<story><title>Notice: Experimenting with HN</title><text>Over the next few weeks I&apos;m going to be experimenting with some of the ideas discussed here&lt;p&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696&lt;p&gt;so don&apos;t freak out of the site changes in some way.  It will probably change back.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>DarkShikari</author><text>The problem with this is it makes every submission into a karma game.  If submitting costs karma, it will cause more people to think &quot;will this earn enough points?&quot; before submitting links.&lt;p&gt;... but that&apos;s not what you want people to think.  You want them to think &quot;is this interesting and on-topic for HN?&quot;  They&apos;re not the same question, as much as the former tries to approximate the latter.&lt;p&gt;If people focus too much on points, you&apos;re likely to get more groupthink and more industry buzz (since that stuff always gets a gazillion upvotes) instead of interesting articles.&lt;p&gt;Certainly, people think about link karma already, but I think this would make it worse.  Creating a cost will cause even people who &lt;i&gt;don&apos;t&lt;/i&gt; think about karma to think about it, even for just a moment -- which is probably not what you want.</text></item><item><author>silentbicycle</author><text>Have you considered adding a slight cost for submitting articles? (perhaps 2-5 points of karma?) There&apos;s a reward for submitting anything first that other people are likely to submit, but no cost, so the new page is often clogged with industry buzz that drowns out more substantial submissions. Many excellent article fall off within an hour, and then they can&apos;t get reposted.&lt;p&gt;Having more articles on the front page that aren&apos;t based on a scramble for duplicate-submission karma would probably improve the overall discussion threads, too; those posts tend to draw a lot of shallow comments.&lt;p&gt;It would also help with spam. Win win win.&lt;p&gt;I also wonder what percentage of upvotes for submissions comes just from duplicate submissions - maybe those should be counted differently (or not at all)? If the front page is already full of threads about some news about Apple (or whatever), being first to submit a redundant (but distinct) post is disproportionately rewarded, yet reduces the signal/noise ratio &lt;i&gt;even further&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>keyist</author><text>&lt;i&gt;You want them to think &quot;is this interesting and on-topic for HN?&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;My earlier proposal (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2242453&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2242453&lt;/a&gt; ): deduct karma from submitter and _anyone who upvoted_ on submissions that were successfully flagged.  That should get people to think the way you mention not only when submitting, but when upvoting as well.&lt;p&gt;Improve the submissions and comments will naturally improve -- submissions that are one-sided/gossipy/demagogic tend to attract similar comments.  Whereas submissions full of technical content are often rich with links to further reading, contrasting viewpoints with cited evidence, etc.  (Disclaimer: observations in this paragraph may be subject to fundamental attribution error).</text></comment>
<story><title>Notice: Experimenting with HN</title><text>Over the next few weeks I&apos;m going to be experimenting with some of the ideas discussed here&lt;p&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696&lt;p&gt;so don&apos;t freak out of the site changes in some way.  It will probably change back.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>DarkShikari</author><text>The problem with this is it makes every submission into a karma game.  If submitting costs karma, it will cause more people to think &quot;will this earn enough points?&quot; before submitting links.&lt;p&gt;... but that&apos;s not what you want people to think.  You want them to think &quot;is this interesting and on-topic for HN?&quot;  They&apos;re not the same question, as much as the former tries to approximate the latter.&lt;p&gt;If people focus too much on points, you&apos;re likely to get more groupthink and more industry buzz (since that stuff always gets a gazillion upvotes) instead of interesting articles.&lt;p&gt;Certainly, people think about link karma already, but I think this would make it worse.  Creating a cost will cause even people who &lt;i&gt;don&apos;t&lt;/i&gt; think about karma to think about it, even for just a moment -- which is probably not what you want.</text></item><item><author>silentbicycle</author><text>Have you considered adding a slight cost for submitting articles? (perhaps 2-5 points of karma?) There&apos;s a reward for submitting anything first that other people are likely to submit, but no cost, so the new page is often clogged with industry buzz that drowns out more substantial submissions. Many excellent article fall off within an hour, and then they can&apos;t get reposted.&lt;p&gt;Having more articles on the front page that aren&apos;t based on a scramble for duplicate-submission karma would probably improve the overall discussion threads, too; those posts tend to draw a lot of shallow comments.&lt;p&gt;It would also help with spam. Win win win.&lt;p&gt;I also wonder what percentage of upvotes for submissions comes just from duplicate submissions - maybe those should be counted differently (or not at all)? If the front page is already full of threads about some news about Apple (or whatever), being first to submit a redundant (but distinct) post is disproportionately rewarded, yet reduces the signal/noise ratio &lt;i&gt;even further&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eli</author><text>If you don&apos;t think a story will get 2-5 up votes, then you probably shouldn&apos;t submit it.&lt;p&gt;And I assure you that people who don&apos;t think about karma (I couldn&apos;t care less) will continue to not think about it.</text></comment>