Comment by Sakes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sakes | Hacker News Reader

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Of all the suggestions I've read, I think I like this one the most. But I think it is barely missing what the main problem is. Here is my twist on your idea, please tell me what you think.

Why do we want comment scores?

Because we want to be able to pick out quality comments quicker.

What is broken with comment scores?

They have created a motivation for people to try and game the comment scores. A simple way to do this is by writing polarizing comments, or kicking up an emotional debate. This hurts the comment system.

So what is the root problem? Why do people want to game the comment scores?

The reason people want to game the comment scores is because the comment scores are tied to their identity. If you can find a way to tie comment scores to the comments, and disconnect them from the user's identity, there should no longer be a motivation for people to game the comment scores.

So how can we do this? Here are a couple of my ideas.

1) Kill the current karma system and replace it with some new system. Why? Since karma is tied to comment scores, people don't just get the instant gratification of seeing their comment get voted up. They get to keep those points as long as they have the account. When you log in you see your karma score right next to your name, just begging you to try and raise it.

OR

2) After 10 upvotes (or some other chosen value) start fading the username from grey to green, and immediately replace that user's name on the entire page with a randomly chosen tag. It could be Alpha, or Liono, or characters from the 30Rock, doesn't matter. As long as it isn't directly tied to that user's identity anymore. If you replace the user's name with the same randomly chosen tag, then readers will still be able to see that that person's comments come from the same person, they just won't know who it is.

All I know for sure is that if comment scores come back they can't be tied directly to the user's identity.

I don't want to remove peoples' names from their comments. Regardless of the number of points, I will likely trust a comment from somebody like grelis.

I do like the idea of dumping any visual notification of karma. The system could keep track for whatever things it needs to (minimum karma to vote, flag, etc), but there is really no reason for the community to know what that karma is.

That's an interesting point; essentially the problem is comment scores tie to people's ego. If we can split comment scores from the ego, the issues with comments would be resolved.

There are plenty of examples of sites that don't have a karma system, and they have plenty of inflammatory, insulting and personal comments.

IMO Removing karma won't improve the quality of the conversation.

Equally, anonymous, or pseudo-anonymous, comments give the commenter more freedom to make unhelpful comments.

Comments are tied to the identity, which goes at least some of the way towards them being self-moderated.

Another idea would be to switch from the positive incentives of karma, to a harsher negative incentive system. So if your karma is good, it is always 0. If you make bad comments and get down voted, it begins to go negative. You can reach zero again by making better comments later, but you can't stock pile points. Zero is as high as you can go.

I still think the perceived reward of having high ranking comments has to be removed somehow.

What do you think bruce?

I like this a lot.

Karma should be displayed to the logged in user in a vague fashion: "Karma: good." The numeric score can be maintained on the server, but never displayed to the user. Downvotes and other abilities would simply show up one day when you've passed a certain threshold, but the user should have no idea how far along they are, as we're trying to dissuade the people that want those sorts of powers (and would abuse them) from getting them. Meanwhile, negative karma could start rate-limiting you past a certain point, such as only allowing 3 posts/day.

I'm still of the belief that the only way to ensure high quality discussion is to discourage commenting for it's own sake. Everybody does not need to contribute to every article, and having a numeric karma score only legitimizes posting for its own sake.

To reiterate my support for a previous point: the only way to fix the karma system is to kill the ego's involvement in it.

I suspect any system can be gamed for some reason or other. Equally, I suspect that making ever more complicated systems, to handle ever fewer edge cases, results in the system being less useful, not more.

Simple systems, like the current karma system, can certainly be gamed, but with each iteration general value is lost. Displaying comment scores (which I prefer) can be abused. So that's gone, and a data point with it.

Keep them, don't keep them, I don't think I'll lose much sleep either way. But as a general rule, removing data or functionality from the many, to try and prevent the excesses of the few always invokes the ire of unit ended consequences. It's almost never an improvement.

I like the idea of not tying the karma score to the user, but that does help identify good users from bad. Maybe cap the karma the user can get from a single comment to something low - say 3, but let the comment itself show the real number of votes.

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