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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

Sounds to me like the reasons he stopped reading HN were:

1) He couldn't stop himself from posting. He had to comment on things even when he had nothing to add. He even admits to commenting solely to gain karma.

2) He couldn't stop himself from reading the things he found pointless. All the flame wars, the arguments, etc.

Just learn to skip all that. Learn to only post when you have something to add. Only read an article when you actually care about the article. Only read the comments when you care both about the article and what others have to say about it.

Learn some self-control.

That, or tell me what the new best tech-news site is. I get a lot more information about new techniques, languages, etc etc here at HN than anywhere else at the moment.

View on HN

Sometimes I write a comment, but writing makes you think more clearly about the subject, and so I realize it is not very insightful.

Then I discard it and feel very proud for saving everyone's time.

That deserves karma!

I'm curious how many people started replying to you but ended up discarding it.

Same here, I discard at least two-thirds of the comments I start.

I think this indicates a higher average quality than other online comments better than most other indicators. In most places the comment would get posted anyway, but here you feel your writing as part of an average standard which is much higher.

I know for one that I also pay more attention to use of words and grammar on here that I probably would other places because that is what the standard is, that is what we all like to read and comments not at that standard usually end up down the bottom heavily down voted.

You don't see a lot of well written and constructive comments down voted even if they are arguing a alternate and contentious viewpoint.

I quite often write out a whole comment pointing out the error of someone's thinking, or just lashing out in general, then realize that I'm not actually adding anything, the person won't listen anyhow, and I'm just wasting my time, others' time, and being negative.

So I click 'back' on my browser and it goes away.

Since I learned to do that, my time on sites like HN has been much more rewarding.

I couldn't agree more. I still manage to slip in some meaningless and regrettable comments, but fortunately far less then the drivel you never get to see.

I've actually thought that the biggest flaw in HN's interface is that the user's karma is displayed on the home page. I've no doubt it seemed like a good way to encourage and reinforce contribution, but I fear it's enabling to a subtle sort of addiction.

Precisely what that addiction is to is perhaps what's hardest to answer. Is it attention? Validation? Some more abstract notion of amassment and score? I've noticed myself looking up into the corner upon return to the site, and have even consciously avoided that gaze pattern at times.

It may even come down to such fundamental questions as the existence of altruism. Just as one can ask "are you doing this for someone else, or just because doing things for others makes you feel good?" one can ask at "are you contributing thoughtfully because you want to participate in the community, or because you want to see your karma go up?" If you want to see your karma increase, is it because you want to participate, or the converse? Can the two be functionally separated?

I write very few comments. When I do write a comment, I always do the top-right corner check when I come back. To me, its validation that my opinion was well taken by the community (a community that I respect).

I'm going to try to avoid that this time :)

If you're not getting down voted a reasonable proportion of the time, you're too timid a thinker (or your comments avoid all controversy and stick to technical matters).

Except that on HN, if you are not getting more upvotes than the number of comments you are posting, you can't vote on the comments. That is what the "avg: " on your profile page is for, if it's not 2 or higher your votes don't count.

Didn't know that. And this isn't the first time.

Is there somewhere to read up on all the rules of HN? I figured out a few things on my own (like that you have to have 200 rep to downvote), but once in a while I come across something I don't understand (like, it seems that you can't downvote immediate children of your comments?).

The features do feel like easter eggs, but I would imagine that pg isn't mentioning them on purpose to preserve the incentive structure on HN and prevent people gaming the system.

I have found out most of this stuff gradually, by reading comments. The best advice I can give you, to maybe speed it up a bit, is to click on "ask" on the orange bar and browse the local posts that discuss HN.

* like that you have to have 200 rep to downvote*

This kind of thing also tends to change. I think I got my downvoting privileges at 50 or so. Like words after a long night of drinking, voting has flowed a lot mre frequently of late. Pg usually modifies the caps to compensate, but they aren't usually announced. I noticed, for example, that /leaders is no longer in the top bar. I think that was a while ago, but just an example of how the site changes.

