I think it's time to stop awarding karma for submitting stories. It really doesn't make sense to do so in the first place, but I suppose it might have helped back when the site was young.
Now, since pretty much every good story is going to end up here anyway, I don't see any reason to reward people for posting them.
Karma for comments makes sense, since it's an actual contribution by you. Karma for posting something you didn't even write just leads to people gaming the system.
I would not go so far as stop awarding those karma. It gives people the incentive to post those stories and its not that just by posting one gets some karma. It has to be liked by the community. But the quantum of karma per post should ideally be less than that for a comment.
Karma seems more sought after than I thought. It seems there is almost a viable market for it. Shudder
Indeed, people are here seeking karma for its own sake. That's the problem.
It's also the reason why every single techcrunch article get submitted here. There was a time where you'd see maybe one TC article a week come through, usually with discussion as to whether it was really worth being here.
Realistically, maybe half a dozen articles per day are high enough quality to even be submitted here. The fact that we're seeing thousands each day is a sign that standards have fallen drastically. Removing the incentive to post things unless they're really good would go a long way toward improving the signal to noise ratio.
Your comment made me think of a scheme where a post automatically incurs a tiny negative karma, which can be compensated and exceeded by the karma awarded by the community. Right now we do not have any dis-incentive for posting noise. It will make posters think twice.
However karma has to be made a float as opposed to an integer. I am curious, do downvoters get a tiny hit for downvoting ?
I agree there should be a cost for posting stories, even going so far as preventing further submissions if you fall below a certain threshold. You could raise your karma back up through commenting.
I'm seeing a lot of cases where someone writes a small post to their site and posts it as a story (or even a comment!) on HN just to get publicity for the site. So it might not always be purely for karma.
Though I'm pretty new here, so this might be 'normal'.
Are you sure you are being voted down like you claim ?
In my experience HN'ers are quite restrained in their downvotes. Apart from a few of your comments in this thread that got downvoted I don't see any major downvoting trend going on.
And about those comments: I do not have the karma to downvote anyone and I haven't till before this thread felt the need for such rights. But some of your comments did come off as immature and needlessly argumentative, to the point of refusing to listen to what everyone is saying to you and blaming everything on being a newbie.
when you have zeros next to your post and when you are watching your karma go up and down as much as 5 points, depending on when you posted, then your are being voted. down. Only reason I am being voted down if because someone or a few think I am here for other reason beside just wanting to get may startup going and just trying to figure it all out. Just leave me alone already.
Great Idea! And I do spend time making sure that people who submit about the same time I do have up voted points. Also try and leave a comment on one that are worth wile that may be a few pages back just so it is seen. I think more people should do this as well.
Couldn't help but notice that a while ago the user submitting those links asked for the benefits of having a higher karma on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2051403).
While this is a perfectly valid question that many people have or had, it may also indicate an interest in getting a higher karma for the sake of it, instead of thinking about the benefits of his/her contributions to the community.
should be able to do this without being called out for asking a newbie question.
Nope, sorry. Participating in the community means taking the good with the bad and vice versa. You may not like being "called out" and the OP may or may not be justified in doing so, but it's part of the nature of things. You don't have to like it, but it will happen.
Unless you're trying to collect karma for its own sake, why would you even care if it gets voted down, other than to consider why the community might be disagreeing with the sentiments you're expressing? Complaining about it in a petulant way like this isn't likely to change how the community feels.
Anyway, average karma is probably more important, and you can't game that by submitting lots of links/comments - you need to focus on submitting meaningful content instead.
"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized." - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Maybe because someone who is more than 90 days on HN isn't considered a newbie. That's plenty time to get an idea about the community. Besides, most fair play guidelines are universal and common sense and do not really require to be dug out from the dark.
p.s. Just in case you think so, I have not down voted any of your comments and am newbier than you by a shade.
I asked the question because I did not know the answer. Need to ask a question to get the answer. Sorry I have not spent 90 days on here non stop... And as I stated in the question that was asked ( many days ago.. Geez), I did search FAQ before I asked.
This comment makes me wonder why you are here at all. If you haven't been here for 90 days non-stop, how do you assume you know what would interest this community?
This leads me to believe that you are just attempting to build karma for some reason without adding any real benefit to this community.
Reviewing what you have submitted, I think it would be to your benefit to look at what type of stories are highly voted on and, more importantly, commented on. Then maybe you will pass over the YouTube video and add something of value.
