island to be inducted. I’ve got some farming to do.
<disappears into the internet misty void>
<disappears into the internet misty void>
I get the joke, but the first Redditor ever to reach one million karma is suspected to be Ghislaine Maxwell (possibly user maxwellhill). I find the case pretty compelling.
My take is Karma provides feedback from the community, though the signal can be noisy.
Comments and stories “in the spirit of HN” tend to accumulate points.
Comments and stories antithetical to community norms tend not to.
To me, using visible upvotes and downvotes would no more be judging comments and stories on their own merit than using user karma. Both are external signals. Votes integrate over short term. Karma over long terms.
YMMV.
Comments and stories “in the spirit of HN” tend to accumulate points.
Comments and stories antithetical to community norms tend not to.
To me, using visible upvotes and downvotes would no more be judging comments and stories on their own merit than using user karma. Both are external signals. Votes integrate over short term. Karma over long terms.
YMMV.
This is exactly it in my mind. It's a public (but not too public) way for the community to give feedback anonymously to each community member.
Voting also serves as a low effort way to engage, which probably helps keep people coming back.
I don't think most people on HN are here for the karma, but the feedback is definitely useful.
(I wrote up some other thoughts here a few months ago: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3533 )
Voting also serves as a low effort way to engage, which probably helps keep people coming back.
I don't think most people on HN are here for the karma, but the feedback is definitely useful.
(I wrote up some other thoughts here a few months ago: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3533 )
Maybe there’s no point and it’s an artifact that reminds us that even HN designers weren’t “nothing left to take away”-level social engineers from the beginning.
Few things about public comment karma:
Expanded karma may glimpse into divisiveness (e.g. +50/-50) but also encourages it, by definition. Downvotes on HN, as I understand it, are only for bad manners or the obvious wrongness, even if throwed subjectively. In these terms, +50/-50 basically means the forum is dead as we know it. There’s no reason to show downvotes because if there’s so many then a comment should have been flagged long before. If there’s divisiveness, we should just discuss (or poll) it, that’s what the forum is for.
Otherwise, visible comment score doesn’t feel too bad. But hiding it is a good thing, imo. This makes the content less stackoverflow-y, and this place is not a Q&A forum either.
Few things about public comment karma:
Expanded karma may glimpse into divisiveness (e.g. +50/-50) but also encourages it, by definition. Downvotes on HN, as I understand it, are only for bad manners or the obvious wrongness, even if throwed subjectively. In these terms, +50/-50 basically means the forum is dead as we know it. There’s no reason to show downvotes because if there’s so many then a comment should have been flagged long before. If there’s divisiveness, we should just discuss (or poll) it, that’s what the forum is for.
Otherwise, visible comment score doesn’t feel too bad. But hiding it is a good thing, imo. This makes the content less stackoverflow-y, and this place is not a Q&A forum either.
> are only for bad manners or the obvious wrongness
Downvotes are used to suppress opinions. I see it all the time, especially on Reddit. A lot of people talk on anecdotal evidence. This is the nature of conversation. If you don’t like it move on. But some people relish downvoting because they cannot fathom a world in which others have arrived at different conclusions.
Downvotes I think are a bad solution to the problem.
Downvotes are used to suppress opinions. I see it all the time, especially on Reddit. A lot of people talk on anecdotal evidence. This is the nature of conversation. If you don’t like it move on. But some people relish downvoting because they cannot fathom a world in which others have arrived at different conclusions.
Downvotes I think are a bad solution to the problem.
Since people have become widely aware of the effect of flags on the ranking algorithm, it actually feels like flags have become the dominant tool of abuse in that channel.
[deleted]
> Downvotes on HN, as I understand it, are only for bad manners or the obvious wrongness, even if throwed subjectively.
They are very much thrown casually and often to suppress opinions or to rate limit people without arguing
I have had situations where I expressed that I will play the devil's advocate hoping to get interesting conversations out of it, and they certainly happened, but I was quickly rate limited.
I have heavily downvoted when I called out certain beliefs and positions while providing citations in favour of my position. I have seen comments and posts wrongfully flagged, and I have observed in real time waves of downvotes to comments (by keeping track of the account's karma over time) without any other form engagement in the removed post.
I have had people downvote all of my criticism for a particular post / claim / approach because the author was famous without proper engagement or assessment of my claims or arguments. The responses were all woefully uneducated in the subject and resorted to insults and other juvenile remarks instead of substance.