The leaders link in the top bar was removed when a separate page was added with the Ask HN questions.

Here is pg's announcement: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173801

In the same discussion, in response to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1174132, pg moved the leader link to the Lists page and had the Ask HN on top bar.

I disagree. If you're not getting downvoted, that could just as easily mean you're not unconvincing.

Downvotes are ideally for low-value content. If your viewpoint is contrary to popular opinion, the onus is on you to explain your reasoning persuasively enough to not come off as a simple contrarian.

Downvotes are not a reward for thinking independently. They are a penalty for sloppy thinking or overly presumptious output. They are also the only way I can think of for fighting populist, short-circuit comments that troll for upvotes - by encouraging actual argumentation.

Ideally, and in practice, are not the same thing here... People downvote things they disagree with, including unconventional views, all the time.

Right. I attempted to argue that this was because the comment they disagreed with failed to make them stop and think about why disagreement exists, and re-evaluate their position. That is, downvotes are generally a sign of failure.

Certainly, some people stop, think, disagree, and downvote. I believe that this is the case when the original comment is sloppy, and generally warrants a reply. In some cases, especially various kinds of politics, the replies are omitted presumably because of fatigue. Such people have already replied to the argument enough times in their life to not want to do it again. That could be interpreted as a failure of domain research on the part of the original commenter, but I don't like to blame people for not being "well-read".

The behavior of a group and the behavior of individuals in that group aren't necessarily the same.

It's quite possible for the majority of people to vote based on agreement, and yet have the overall score of the comment be determined by those who vote by quality. Of the ones who vote by agreement, some will agree and some will disagree, and they end up cancelling each other out. The remaining comment score is made up of those who voted because it was a well-reasoned argument.

Reddit has the "Controversial" tab for this, though HN unfortunately doesn't make a distinction between a comment with 50 upvotes and 40 downvotes vs. one with 10 upvotes and 0 downvotes.

> Of the ones who vote by agreement, some will agree and some will disagree, and they end up cancelling each other out.

It's possible for this to happen, but I don't think there are that many hot-button issues where the two sides are exactly balanced. More commonly there will be at least a slight skew in one direction or another, which gets magnified in absolute score the more people there are who vote based on agreement. For example, if there's a 60/40 opinion skew among people who vote based on agreement on a particular topic, and 20 people vote that way, you already have an 8-point rating gap between the popular and unpopular comments (+12/-8 versus +8/-12). On really high-traffic topics, where 100 people might up/downvote based on agreement, you only need a tiny skew from 50/50 for the votes to pile up in one direction or another.

I think in practice that often swamps the quality-based voting, especially on high-traffic articles: you sometimes see extremely short and not particularly insightful comments that express a popular sentiment up at +40 or more.

Voting based on agreement/disagreement, rather than based on quality and relevance is thuggery. It's also human nature; we're passionate, lazy animals. The question is whether or not the problem is widespread enough to threaten the overall value of HN.

Granting that it's human nature to want to send a 1-click agree/disagree signal, and that signal can then be noise which hides another valuable/punishable signal we want to collect, I'd like to see HN or another site like it try a two-axis voting system:

up-promote vs. down-demote: affecting order-of-presentation and karma

left-agree vs. right-disagress: a mini-poll per comment, with no censorious effect on presentation or numerical-reputational effect on karma

Don't worry, I'm not downvoting you because your views are unpopular. I'm downvoting you because you're trolling.

Don't let all of these naysayers slow talk you out of your crackpot proselytizing. Here, have a downvote.

My comment history serves as a counterexample to this claim.

I make plenty of comments on controversial topics, often in opposition to mainstream opinion. I get lots of critical responses, but I only rarely see downvotes, and have only one comment that I know of that's below 1 (deservedly so; it was snarky and non-contributory). I'm neither timid nor controversy-avoiding; I just present my controversial ideas in a way that's engaging and enlightening.

I do too, but I would MUCH prefer it if that number were replaced with a count of new replies made to posts you've made, and linked to the 'threads' view of that same count.