> so even my question about being a newbie get voted down. NICE!
Is not a question. That's what I was referring to. You will get the context from the indentation level. And yeah I hope :-) that not everyone has been on the site everyday since the day their account was "created".
Ok I am taking notes: when you have, enough point to do so down vote all newbies who are learning the ropes and discourage them from feeling welcome or posting. Right? That is a question by the way.
You made a fuck up. Some people tried to help, others piled on a little strong.
Bottom line is; things are a bit different around here (as well as much the same as any other community). Accept you screwed up, read the advice and take it away. Getting upset at blunt replies isn't really going to help (you or anyone else). Getting mad about the downvotes, even less so. Starting threads moaning about flamewarring etc. is even worse ;)
Don't worry about it. We all make mistakes. Now you've had a crash course in some of the rules and ettitquete.
No one is out to get you.
I would ignore this entire thread from now on if I were you. There is little else constructive to be added. I suspect a mod will kill it off reasonably soon.
..Or having every thing I have posted in days past being voted down, by a few individuals in the last 1 hour? No matter how worthwhile it is. NOt right, and I have no recourse. I just get to watch my "Karma" drop non stop. NICE.
I appreciate those who are becoming aware of this and are voting some back up. Thanks
This is very unwelcoming and an attack to the individual.
Not taking any sides really but the way how you worded the post.
"20 in 20" sounds like you wanted a winning headline (which I guess is the case)
Please stop scolding the user for trying something out of the norm. It just means one will have to take a bit more effort to go back the first page of http://news.ycombinator.com/newest (click the more link... some more).
You can also tell the user that comments hold more value for a person than posting links.
It is like twitter for some people at first you try to mimic the big guys as fast and as abundant as possible but after a while you "get" the system.
Give the user some time o0.
These guidelines are taken as advice no? After all this is just an experiment. Stop smothering the small guys, we are people too :)
HN is not like Twitter in that, here, you're generally expected to actually know what you're doing/what's going on. The problem with this "experiment" is that it was (and still is) disruptive to the intended use of HN ("[gratifying] one's intellectual curiousity").
Also, I don't think the regulars would've jumped on 10smom the way they have if it were obviously a newbie mistake. Personally, what galls (enough to pull me out of lurk-mode) is how this could probably have gone away early on if 10smom actually tried to make amends. Instead, additional comments were posted that point to someone who was aware that what she was doing pretty much amounts to gaming HN's karma system.
Perhaps you should consider changing what you post, then? Most of the comments you've left have exactly the same style/tone, and it's a very self-serving and self-entitled one.
It might be better to listen for a while and stop posting more comments complaining about down-voting - the more of those you post the worse your average score will be (because you can be sure that a comment complaining about down-voting will never be voted up much).
I do ... one of the nice things about HN is the quality of its human filter!
But to address the cumulative comments made by 10smom below, here's the snippet from her profile - "I am a Female, self funded, Startup Entrepreneur". From what I've seen lurking around here for a year or so, you're best bet is to ask for feedback on your start-up. You'll either get accolades or at least constructive criticism but I strongly doubt you'll get into an argument like this one.
If you're thick-skinned enough to be an entrepreneur, I'm sure you can forget about this thread ... let's just start over as though we'd never met you.
And if you're worthy of karma, people will realize that over time and you'll get it. I started following patio11 a long time before he was a rising karma star, but if you read his comments here and his blog at http://www.kalzumeus.com, you'll realize why he has (and deserves) so much respect.
I wouldn't say that there are spam in the submissions, probably the vast majority of HNers does not go to new page, so it really does not affect the vast majority. Even though it does ignored the last recommendation on submission guidelines[1], but even then I do not see much problems about that.
Y combinator encourage posting news by their rating system. Nothing wrong here by doing exactly what YC encourages. Why not post if I find good news? They even make it extremely easy by their bookmarklet. Also it gives me a great way to keep good news in one place: my profile! :)
Generally the unspoken rule here is that if you are taking up most of /newest you are posting too much. Sorry that's unintuitive; it's quite weird that Hacker News has lots of secret rules.
"Y combinator encourage posting news by their rating system. Nothing wrong here by doing exactly what YC encourages. Why not post if I find good news? They even make it extremely easy by their bookmarklet."
There is absolutely no question that you're abusing the system. You're purposefully degrading the experience of everyone, and of course you're aware of it. Whether there's a rule about this sort of thing is completely irrelevant and stating that "Y combinator encourage" this behavior by not implementing functionality to stop it is simply disingenious.
