Ask HN: Should links from popular blogs be excluded from karma pts?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=754063

by dannyr • 17 years ago

20 22 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I believe posting links from popular blogs (e.g. Techcrunch, Mashable) almost guarantee a lot of karma points that it becomes a race among HNers to post them.

My suggestion is that Karma points should only be awarded for HNers who discovered and contributed links that the community might not easily find.

shabda• 17 years ago

My suggestion: Make Karma (and other points) COMPLETELY invisible in the system. Make them invisible in the UI, the system uses them behind the scenes to rank and order data, but never display them.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

yes please...

but it isn't going to happen.

dbz• 17 years ago

I like seeing the individual karma points on links, if I see an interesting link with a lot of karma, it shows that a lot of individuals found it interesting, as with the opposite. I find it helpful.

branden• 17 years ago

I don't see how that addresses this problem. Even if people can't see each other's e-peen, they will still seek to embiggen their own.

greyman• 17 years ago

I don't feel this karma issue decreases the overall quality of the frontpage.

pg2• 17 years ago

Exactly.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

It's only a race if you feel that you are losing it, simply don't assign too much weight to karma. Treat it like an odometer, it's more a function of how much time you spend on HN than anything else.

rokhayakebe2• 17 years ago

Correction if I may. It's more a function of how much the community values your contribution.

tom_rath• 17 years ago

Not really.

If one throws an hojillion low-quality posts up in a day, a few of those will be ranked +1. That grants frequent posters a ludicrously high karma score for what amounts to little overall contribution to the 'community'.

In a way, it's almost an MMORPG -- the longer you stick around and 'grind', the higher your score gets.

cdr• 17 years ago

I can't agree. I almost certainly don't "deserve" the amount of karma I have - I've just been around a long time.

Karma accumulates automatically over time - the only thing quality might affect is how fast it accumulates, and even then just posting more would probably get you there faster.

FreeRadical• 17 years ago

don't worry about it

olefoo• 17 years ago

If karma matters that much to someone let them have it.

And not everything by techcrunch or mashable garners karma either; it has more to do with the currency and importance of the story.

#adjusted for local definitions of what is important, obviously.

icey• 17 years ago

Karma is just a sign that someone spends too much time here.

Banzai10• 17 years ago

And how will you define popular blogs? By visits, by registered users?

If they are popular its popularity comes from good content, that should be shared here in HN. Sorry, but I disagree with your idea.

onreact-com• 17 years ago

Yeah, this is a good idea, that's why Digg has become a main stream place where just a few well known URLs get submitted and front page all the time while the little guy gets no attention.

We shouldn't penalize such submissions though, that's wrong as well. They should just count less. Like 50% or only the points above 20 should count.

Or something like this:

if url already popular 10 times this week

karma = karma - 10

jpwagner• 17 years ago

Whoa, this is possibly the first post complaining about opportunity-negative-karma, which, in my opinion, violates the guidelines by technically complaining about being down-voted.

  FLAG

aichcon• 17 years ago

It just doesn't matter. If it's bad enough it'll be flagged. Adding arbitrary and reactive rules to the system is only going to hurt it.

Ask HN: Should links from popular blogs be excluded from karma pts?

Related Stories