I'm not convinced that works, since the post still goes lighter, so you can tell how badly it's been downvoted, but that's the intention.
It doesn't matter that your HN karma score isn't going to get you laid[1], people generally care about anything they're scored on.
[1] If it did edw519 would probably be dead from exhaustion or at least severely chafed.
I hate the notion of karma used by sites like HN and Reddit. It turns the content of the site into a popularity contest, specifically because the motivation you're talking about encourages people to do things that have crowd appeal. Conversely, when an active, respected community member -- like jrockway for example -- says something offbeat, controversial, or just different from the prevailing opinion of the audience, and then gets "punished" for it by this collective reduction of a totally worthless number ... to me, all that does is reflect badly on the community.
To be honest, I have a pretty low opinion of a lot of the HN community, and the karma system contributes to that.
(the fact that you're not being downvoted for making such an egregiously incorrect statement is proof if it was needed that the groupthink is not so bad, btw)
Voting was intended as upvote means good comment and downvote means bad comment, but people use it as upvote means "I agree" and downvote means "I disagree". Not everyone of course, but a lot of people do. This problem is less severe on hacker news than on reddit, but on reddit more people keep posting regardless of downvotes whereas here they are banned from the site.
I dunno that you could say that someone has "earned" something that's primarily the result of their spending some spare time in a community and usually behaving in a way that the community likes.
On this site you gain preference by the ranking algorithm, for one thing. Your comments and votes hold more weight. Outside of that, many people believe the karma makes the man and not the other way around. It can be an instant way to determine whether someone making a statement is qualified to make that statement. Of course that isn't how it should be, but that is how the human brain works until you've trained it otherwise. I've seen people with 10k karma make an ass of themselves and people with 30 karma divulge great insight, but the image is still there.
I would say on Hacker News you do more or less earn your karma. Since this community doesn't take too kindly to smart ass comments you are forced to conform to a higher standard than you find on other communities that give their users karma.
It's not perfect, but I do believe if you have high karma you have earned it (on Hacker News).
> Since this community doesn't take too kindly to smart ass comments you are forced to conform to a higher standard...
Assumptions in this statement:
1. Everyone always wants to make smart-ass comments.
2. Nobody wants to behave this way anyway.
3. Smart-ass comments are never rewarded here.
I don't think I agree with any of those. I behave here exactly the way I did on Reddit; I simply no longer spend any time on Reddit. Nor does the karma system here discourage me from saying anything or behaving in a particular way. At the most, I might withhold an opinion on something simply because I don't feel like it's worth defending. (I'm spending so much effort ranting about karma here because I'm hoping that maybe someone will read it later and consider doing something different in the next social whattathingamajig.)
I don't believe my statement made any of the assumptions you listed.
Not everyone wants to make smart-ass comments, but many do. This is more true with people outside our community (Redditers) than for people who have been part of this community for a while. Smart-ass comments are sometimes rewarded here and that is somewhat unfortunate. The general rule however is that they are not. You do not behave like your standard Redditer, and that might be why you no longer engage in discussion there.
Nevermind, carry on.
Please mind your language.
Please stop moralizing.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432322
lost me something like 10 karma. There's another one of mine similar.
It was pretty awesome to have my average comment karma go from ~4 to <2 in like 2 weeks due to 2 "-4" comments that the community disagreed with.
sigh
In my experience, a two word response containing an obvious course of action that everybody is overlooking like that would have either been downvoted to -4+ or upvoted to 30. It's a crap shoot.
Not sure how suing somebody who owes you that kind of money requires a long exposition to explain. The subsequent comment asking for alternatives was upvoted into positive territory that same day it was posted, without adding anything else and with no responses in the form of alternatives.
edit
similar, newer comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432131 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432131 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432612 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1432133 were not similarly downvoted (and a couple were actually upvoted) yet add no more to the discussion than mine (since they came after my comment and recommend the same thing, by definition, they do not add anything "new") and probably should have just been responses to my original comment in the form of adding specificity or methods.
It's not the downvotes per se that I mind. People can feel free to disagree that a lawsuit is a bad course of action when somebody owes you $126,000. I think they are wrong, but whatever. It's not like any of the 10 people who hit the little down arrow could be bothered to type "I disagree with this because...". But that people continued to downvote long after my suggestion hit -4 shows that allowing downvotes after hitting -4 doesn't work. At that point, I'm just being targeted. Particularly when essentially the same comments were untouched or upvoted. If the thread hadn't moved off the front page rather quickly I'm sure I would have taken more hits.
Okay HN community! I got it! I should have provided half a dozen words telling them to sue instead of 3! Clearly that's the community standard as the linked comments demonstrate.
I now realize I'm now edw519 or patio11, where every 3 word comment gets half a dozen upvotes. Perhaps I should put some numbers next to my handle?
I'm consistently amused at how people who get their comments downvoted complain about the downvoting by rephrasing the point they were trying to make in order to make it clearer and more articulate. I do it, too. The joke is that if the original post expressed your point as clearly as the complaint post, we wouldn't get downvoted in the first place.
Writing for human consumption is a frustrating and inexact task. You might sound like a complete asshole without meaning to. I, in particular, often have that problem.
This comment had lost its author 75 points of karma by the time I made this post and still shows up as -4:
I still have no idea why the _ck_ account was disabled in the first place.
A few years ago, I discovered a site called Reddit. After awhile, I realized there were comments on the site, and began reading them. While a few added to my enjoyment and understanding of the articles, I have to admit that what really attracted me were the pun threads.
Well, I thought I would attempt this interesting variety of interaction. I began to post my thoughts on subjects. I was surprised to see that my well thought-out comments were getting downvoted. Sometimes quite strongly.
Hmm... I reexamined my arguments and how I conveyed them. I experimented with different ways of expressing myself. However, most of the time when I made a comment which I thought was a bit insightful, I would see negative karma.
Finally, I changed my approach. Instead of thinking about a subject and writing what I thought of it, I instead peppered the site with knee-jerk, humorous comments.
My greatest success, by the way, was a one-line "your mom" joke which earned me something like 270 karma for a couple of seconds' work.
I found the worst problem to be in the subreddits. As I quickly learned, subreddits are inhabited by people who want their views validated. Even correcting dangerous misconceptions around basic physics would get harsh downvotes. Meanwhile, comments which perpetuated the status quo of ignorance were celebrated.
Up/down community rating does not provide any sort of legitimacy to posters. It only provides popularity. As one who doesn't take political advice from movie stars (for example), I find it appalling that this system is spreading.
As for the specifics of downvoting repeatedly, this is simple lynch mob mentality. A -1 rating has just as much power to say, "we don't like the way you express yourself," as a -10 rating. The only thing that -10 adds is a reflection of groupthink and people venting angst.