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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

tosh and others do a lot of reposts, Wikipedia links, etc

karma farming?

On HN, a small number of reposts is ok if a post hasn't had significant attention yet in the last year or so. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

It's true that repostiness per se is annoying, but it's more annoying for good submissions to miss out on attention because /newest is something of a lottery. Allowing a small number of reposts is a way to mitigate that randomness, until we can maybe work out a better solution.

In a well-designed karma system, karma farming is something to encourage because it means users are posting content that helps the website.

(I don't know many well-designed karma systems, but, that's at least the goal. The feedback cycle exists for a reason.)

stumbled upon it (again(?)) in a recent comment on "Is Git irreplaceable": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21980556

and thought this might yield an interesting discussion

I have five figures worth of karma. I don’t see what it gets me exactly or why anyone would want to farm it, but I guess there are all kinds of different hobbies.

Why does it matter to you? Does this submission hurt you?

I’m simply pointing out why we get lots of repeat submissions.

Some stories are great and worth seeing every few years.

Your anger gave away the fact that you do the same thing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Tomte

The one downside is that it creates a lot of noise on HN. It forces new stories off the first page quicker.

Also, stories about Jerry Lee Lewis’ marriage to a 13 year old isn’t HN, for example.

I'm not angry, actually. I just wonder why you're so invested in what I'm doing. I'm actually proud of it. More people should un-earth cool stories and submit them.

About Jerry Lee Lewis: I disagree. The sheer fact that moral compasses were so wildly divergent between America and England, of all pairs of countries, so recently, is quite on-topic, in my opinion.

Also, I think it's great that you found only one story you disagree with in the thirty stories my submission page shows. Clearly you approve of my selection.

> I’m simply pointing out why we get lots of repeat submissions.

That's explicitly okay, as the moderators point out all the time.

You joined the conversation. I mentioned another user. I quickly looked at your account once you became indignant. I scanned your last submissions page and saw you’re karma farming too and picked out the most egregious submission.

I didn’t say it wasn’t ok. I’m sure I do it occasionally.

I’m waiting for the first person to write a karma farming AI. Take great stories, determine a decay time, then repost.

“HN Karma Farming with Deep Learning (in Rust)”

> I’m waiting for the first person to write a karma farming AI. Take great stories, determine a decay time, then repost. > > “HN Karma Farming with Deep Learning (in Rust)”

This probably doesn't even need any AI, just some scrapping and scripting to determine when it's worth resubmitting.

Somebody should implement this, seems like fun.

Of course, if it's done with deep learning... then it would be something else. Maybe even determine correlation with other themes in the other news of the day/front page, or month, etc.

Machine learning is just a currently popular approach that is called “AI”. Expert Systems are also AI, and a title that called a karma whore bot AI wouldn’t be technically misleading...?

You’re forgetting that people actually have to upvote submissions. Presumably not everyone sees every submission on HN every time thus are candidates to upvote it.

Sure, write that karma farming bot. Seems like a good service to those of us who want to see good content we may have missed, generate new discussions on classic content.

Complaining about “karma farming” has always seemed like a weird jealousy thing to me. Where you presumably care so much about karma that you’re annoyed over your arbitrary concept of karma-fairness. Who cares? If someone can get karma by reposting classic content for HNers who missed it the other times, more power to them. They reposted the content to an audience that wanted to see it. You can’t always take it personally or lash out at others just because you’re not part of that audience.

I’m not complaining. I’m providing deeper insight into why people are seeing repeated posts.

I did point out a downside, but have at it.

Why are the motives to Karma farming-- is it the fuzzy feeling of internet points? Or is it people wishing to gain a reputation with a community, and then leverage the account to share their world view / interests / etc. I suppose it could be a matter of both, but since points take a more minimal role on HN, it's tough to say why Karma farming would make more sense here versus other platforms.

I assume you're comparing to Reddit. I wouldn't say internet virtue points play any less of a role here.

Your total "internet virtue points" here are displayed in the top right corner (whereas on Reddit you have to go looking). The virtue points any given comments gains are not visible to other people (unlike on reddit) but losses are. That doesn't seem like a big net difference between the two platforms.

HN's karma system is just as good as Reddit's at faking a consensus and marginalizing whoever has even a slightly less popular viewpoint on a subject.

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