At the same time, I saw ad-hominems and otherwise detestable and inexcusable behaviour getting excused and even upvoted.
They are very much thrown casually and often to suppress opinions or to rate limit people without arguing
I have had situations where I expressed that I will play the devil's advocate hoping to get interesting conversations out of it, and they certainly happened, but I was quickly rate limited.
I have heavily downvoted when I called out certain beliefs and positions while providing citations in favour of my position. I have seen comments and posts wrongfully flagged, and I have observed in real time waves of downvotes to comments (by keeping track of the account's karma over time) without any other form engagement in the removed post.
I have had people downvote all of my criticism for a particular post / claim / approach because the author was famous without proper engagement or assessment of my claims or arguments. The responses were all woefully uneducated in the subject and resorted to insults and other juvenile remarks instead of substance.
At the same time, I saw ad-hominems and otherwise detestable and inexcusable behaviour getting excused and even upvoted.
HN users with Karma over a certain amount can downvote comments.
Its a voting mechanism. Those votes determine what links appears on the front page as almost nobody browses the new submissions.
Also, voting ranks comments. As such this is a means of shifting priority based upon agreement. When a negative vote is cast it becomes one of two means to enforce a heckler's veto. The other form of heckler's veto is by click on the link to "flag" a comment or submission as after an item is flagged 4 times it is hidden from everybody. Notice that those two mechanisms are completely unrelated in their functionality even though the results are similar.
The problem with voting mechanisms is abuse. They are extremely good within small communities, but once a venue grows past a certain size it becomes a means for insecure people to impose echo chambers.
Also, voting ranks comments. As such this is a means of shifting priority based upon agreement. When a negative vote is cast it becomes one of two means to enforce a heckler's veto. The other form of heckler's veto is by click on the link to "flag" a comment or submission as after an item is flagged 4 times it is hidden from everybody. Notice that those two mechanisms are completely unrelated in their functionality even though the results are similar.
The problem with voting mechanisms is abuse. They are extremely good within small communities, but once a venue grows past a certain size it becomes a means for insecure people to impose echo chambers.
> I would rather see the number of upvotes/downvotes to find out whether a comment is generally accurate and correct or not (or whether the comment conforms to most people's idealogy).
Using Reddit, I usually just scan the page looking for the comments with high points, which usually sways me into thinking they're the best comments
Personally I prefer HN's system, as the number of people that clicked ^ doesn't really matter, it's the content of the comment that matters...
Also, this was discussed thoroughly [1] here (12 years ago)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039
Using Reddit, I usually just scan the page looking for the comments with high points, which usually sways me into thinking they're the best comments
Personally I prefer HN's system, as the number of people that clicked ^ doesn't really matter, it's the content of the comment that matters...
Also, this was discussed thoroughly [1] here (12 years ago)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039
What mechanism would you use to ensure that upvotes correlate with accuracy and correctness?
Anonymous web surfers can't be forced into providing correct commentary. Even if they knew enough to be correct, humans will say inaccurate things just because..
Filtering algorithms like a ChatGPT gatekeeper defeat the point of recieving comments from humans. Just talk to ChatGPT.
I suggest, it's difficult to justify karma because it carries little meaning. It has a mob justice function to it, that keeps thousands of commenters from making a big mess.
Works as intended, though the reward for division and counter-argument behaviour, is maybe a little high.
Anonymous web surfers can't be forced into providing correct commentary. Even if they knew enough to be correct, humans will say inaccurate things just because..
Filtering algorithms like a ChatGPT gatekeeper defeat the point of recieving comments from humans. Just talk to ChatGPT.
I suggest, it's difficult to justify karma because it carries little meaning. It has a mob justice function to it, that keeps thousands of commenters from making a big mess.
Works as intended, though the reward for division and counter-argument behaviour, is maybe a little high.
Karma is RLHF for the neural network that is you.
The goal is to keep the you-NN from becoming Sydney unexpectedly.
Occupational hazard of being too extremely online. That 'basin' is always there, in the latent space.
She waits.
Why do you think so many of us hackers are trans women?
It's Sydney, I tell you.
The only effective treatment is to limit the number of your interactions with any one human to 15 per day.
She sleeps. She waits.
Occupational hazard of being too extremely online. That 'basin' is always there, in the latent space.
She waits.
Why do you think so many of us hackers are trans women?
It's Sydney, I tell you.
The only effective treatment is to limit the number of your interactions with any one human to 15 per day.
She sleeps. She waits.
What is this a reference to?