The majority of time when I post it isn't to make a point, but to get clarification or ask a question, and sometimes I forget to look for the answers, or the answer comes after my 'threads' page has gone through a few pages, making it harder to find, etc.

PG tried hiding the karma for every comment a year or so back, but that made it harder to to skim pages looking for insightful comments.

Something that could reduce the game-like unpredictable reward aspect of karma scanning might be to delay updating it, perhaps only once a day. But then you might fall back to checking 'threads'.

Perhaps only hide karma score from your own comments made more recently than a day?

I think he means your overall karma (in the top right hand corner), not the karma on each comment.

An experiment would be to remove it, and only display it on your username page (as your average karma is now.)

I know he meant overall karma. That's why I suggested only updating it once a day, but you could still check how recent comments are doing with the "comments" link on the top bar, so you'd need to hide those scores too, hence my comment.

Ah, sorry, I see what you mean now.

I was just thinking about this the other day too. Some Swiss students posted a survey to Reddit asking things like, is karma beneficial or not? After thinking about it, it's not clear whether social news sites truly benefit from quantifying reputation with karma and other measures.

It creates an incentive to game the mechanic, makes it easier to game the mechanic with vote rings and bots and whatnot, causes people to comment and submit for the wrong reasons (build their karma rather than listen, learn, and contribute), and displaces the more natural, organic reputation from Web 0.99beta (Usenet, BBS, mailing lists, etc) where you actually had learn netiquette and figure out for yourself who knew what they were talking about and who didn't

Perhaps it's useful to some social networks, but I think HN is much more capable of getting along just fine without it.

Karma is useful at the system level, but not for end users. You can use it to weed out the bad apples but it will only ever be a very superficial indicator of quality.

I agree with this. A large part of the addictiveness comes from knowing that every time you reload the page you might gain the tiny quantum of satisfaction that comes from seeing that number increment.

Hey pg, next time you're making changes to make HN a little less addictive, how about a "hidekarma" option, which would stop my karma appearing in the top right hand corner of every page?

It's a matter of SNR though, isn't it? Sure you can skip things and sure you can edit yourself, but it's also easier (healthier?) to just stay somewhere that, to your own personal comfort, delivers signal and promotes meaningful response.

The less I have to bear the burden and sink the energy cost of filtration the more I can put into comprehension, enjoyment, and growth.

Being unable to stop reading or commenting on hn can never possibly be the reason you've successfully stopped reading or commenting on hn can it?

He wanted to spend his time reading and discussing articles on hn. His problem was that he was finding it increasingly unrewarding. So he quit.

Your last point regarding the best tech-news site is irrelevant. He is replacing hn with "arguing with people in person or via e-mail, reading disagreeable books, and the like."

And getting his tech news from his RSS feed.

A way to implement this is to use the new page. There's little indication of what you "should" read, so you have to make up your own mind, from the title or brief skim. There's no or few comments, so less opportunity for meaningless conflict that is irrelevant to the submission. It is, however, more work.

bonus: you have a massively increased influence on what gets to the front page - so, to an extent, you create the HN you want.

> I get a lot more information about new techniques, languages, etc etc here at HN than anywhere else at the moment.

I find much more useful content on reddit these days. HN tends to be full of opinion pieces with very little technical content. These sometimes start interesting discussions but I don't feel that I actually learn anything useful either from the original article or the comments.

One of the problems with the Karma thing is it's ridiculously simple to gain karma. Unless you're deliberately being stupid.

All you have to do is say something you believe will fit in with the groupthink of the community.

The first step to salvation is the realization that karma="how much time you waste commenting" rather than how much your comments are valued.

I'd like to see a community where there is a limited supply of karma. Or your karma is shown as a percentage of total karma. I think that would produce much better dynamics.

"Just learn to skip all that. Learn to only post when you have something to add. Only read an article when you actually care about the article. Only read the comments when you care both about the article and what others have to say about it."

Perfect advice. That pretty much applies to the entire Internet, not just HN.

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