Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=438936

by frisco • 18 years ago

44 57 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've just been a little curious about this recently, since I've noticed things appearing that weren't there before. I now have a "flag" link under the title on comments pages, and can set a topcolor in my profile. What becomes unlockable, and what are the milestones to each?

brandonkm• 18 years ago

At 250 apparently you can change the color of the bar on the top.

6 more points to go!

*Thanks to everyone who voted this up. I can now confirm that this is indeed legit. On your settings page you can enter a six digit hexadecimal number that will change the color of the top bar. I'm going to try some of these out! http://www.somacon.com/cgi/colorchart.pl

fgimenez• 18 years ago

Consider my upmod as a research grant. Please report results.

maxwell• 18 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors

mojombo• 18 years ago

There's an easier way: http://colorpicker.com/

bd• 18 years ago

Cool, it looks like these are actual live topcolors from HN database (distinct colors set in preferences by all users).

I made a color map sorted on hues and lightness: http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/hn/colors.png

rms3• 18 years ago

You've won everything you're going to get. Congratulations.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

No, I believe there's a higher threshold yet to post polls.

robertk• 18 years ago

How do you post polls?

I'm in like...the top 250...I should be able to.

frisco4• 18 years ago

I would have imagined that there'd be more. For instance, I can't downmod overall topics, and that seems like a fairly straightforward thing to unlock for much higher karma levels.

qhoxie• 18 years ago

That is not an available option on HN.

rms3• 18 years ago

There could also be a secret prize or two

_5y6p3• 18 years ago

I have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect the score. Which is to say, I click on the downvote, and the points go down by one, but upon reloading the page, the score is the same as before.

(And yes, it's happened enough times that I know it isn't just someone voting the comment back up in the intervening period.)

jjs2• 18 years ago

Could the time to downvote have already passed? (i.e. you downvoted on a stale page)

_5y6p3• 18 years ago

It happens even if the comment I'm downvoting was posted a minute ago.

gravitycop6• 18 years ago

I have downvote arrows on comments, but at some point they ceased to affect the score.

It's part of karma-grump protection. One's downvotes do not count, unless he upvotes first and at least as many times. If you run across something you want to downvote, first find something else to upvote. If you want to rack up downvote ammo to spare, upvote often. For example, if you upvote 10 times in a row, you will have 10 downvotes available. After that, your downvotes will no longer count, unless and until you do more upvoting.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301

I'm considering adding an additional layer of protection against grumps: to only allow users as many downvotes as they've made upvotes. That way each user's net contribution to the global karma would be at least neutral.

_5y6p3• 18 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out. I suspect there may be something genuinely broken with my downvoting, though, because despite having only upvoted for a good while, my downvotes continue to not count.

Alternatively, HN is keeping a backlog of my uncounted downvotes, and counting them in order as I make more upvotes. Thus, as long as there's a backlog, any new downvote I make will initially not count.

Personally, I think the >=0 net karma rule goes too far. I've tended to downvote more than I upvote because I drift towards policing behavior (not "grumpness": not all people who downvote more than they upvote can be classified as grumps, which is a highly subjective notion anyway), and generally have high standards for what I consider worthy of an upvote. Social moderation systems have to account for the variety of sociological roles. Not to mention, the net karma of the site may be negative, but a >=0 rule will never allow this state to be represented.

It is also impossible to determine what my net karma contribution is, and thus that the >=0 rule is even in effect. Net karma contribution should appear on a user's profile page, or at the top menu bar. I shouldn't be expected to track my karma contribution manually.

CalmQuiet3• 18 years ago

My question would be: why the secrecy? HN worried that transparency about the processes of ratings & their "rewards" (which (plus + $5.00) will buy you a cappuccino) would lead to abuse of the system? I think openness system would allow for HN viewers to discuss the value of different site-karma processes -- enabling the site designers (and all of us) to benefit more from the community's collective genius and experience (on this issue the way it does on others).

pg2• 18 years ago

It's simpler than you think. As moderately dangerous new features got added, I gave them karma thresholds to avoid abuse. Since there's no man page there's nowhere to list them all. Most got explained individually in News News though.

CalmQuiet3• 18 years ago

Thanks for the reply. That leads me rather automatically to rephrase my question: "Why no man page?" And (sorry to be such a newb) what is News News? Do you mean just http://news.ycombinator.com/news ? If so the SEARCH button/form is proving hard for me to find !?¿?!

bouncingsoul• 18 years ago

20 karma – downvote comments.

200 karma – make polls (http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll).

250 karma – customize the top bar background color.