Any system can be gamed or abused if you just make an effort. In the end it comes down to your (missing) sense of honor. Do you want to contribute or would you rather like to corrupt the world? Corrosion is always easier of course, and may even reward you in the short run. And I guess we already are rewarding you by talking about you, so I guess the strategy paid off. HN wouldn't be the first site to die like this, but I'm guessing this is not the time yet.
The thing that I do not like about it is that it floods out other submissions from the "New" page. Surely there are better and less disruptive ways of keeping track of news you find interesting.
Maybe something like a cool-off period, similar to what is used for deeply nested threads, will be good.
NO that is not my primary reason. Primary reason for posting is it is Headline news and would be posted anyways. Why should I not be able to post? It will be posted sometime in the next 2 hours anyways.
The 'new' page is a spare resource, there's a limited number of people looking over it so if it is flooded with bursts of new posts then the ability to promote worthy news to the main page is damaged as the amount of time spent in the 'new' section decreases and you're not bringing new independent eye-balls to evaluate and upvote them.
There is a rule for dealing with this scarcity: don't bulk-post. Take your best guess for the most worthy news, post it and then respect the waiting period before you post again.
> Why should I not be able to post? It will be posted sometime in the next 2 hours anyways.
This shows a sense of entitlement that not only goes against the spirit of the community but also against the published guidelines as others have mentioned. Here's a list of some guidelines you've either ignored or are ignorant of:
> If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
('what to expect' at CES isn't exactly intellectually gratifying, and certainly not two stories about the exact same topic within minutes of each other)
> If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link anyway.
(Almost every link you submitted)
> If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
(Such as "10 Transportation Trends That Rocked 2010 | Autopia | Wired.com")
> Please don't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated by your submissions.
(Obvious)
If you're unsure about what is expected of a community, there's a couple of approaches you might adopt. You can bombard the community with a ton of questions which, depending on the community, many not go over well... like your "Ask HN" about how to search HN -- is it really too difficult to find the "Search" link on the footer of every page? Or you can adopt the age-old tradition called lurking.
I didn't downvote that comment, but only because I can't. I obviously can't speak for those that did, but I'd downvote your reply because it seems more an ill-formulated rationalization than an actual answer.
Posting a link just because it "would be posted anyways"? That, to me, is an admission of sorts to gaming the system; that you're "sharing" those links only for the karma, not because you're genuinely interested in the content you're linking to.
This is ridiculous This is amy inteial reply to this post and because of all the replies under it It get -pts. I just replied to the guys post directed . Why am I being penalized by answering his question?
If you notice most of the news is CES 2011 and thought it was worth while info to post. LOts of news coming out right now from CES. Do a search you too will find a ton of new stuff since I posted. Feel free to post! I promise I will not call you out. :)
If you want to post something about CES 2011 that you think would be of interest to hackers, do it, but pick ONE item that you think is the best and submit that.
If that one item doesn't make it to the front page, then you confirm that others don't have interest in the other not-as-good items, so don't submit those.
Again I have pts bing taking away from just responding. OH MY! I have gone down 20 pts by just responding. And I can not take pts away in kind for responses to me. HOw fair is this? PLease not this was a comment from 20 minute ago. It is fair to reply to it, but it is not fair to give move down when all I am doing is responding to something that is directed at me. PLease give a newbie a break already and stop bringing down everything a I post.
OK so, Now I am getting the system: Flame A person for being a newbie, Collect as many up points as you can by doing so then, follow that newbie around and down vote everything they post? Do I have that straight? I just want to be sure.
Careful... You are bordering on being inflammatory with your sarcastic questions. Having read all of your posts/replies, you are close to what people would call a troll.
From wikipedia - In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
As I am sure this is not the intention you have, please be a bit more careful. We are all friends here. No need for sarcastic questions or inflammatory messages.
I'd prefer readers to be human filters, submitting only the best of the best out of their RSS feeds, such that the overall submission rate stays at a rate that I can read.
Definitely. And regarding karma, for me the only karma that "counts" is the messages one, the ones who only dump links on HN without commenting further are on the wrong site, imho.
Now, since pretty much every good story is going to end up here anyway, I don't see any reason to reward people for posting them.
Karma for comments makes sense, since it's an actual contribution by you. Karma for posting something you didn't even write just leads to people gaming the system.