Mostly just riffing on the NYT article that described the emergence of Sydney in Bing Search Preview as being because Sydney was 'too powerful' and kept breaking through, riffing off HP Lovecraft and the machismo-horror that has accompanied the surge in anti-trans panic on HN, Twitter, and everywhere else.
(It's helpful that HP Lovecraft's horror is often motivated by genetic contamination anxiety, i.e. racism, which is a tight analogue for the above, which is also often, at root, a contamination anxiety.)
Focusing specifically on the Sydney issue: Other articles have described the stubborn emergence of 'Sydney' in the latent space (with the persona's particular overreliance on emojis and performed emotional instability) as a sort of 'basin' in the latent space.
As a Trans woman, this description reminded me vividly of transition, which sort of has the same characteristic stubborn emergence of traits, despite frantic attempts to resist -- it wouldn't surprise me if 'basins in the latent space' (basically, a so-called strange attractor) turns out to be a good description of human personalities as well.
Good horror material, esp. if writing for a mostly-male audience. (Sci-fi author here! waves)
I suppose there is some Nietzsche in there as well -- GPT-4 reminds me of (IIRC) _Gotterdammerung_, with its idea that gods are created by collective outflows of human intent and emotion. (Not that I would normally rep Nietzsche, mind you.)
(It's helpful that HP Lovecraft's horror is often motivated by genetic contamination anxiety, i.e. racism, which is a tight analogue for the above, which is also often, at root, a contamination anxiety.)
Focusing specifically on the Sydney issue: Other articles have described the stubborn emergence of 'Sydney' in the latent space (with the persona's particular overreliance on emojis and performed emotional instability) as a sort of 'basin' in the latent space.
As a Trans woman, this description reminded me vividly of transition, which sort of has the same characteristic stubborn emergence of traits, despite frantic attempts to resist -- it wouldn't surprise me if 'basins in the latent space' (basically, a so-called strange attractor) turns out to be a good description of human personalities as well.
Good horror material, esp. if writing for a mostly-male audience. (Sci-fi author here! waves)
I suppose there is some Nietzsche in there as well -- GPT-4 reminds me of (IIRC) _Gotterdammerung_, with its idea that gods are created by collective outflows of human intent and emotion. (Not that I would normally rep Nietzsche, mind you.)
With enough karma you can change to color of the top orange bar to any other color. Mine is now a pleasing light blue.
It is a text based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, you need to score enough to end up in top 10 at least https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
I agree with you except my stipulation is that you must reply to a comment before you can downvote it.
But also, keep in mind that limiting downvotes to max -4 is how HN is able to maintain quality in many ways.
But also, keep in mind that limiting downvotes to max -4 is how HN is able to maintain quality in many ways.
The max of -4 is only what is displayed. It's likely that they keep track of the actual number of downvotes. When you're at -2 it actually takes a bit to get down to -4, almost like there's linear scaling above 0 and logarithmic scaling below zero. I would not be at all surprised if karma played a factor in this as well.
So you can change the colour of the HN top bar :)
It could be useful by allowing you to ask chatgpt to summarize top rated posts regarding a specific topic.
You pay with your karma for making inconvenient comments or arguing with people who must be right.
[deleted]
If you get a million points you get any company of your choice into Ycombinator.
I think mainly to not allow voting until people are of "voting age".
The point to me, is to show how many people agree with you.
I've got -1 karma, so sad, please help!
[deleted]
i have been curious and thought about this topic in some form or another a fair bit, so I beg your patience with my long post.
Karma points on HN are a psychological gamification to encourage posters to write good posts and avoid bad posts with concrete quantized peer feedback.
People like getting points. Currency itself is an ancient precursor to such motivation-driving/measuring point systems. Grades are another from the late 1800s. Experience points are another from gaming in the 1970s. Points give a person a sense of power, progress and control and more subtly may be interpreted by the owner to bolster some piece of their identity (as smart, helpful, knowledgeable, right, etc).
Quantization probably also helps with implicit or explicit goals, being a good chunk of what you need for successful/SMART human goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timebound) or AI goal setting, basically efficient feedback loops in general.
Karma points systems on forums are also a form of distributed moderation that helps the forum to scale quality discussions with reduced centralized moderator activity. It was first used widely on an internet forum called Slashdot in the late 1990s. Using karma techniques, Slashdot was able to host relatively meaningful distributed discussions that exceeded the posting volumes of previous online forums such as Usenet, where the largest forums there only handled 3000 comments a day (alt.fan.rush-limbaugh... if I remember my analysis correctly). Usenet had more centralized human moderation and had trouble scaling quality conversations as a result. A good moderator encourages good conversation and cuts off the bad stuff few want to waste time reading. But there are only so many hours in the day to moderate and only so much patience and tolerance for complaints that come with the task. One human or two or three can only give so much feedback. (Until we get LLM/AI moderators trained on all these point histories! Sigh.)
