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Comment by jmackinn | Hacker News Reader

Is this really the direction that YC News should be headed? I don't think that this is a good idea and could easily lead to many problems. As some people here have pointed out, comments on new stories will be discouraged, deep and long threads will be curtailed, and comments are likely to get longer. It also creates a sort of class system within the community. Now a person's karma level is visually seen all the time.

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It's not quite a class system if it's based on your 50 most recent comments. 3.5 karma points a comment is a pretty low barrier of entry, after all, which means that a, it's easier to get the highlight, and b, it's not worth as much because it's easier to get, meaning people won't jump to try and achieve the highlighted title.

A class system may be extreme, but there is now a visual distinction between users and comments will likely be skewed by that.

Yeah, but a visual distinction that constantly shifts, with no high entry point, isn't much of one at all. Even if you do have it, you have no advantage over keeping it than somebody who's just joined yesterday.

I don't know if it's a useful feature - I'll give it a few days and see if it starts looking natural - but it's not one that's creating any more of a skew than the leaderboard is currently.

Except that getting karma points is more difficult for people who comment/post in offpeak times (like on the other side of the world), so this system can essentially penalise them.

What is offpeak? Until a month ago, I was staying up until 6 in the morning Eastern Time, and there was never a lull in activity. Stories stay up for 24 hours very often, so even if you post while nobody's on, they still eventually come across your comment.

Well I'm about 14 hours ahead of east coast USA - I usually get to stories about 6-8 hours after they've started and my comments can most often be found down the bottom of threads and due to "group think" thats where they stay.

The other thing to do is to comment on new stories (which I do) but due to them not being as often trafficked those can also go unnoticed.

Generally, I can still get karma, but most often I get Karma by saying inane things or being early to a post. At most other times I'm shit-outta-luck.

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