On stackoverflow you can spend your reputation on bounties for certain questions (niche, difficult) that would otherwise get ignored.<p>Personally I spent about 1000 reputation points on those, and some of the answers were surprisingly good.
The sociologist in me suspects that scoring systems are popular because they instrumentalize interaction in a sufficiently ambiguous way to do work for many audiences. It's really useful that comment scores have vague relationships to a lot of socially important qualities (interest / sentiment / etc). I 'use' changes in my HN karma as a cue that someone is interacting with one of my comments. For me the karma system could be totally replaced by reply notifications - but others might use it differently.<p>Keeping the score system basic leaves each person to have whatever thoughts they want about their karma without the website telling them how to feel. There's a dark pattern aspect to this where web sites can foster unhealthy levels of interaction while saying that's not what they intended. There's also an emergent behavior side where scoring systems are used in ways the makers can't predict.
I like this site, but honestly the most annoying thing is that there isn't a way to opt-out of the karma system visibly. Why can't there be a check box that stops showing me my karma and greying out downvoted posts? There's no way it would take more than an hour to implement this.
Personally I couldn’t care less about all those scores. Why should they mean anything to me ? I’ve been on all the same websites as you for years, when I can contribute I do it. When I find a good answer or topic that unstuck me or help me I’m glad. Beyond that it’s noise that I choose to ignore. I chose that online reputation will not have any importance for me and I value this. I don’t want people to « know » me neither companies beyond that’s necessary.
My value is not defined by those systems and those virtual points and the idea of chasing them makes me uncomfortable. I used to do all that but like any game, it’s almost pointless and a waste of time in the end so for me I choose not to play, even if I’m « no one » or « invisible ». That’s ok
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".<p>That's not to say anything about any beneficial side-effects, though.<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law#Generalization_by_Marilyn_Strathern" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law#Generalizatio...</a>
The author is trying to fight human nature.<p>Deprecating scores via cold turkey won’t work. You have to iteratively create newer scoring systems until we finally end up with a scoring system we all agree is trivial and ridiculous (e.g HS Diploma). That’s if you really want to break systems.<p>So take Leetcode - I’d like to see a new system that cuts it down to about 500 questions across 8 classes (maybe we can live without topological sort questions). As it stands now, Leetcode is adding more and more questions and more and more topics, so the machine gets stronger. Breaking the system requires an iterative approach in the opposite direction.<p>That’s if anyone’s serious about it. But alas, what is the motivation to be serious about it?<p>People gain their status by passing LC, or having high HN karma, so what incentive do the winners, ergo gate-keepers, have in wanting to break the system? It would take sheer principle, which brings me back to my initial point. You are fighting human nature.<p>We are not enlightened, competition is a breeding ground for all things reptilian that are left over from evolution.<p><i>Gets back on high horse, rides away (flings cape back so the wind glamorously catches it).</i>
Those scores are a part of the game, but that doesn’t mean they are meaningless. They are just as meaningful as goals in soccer, or stats in RPG, or gold coins in platformer games.<p>That means: realize this is a game, understand rules, and decide if you want to play this game for the score. If not, don’t waste time of them. If yes, don’t forget to periodically re-evaluate if this game is still worth your time.
For github, there's no point in scores.<p>For HN, I'd rather it be hidden, something people can peek at if they really want to.<p>For StackOverflow - a simple rank system would be nice, because you really want to know the cred of someone piping in. You get points (rouhgly hidden) and then a public badge for rank. Very simple, like 4 or 5 ranks max, that's it. I use StackOverflow but have never bothered to investigate the point system deeply I find it confusing and not hugely relevant and I am not alone.<p>For Twitter/Instagram/TikTok - there actually is something to likes. Perhaps they could flag content as being 'big' 'super big' and 'viral' or something so that people don't worry fret about numbers but at the same time we have some instinct as to how popular something is, even if we concede that it's a very crude measure of anything.
I think scores on github, stackoverflow and HN may be a net win for all concerned.<p>Twitter and Facebook scores on the other hand... a massive net loss for all but Twitter, FB, their employees and shareholders.
While I agree in principle, I don't think these three sites in particular are good examples against scores.<p>If you completely ignore the scores, just using these three sites "correctly" will naturally increase your karma. I strongly suspect the people who are on any of these sites for maximizing the score are in a vanishingly small minority.
I find HN score partially useful - as an aggregate it tells me nothing, but the score per comment tells me when people disagree, it is a feedback loop. Sometimes I don't figure or disagree with the feedback, but it is a lot better to have it than not to have it.<p>I don't care of any other score in any other place, it tells me nothing.
I tend to see it as having an impact with new users, but almost everyone stops caring fairly quickly.<p>You see the same sort of effect with some video games where they make highly visible score or damage numbers, which is motivational early on, but a lot of people find the setting to turn it off if they play it for a while.
OP, you’ll be interested in my proposal from a couple years back: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267</a>
Scores often don't just benefit the website owners, but arguably also the other users (and thus also you). Without karma, HN could be a different place.