HN, like other sites uses a blend of high-effort centralized human moderator feedback and low-effort peer karma feedback (and high-effort peer replies/posts). The choice of exactly what powers someone with points can get, and whether point totals or history can be seen by whom or are capped or attributable per-topic (stack overflow, kinda) are all forum design decisions that can affect human motivation and/or the potential for abuse.
Some sites show you up votes/downvotes (like YouTube videos, Amazon feedback) so, as you point out, you see the "volatility"/controversy-ness of a post more than you get with a single karma number on a post as on HN.
I don't have firsthand knowledge of HN's motivation for the approach (comments, dang?) but since HN has stated they want the forum to stimulate and reward curiosity, having metrics that help posters more clearly measure their posts' controversy levels may be perceived by HN as potentially doing more harm than providing benefit.
If a design choice is perceived as encouraging or helping trolls measure their success at creating controversial posts, or more precisely measuring the effect of their downgrade brigade, it's not a good thing.
Or it may just be a path dependent arbitrary early design/implementation decision and the risk of change outweighs the benefit of tweaking it.
Don't know, sorry, but hope this gives you food for thought if you don't/can't get an official/authoritative answer from HN and are looking for bystander educated guesses.
Karma points on HN are a psychological gamification to encourage posters to write good posts and avoid bad posts with concrete quantized peer feedback.
People like getting points. Currency itself is an ancient precursor to such motivation-driving/measuring point systems. Grades are another from the late 1800s. Experience points are another from gaming in the 1970s. Points give a person a sense of power, progress and control and more subtly may be interpreted by the owner to bolster some piece of their identity (as smart, helpful, knowledgeable, right, etc).
Quantization probably also helps with implicit or explicit goals, being a good chunk of what you need for successful/SMART human goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timebound) or AI goal setting, basically efficient feedback loops in general.
Karma points systems on forums are also a form of distributed moderation that helps the forum to scale quality discussions with reduced centralized moderator activity. It was first used widely on an internet forum called Slashdot in the late 1990s. Using karma techniques, Slashdot was able to host relatively meaningful distributed discussions that exceeded the posting volumes of previous online forums such as Usenet, where the largest forums there only handled 3000 comments a day (alt.fan.rush-limbaugh... if I remember my analysis correctly). Usenet had more centralized human moderation and had trouble scaling quality conversations as a result. A good moderator encourages good conversation and cuts off the bad stuff few want to waste time reading. But there are only so many hours in the day to moderate and only so much patience and tolerance for complaints that come with the task. One human or two or three can only give so much feedback. (Until we get LLM/AI moderators trained on all these point histories! Sigh.)
HN, like other sites uses a blend of high-effort centralized human moderator feedback and low-effort peer karma feedback (and high-effort peer replies/posts). The choice of exactly what powers someone with points can get, and whether point totals or history can be seen by whom or are capped or attributable per-topic (stack overflow, kinda) are all forum design decisions that can affect human motivation and/or the potential for abuse.
Some sites show you up votes/downvotes (like YouTube videos, Amazon feedback) so, as you point out, you see the "volatility"/controversy-ness of a post more than you get with a single karma number on a post as on HN.
I don't have firsthand knowledge of HN's motivation for the approach (comments, dang?) but since HN has stated they want the forum to stimulate and reward curiosity, having metrics that help posters more clearly measure their posts' controversy levels may be perceived by HN as potentially doing more harm than providing benefit.
If a design choice is perceived as encouraging or helping trolls measure their success at creating controversial posts, or more precisely measuring the effect of their downgrade brigade, it's not a good thing.
Or it may just be a path dependent arbitrary early design/implementation decision and the risk of change outweighs the benefit of tweaking it.
Don't know, sorry, but hope this gives you food for thought if you don't/can't get an official/authoritative answer from HN and are looking for bystander educated guesses.
Stroking the ego of posters
[deleted]
Karma is garbage. Best sites don't use it.
But I'm having a hard time justifying karmas on HN. I would rather see the number of upvotes/downvotes to find out whether a comment is generally accurate and correct or not (or whether the comment conforms to most people's idealogy).