??? karma – flag posts and comments (on their individual page).

frisco4• 18 years ago

Flagging is much lower; somewhere in the 100s.

Oompa• 18 years ago

It has to be. I have 206 and can flag.

gravitycop6• 18 years ago

Flagging is much lower; somewhere in the 100s.

It's 51, the same as downvote.

zepolen• 18 years ago

I think the 20 limit is wrong, since I'm past that and still can't downvote comments.

11ren• 18 years ago

I just created a poll with karma of 196

chris11• 18 years ago

I created one with a karma of 150, so it has got to be way lower than 200.

rodrigo• 18 years ago

I have 47 and cannot downvote.I can flag since around my twenties thought.

gravitycop6• 18 years ago

Your data is old and out of date. Your Karma 20's arrived almost a year ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=rodrigo

laut• 18 years ago

I think the limit for comments down-voting is 75 (or a number close to 75).

gravitycop6• 18 years ago

Your numbers are wrong. They are changed by the management over time to account for karma inflation. http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+%22kar...

Recent karma-threshold schedule:

  10 karma - Upvote comments.
  51 karma - Downvote comments. Flag comments.

lani0• 18 years ago

your destiny unlocks with karma. it ensures that in your next re-incarnation, you do not come back as a Digg user

giles_bowkett• 18 years ago

At 600+ karma, you get infinite bonus mushrooms and infinite ammo. You have to beat the game twice on impossible mode in the military suit and max out all your guns, though, even the stupid one that takes forever to fire and then the zombie eats your head because you were sitting there trying to warm it up instead of shooting zombies, which would have been the logical thing to do.

At 1000+ karma, you take off your helmet and guess what you're a chick. If you win three times in a row on impossible mode with perfect karma without getting shot once, using nothing but the annoying gun that takes forever, you take off your armor and guess what you're a hot chick. Then you can play the game again wearing a bikini.

At 2000+ karma, Paul Graham comes to your house, tells you the meaning of life, and makes you a sandwich. It is the best sandwich known to man. Only rich people can make this sandwich.

pg2• 18 years ago

These numbers are way too low. I'd have to have gone to 94 people's houses and made them sandwiches. (I already explained the meaning of life in a footnote in "Great Hackers.")

Xichekolas• 18 years ago

Hmmm... I'm getting close to my 2000... Can I request a chicken sandwich with my zen awakening?

Rumor has it that at 20,000 karma you get to know nickb's true identity.

prakash• 18 years ago

[3] I think this is what people mean when they talk about the "meaning of life." On the face of it, this seems an odd idea. Life isn't an expression; how could it have meaning? But it can have a quality that feels a lot like meaning. In a project like a compiler, you have to solve a lot of problems, but the problems all fall into a pattern, as in a signal. Whereas when the problems you have to solve are random, they seem like noise.

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

But, let me tell you, it's a _great_fucking_sandwich. It was actually so good, I'm going to register a new username: MORE_SANDWICH and climb the karma ladder again, just so PG makes me another sandwich. I need one... more.... taste...

gaius2• 18 years ago

sudo make me a sandwich :-)

fallentimes• 18 years ago

At 4000+ karma you start receiving Christmas cards.

davidw• 18 years ago

Nope:-/

petercooper• 18 years ago

Hmph.. you might like to think so, but I'm still waiting for my sandwich!

ComputerGuru• 18 years ago

Up-modded for the multiple THGTTG references :)

kwamenum86• 18 years ago

Every two weeks it seems like someone writes this post and it hits the top 10. Astounding.

rms3• 18 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404872

There was one a month ago

cdibona• 18 years ago

This is pretty interesting to me. When karma was implemented at /. we used to expose the number, but then the number became why people did things on /. Then we obscured the number by replacing it with english words like "excellent" for the top karma scores, then we started paying off in terms of allow people to moderate and meta-moderate. It was pretty neat at the time, but I have to admit I like HNs system. It seems like it embraces the karma rather than obscuring it as some kind of necessary but lamentable side effect, which is how it sometimes felt at /.

nailer• 18 years ago

I always, always, wanted /. to announce the 'excellent' in the Mortal Kombat voice.

sanj• 18 years ago

This reminds me of a band that gave out stamps when you came to their concerts.

The top levels were awesome:

30 Stamps: Special Date #1 Dinner and dancing with Dave.

36 Stamps: Special Date #2. Dinner and dancing with either Jean, Mike, or Murray.

50 Stamps: Ass Brand. The Frühead gets the Früvous budgie-dog (Larry Boniface Clebdon) branded on their ass. This is administered by a member of the band.

Ask HN: What unlocks with karma, and when?

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