Maybe others would like that option too?
Rude people are rude people. If they can't complain about your karma they will complain about your socks.
My advice is to ignore them and carry on. Don't take criticism seriously unless it's serious criticism.
Because the leaderboard has positive and negative sides to it.
The negative sides have to do with the people that think that HN is all about 'being in the top 100'.
The positive side is that you can see fairly easily who are the people that have spent a lot of time on the site, in other words who is here for the long haul and who is passing through.
On /. you get a similar feeling by looking at people uid#, here we don't have that so the leaderboard has some of that function.
> Rude people are rude people. If they can't complain about your karma they will complain about your socks.
Ah, but they can't see my socks :)
> My advice is to ignore them and carry on. Don't take criticism seriously unless it's serious criticism.
It gets a little tedious after a while and the negative returns from being on the leaderboard seem to outweigh the positive ones, hence the request.
You know how YC always preaches that you should take your users feed back serious and all that ;)
It may be a narrow appeal, but it is being requested by someone who has demonstrated significant contribution to the community to be rewarded in about the only way one can be rewarded here and you won't free him from that which he considers a punishment.
After all, for every person that removes themselves from the leaderboard another one gets the ability to make the decision.
Unless you think that the majority of the HNers is here to make it to the leaderboard, which is a possibility but I highly doubt that a majority here is taking the karma count as their reason for contributing.
edit: this is the third time in as many weeks that I get pretty negative email definitely caused by HN users, it's not at a level where I worry about it (that takes a lot more) but it is a nuisance and it spoils some of the pleasure of being here.
The biggest reason why I am here is because of the people, the second one is the ability to ask and answer 'Ask HN' style postings, the third is to learn and interact. None of that stands a chance of being harmed by a couple of idiotic emails.
I figure that by taking my name off the leaderboard I would make a statement about what I think HN is all about, which is not the leaderboard, anything but.
The silly emails just made me think about it, and in that sense they served a purpose. The alternative, to make another account is also a possibility but then I'm still taking up that slot.
Even if the leaderboard does serve a purpose, which to me is simply to distinguish the frequent contributors from the rest (but for that the leaderboard is actually too small since HN has far more than 100 frequent contributors). I have gone through ever single profile on the leaderboard and visited the sites of the people listed there to see what they're up to.
Enough reasons to add the feature.
The best incentives are non monetary. Real people are motivated by them.
To get that you'd need to spend like 6-7 months on HN submitting quality stuff or making quality posts(need those votes). Noone is going to do all that for a single link, they'd rather spend that time adding their site to a bunch of directories or writing articles to submit to content farms.
Votingrings with sockpuppets would be detected long before they would get even near that level, presumably long before they'd reach even 10% of what it takes to get on the leaderboard.
There must be softer targets than the HN leaderboard.
front page: PR7 page 2: PR0
the top100 leaderboard user profile on the other hand: PR4
There are a lot of guys here working hard on their startups who have also spent a boatload of hours on HN submitting, ranking, and commenting. Giving them a little GoogleJuice doesn't hurt HN at all (want to take a year to get on the board just for one link? Don't think so) and it helps some of us out a bit.
The term "Leader" makes me uncomfortable in the first place, English is not my first language, that's why maybe it resonate for me as in : "The persons who rules the others".
In my opinion "Top contributors" would be more appropriate.
"Leader" can imply "ruler," but it can also mean someone who is winning a competition (his opponent are behind in score and hence are "following" him) or someone whom other voluntarily follow.
It is generally considered a benign term.
That has other effects too, such as splitting the posting history / comment history across several accounts. And the 'sockpuppet' detector might not like that.
And because the return is forged I haven't a clue who it could be. Not that that would matter much but it would at least give an indication why.
The only thing I can think of that could cause this in recent memory is this thread:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1035080
It generated a fair amount of email, not all of it positive.
Thanks for letting us know. There must be a better way though.
1. There's a way to recognize the same user in a thread - maybe color, or some way to say "This is the same user that you just replied to".
2. admins etc can see who you really are.
I think then you'd be able to truly let your comments win/die on their own.
I think most of us can tell the difference between a great contributor such as yourself and a karma-whore.
Damn, I've been had!