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Comment by TrevorJ | Hacker News Reader

A website-as-MMO. Saints preserve us!

Taken far enough it quickly becomes a very strange type of self-modifying or 'nomic' game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic], where those with the karma get to make the rules about how karma is made, transferred, destroyed.

I'm very curious about the limits of this kind of voting determing the content, permissions and abilities of users to a web site, and the point where gamability becomes a fatal problem.

You could take it stupidly far, and have the highest karma users be able to alter the source code of the site or make similar deep structural changes. If I had the time to learn Arc it'd be great fun to hack the HN source to support this kind of tomfoolery.

I'd play...

I recommend pure Nomic as a geek drinking game.

Well, the idea was that functionality would be contained within modular widgets, like facebook apps.

Sure, I just enjoy stretching ideas to breaking point to see what happens. I really like the idea though, it'd be an interesting project.

Hmmm, in that case wouldn't the elite install rules to keep them elite, and keep all others out?

I think not. The elite derive value from the masses, and they keep the masses interested with the possibility for them to become elite.

I wrote a long and elaborate post here about why you where wrong, but then realised that in essence the system already works this way. With y combinator as the elite.

So while I'm stubborn enough to maintain that, of course, theoretically you are totally wrong(democracy vs one party systems and all that) in practice you are absolutely right :-)

it would be the entire 'web in a microcosm. Karma instead of the dollar though.

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