<story><title>Withdrawing from Hacker News</title><url>http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WithdrawingFromHackerNews.html?HN</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blhack</author><text>I totally agree with this, but it&apos;s kindof sad to see people just give up on this community.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve seen some things tried in the past (like hiding karma in comment threads), and I think it would be great if we could try a few more things in the future.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;d love to see HN try making users &quot;earn&quot; karma.  You &quot;spend&quot; your karma when you upvote or downvote somebody.  Upvotes cost one point, downvotes cost two.  This is good because it incentivizes people &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; to downvote people (it&apos;s &quot;expensive&quot;), and also prevents brand new users who don&apos;t yet understand the conventions from downvoting things just because they disagree with them.&lt;p&gt;I think that one of the big problems lately has been comments being inappropriately downvoted.  I asked a question a couple of days ago about how google justifies things like google charts (which I use heavily), and was downvoted to -4 for it.  3 years ago (when I joined) this wouldn&apos;t have been the case.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile I&apos;m starting reddit-style to see joke threads pop up in the comments.&lt;p&gt;I really think that a lot of this is new users, and I really think that slashdot&apos;s style of earning the right to moderate is a solid concept.  We should try it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rlpb</author><text>Along the same lines, I think that part of the problem is that there&apos;s inflation in upvotes because people have an unlimited supply.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t upvote that often. When I do, I really mean it because the content is that good.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m sure that there are others who have a much lower bar for submitting an upvote. After all, an upvote costs nothing.&lt;p&gt;Why shouldn&apos;t upvotes from people who are active but upvote rarely count more than those who upvote a lot? How about some of the outstanding long time users with tons of karma: why don&apos;t their upvotes count for much more than a newbie upvoting a linkbait article or a reddit-style joke thread?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;All upvotes are not equal.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think this is one of the underlying problems with many social moderation systems, HN included.&lt;p&gt;Your idea of having upvotes cost karma is an example of one of the possible solutions that economics has devised for us.</text></comment>
<story><title>Withdrawing from Hacker News</title><url>http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WithdrawingFromHackerNews.html?HN</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blhack</author><text>I totally agree with this, but it&apos;s kindof sad to see people just give up on this community.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve seen some things tried in the past (like hiding karma in comment threads), and I think it would be great if we could try a few more things in the future.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;d love to see HN try making users &quot;earn&quot; karma.  You &quot;spend&quot; your karma when you upvote or downvote somebody.  Upvotes cost one point, downvotes cost two.  This is good because it incentivizes people &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; to downvote people (it&apos;s &quot;expensive&quot;), and also prevents brand new users who don&apos;t yet understand the conventions from downvoting things just because they disagree with them.&lt;p&gt;I think that one of the big problems lately has been comments being inappropriately downvoted.  I asked a question a couple of days ago about how google justifies things like google charts (which I use heavily), and was downvoted to -4 for it.  3 years ago (when I joined) this wouldn&apos;t have been the case.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile I&apos;m starting reddit-style to see joke threads pop up in the comments.&lt;p&gt;I really think that a lot of this is new users, and I really think that slashdot&apos;s style of earning the right to moderate is a solid concept.  We should try it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brianbreslin</author><text>I think downvoting isn&apos;t as easy as you think for a newbie. I only see a downvote button occasionally, and have to go into a individual comment link to flag it, and I have been here for a fair amount of time.</text></comment>