<story><title>Hacker News Karma Tracker</title><url>http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zalzane</author><text>&amp;#62;My highest rated comments aren&apos;t what I would consider my best. Instead, they are ones that appeal to a wide audience with some kind of emotional (rather than technical) insight.&lt;p&gt;I definitely feel you here. This is a trend I see absolutely everywhere; hell, I was surprised to find out it even extends into video games that implement this kind of voting system.&lt;p&gt;This problem feels like it could be solvable by changing the &quot;meaning&quot; of the upvote. Right now, the upvote is a tool that allows you to make a comment more visible and to throw a bone to the author in the form of karma. People probably feel inclined to &quot;tip&quot; someone who makes a clever or witty comment with the karma from the upvote. On top of that, people making witty comments who get upvoted are now encouraged to make more witty and unproductive comments because they know that they will get karma for it.&lt;p&gt;The issue is that the upvote represents general approval of a comment, rather than a nod of the head that a comment is productive or insightful.&lt;p&gt;Just throwing around ideas - maybe the elimination of the user-karma-tracking system altogether is a reasonable solution?</text></item><item><author>Xcelerate</author><text>This is a cool website.  I was wondering about some kind of ranking system like this.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; Speed percentile: 98.82%&lt;p&gt;While I have to acknowledge that some instinctive/animalistic part of me is excited at being in this percentile, it also prompts me to remember that karma is effectively worthless and I really need to get busy on class work and research...&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s really strange the impact something silly like karma has, because I tell myself I&apos;m above accumulating imaginary points on the internet, but obviously, I don&apos;t seem to be.&lt;p&gt;In some ways, it&apos;s  curious.  My highest rated comments aren&apos;t what I would consider my best.  Instead, they are ones that appeal to a wide audience with some kind of emotional (rather than technical) insight.  My last comment, a quip about about how every programmer thinks they&apos;re the best, was worth 64 points.  However, a detailed post I wrote on molecular dynamics simulation where I fact-checked and reviewed the literature was only worth 3 points.  Go figure.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: After thinking about it some more, I&apos;ve decided karma isn&apos;t entirely worthless in real life.  It is a metric that lets you know how well other people like your written work.  Over time, I&apos;ve slowly come to realize what will get upvoted and what will not.  This ability could have interesting repercussions in the way I write about my research, or the way that I craft something like grant or fellowship applications.  Every person is different, but posting on HN reveals to me that, in the aggregate, there are certain things you can say that have a certain appeal to others, and the capacity to recognize this could in fact be useful in many life situations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anthonyb</author><text>This is why I was against hiding karma on posts. I suspect that it drives the points reward up for one liners, since there&apos;s no way to balance things downwards, ie. not upvote or downvote if you think a post has too many points.&lt;p&gt;And I think the upvote is pretty much set in stone now. It&apos;s essentially &quot;I like this post&quot; or &quot;I don&apos;t like this post&quot;, there&apos;s not much nuance.</text></comment>
<story><title>Hacker News Karma Tracker</title><url>http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zalzane</author><text>&amp;#62;My highest rated comments aren&apos;t what I would consider my best. Instead, they are ones that appeal to a wide audience with some kind of emotional (rather than technical) insight.&lt;p&gt;I definitely feel you here. This is a trend I see absolutely everywhere; hell, I was surprised to find out it even extends into video games that implement this kind of voting system.&lt;p&gt;This problem feels like it could be solvable by changing the &quot;meaning&quot; of the upvote. Right now, the upvote is a tool that allows you to make a comment more visible and to throw a bone to the author in the form of karma. People probably feel inclined to &quot;tip&quot; someone who makes a clever or witty comment with the karma from the upvote. On top of that, people making witty comments who get upvoted are now encouraged to make more witty and unproductive comments because they know that they will get karma for it.&lt;p&gt;The issue is that the upvote represents general approval of a comment, rather than a nod of the head that a comment is productive or insightful.&lt;p&gt;Just throwing around ideas - maybe the elimination of the user-karma-tracking system altogether is a reasonable solution?</text></item><item><author>Xcelerate</author><text>This is a cool website.  I was wondering about some kind of ranking system like this.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; Speed percentile: 98.82%&lt;p&gt;While I have to acknowledge that some instinctive/animalistic part of me is excited at being in this percentile, it also prompts me to remember that karma is effectively worthless and I really need to get busy on class work and research...&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s really strange the impact something silly like karma has, because I tell myself I&apos;m above accumulating imaginary points on the internet, but obviously, I don&apos;t seem to be.&lt;p&gt;In some ways, it&apos;s  curious.  My highest rated comments aren&apos;t what I would consider my best.  Instead, they are ones that appeal to a wide audience with some kind of emotional (rather than technical) insight.  My last comment, a quip about about how every programmer thinks they&apos;re the best, was worth 64 points.  However, a detailed post I wrote on molecular dynamics simulation where I fact-checked and reviewed the literature was only worth 3 points.  Go figure.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: After thinking about it some more, I&apos;ve decided karma isn&apos;t entirely worthless in real life.  It is a metric that lets you know how well other people like your written work.  Over time, I&apos;ve slowly come to realize what will get upvoted and what will not.  This ability could have interesting repercussions in the way I write about my research, or the way that I craft something like grant or fellowship applications.  Every person is different, but posting on HN reveals to me that, in the aggregate, there are certain things you can say that have a certain appeal to others, and the capacity to recognize this could in fact be useful in many life situations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>In a previous comment on karma systems I suggested a scheme where there was a voting &apos;diamond&apos; up, down, left, right, and center. Where up was &quot;good comment/submission&quot; and down was &quot;not-good comment/submission&quot;, left was &quot;less like this&quot;, and right was &quot;more like this&quot; and center was perfect.&lt;p&gt;That allows you to establish both what you like the site to have in it, and how you much you liked this instance of it. Perfect would mean simply that &quot;spot on&quot; or &quot;this.&quot;&lt;p&gt;The second part of the system would then adjust the presentation of your karma (to you and others) unscaled vector along the line to the &apos;perfect&apos; site in the context of the viewer.&lt;p&gt;To use a simple example, lets say HN was over run with cat pictures, and I thought they were the &lt;i&gt;best&lt;/i&gt; so I vote like this and &quot;+1&quot; (up and to the right), You the reader &lt;i&gt;hate&lt;/i&gt; cat pictures so you always vote down/less like this.&lt;p&gt;So we&apos;ve created virtual root nodes at +loves cat pictures and one at +hates cat pictures. Now I can plot your karma as negative with respect to mine if we assume that the center point between your root nexus and mine is 0. Now do this with enough topics and you get multiple consituencies all in the same discussion space where your view of their karma will inform you how likely it is you&apos;ll like to read what they wrote :-)</text></comment>