Ask HN: Do you like HN's karma system?

I think downvotes are fundamentally broken.<p>If upvotes are agree&#x2F;approval and downvotes are disagree&#x2F;disapproval then why are downvotes used for automatic moderation too? It is a problem in this site and other sites that double-use downvote to mean two different, contradictory, things.<p>The strange thing about HK in particular is that they already offer a &quot;flag&quot; button. If the flag was dedicated to moderation and the downvote dedicated to discussion, the site would be fine, but downvote will auto-hide comments, grey them, shadowban people in certain cases (like green accounts), and is weighed during flagging&#x2F;dead-ing (e.g. one flag for a grey comment Vs. multiple flags for others).<p>I think it has a chilling effect. People are hesitant to post controversial opinions no matter how well written because the consequences (via simple downvotes) can be problematic to even accounts in otherwise good standing.<p>In an ideal world a site should have an upvote&#x2F;downvote and flag button. The first two should be dedicated to discussion only, and having a controversial viewpoint should be noteable but not punishable. The latter (flag) should be for comments thats that violate the site&#x27;s guidelines or community standards (e.g. -isms, trolling, insulting, etc).<p>PS - Part of the problem right now is that for comments the flag button is hidden below the fold. Many new users may never see it.

One thing I notice sometimes is that insightful, well-written comments will sink to the bottom of a thread (presumably from posters without a high karma), leaving less interesting comments percolating at the top of the discussion (presumably from posters with high karma). That&#x27;s a shame and I don&#x27;t really know how it could be resolved. But it&#x27;s also a problem on many discussion sites (Reddit, Slashdot etc)<p>In long threads, I suspect many posters will never scroll towards the bottom of the discussion. Thus, the comments at the top of the discussion continue to accumulate upvotes while good quality comments further down never get a chance to rise up. But I guess that is more due to user behaviour rather than some algorithmic logic.

I don&#x27;t think the karma system is the important part. Once I had enough karma to post&#x2F;comment&#x2F;downvote I&#x27;ve always had more than I ever needed.<p>I do wonder though if a few users are posting a large volume of stories (even automatically) adding to the general mainstreamness of content. Is there a per user daily post limit? I think there ought to be.<p>What&#x27;s important is the rules by which we act. This is of varying consistencies. In particular downvotes shouldn&#x27;t be used for disagreement or dislike but rather identifying clearly incorrect statements or noncondusive&#x2F;worthless comments--an opposing view well presented shouldn&#x27;t be downvoted.<p>Instead of the karma system, I wish there was an update to the story points. HN now has so many users that unexceptional stories of general interest get far too many points.<p>I would be great if posts could be tagged (e.g. 36 point &#x27;physics&#x27; label) and the reader could vary weights of labels to surface or partially bury some categories.

I like upvotes of course, and flagging is fine. IMO downvotes tend to greatly increase the echo chamber effect and should either be removed or less weighted.<p>The least controversial comments usually bubble to the top, even when they&#x27;re not the most informative or constructive, due to downvotes.<p>Controversial but otherwise fine comments should not be punished by downvotes if they don&#x27;t violate site policy (flagging). IMO a site that promotes good discussion shouldn&#x27;t allow users to tank comments they don&#x27;t agree with

1. Separate submissions karma and comments karma. It&#x27;s very easy to accumulate a lot of karma by submitting an article on some hot topic. This karma should be a lot less valuable than karma earned through writing high quality comments.<p>2. Limited number of upvotes&#x2F;downvotes, or downvotes substracting your own karma (perhaps not 1:1).<p>3. Mandatory justifications for downvotes (e.g. choose from dropdown menu), with this information publicly visible for each comment.

No. I think is good to have communications without it. I would like to be able to disable it, so that when displaying messages to me, the karma is not taken into account. (Even if other people want to keep it enabled for displaying messages to them.)

I think HN has one of the better systems. The waiting period means you kind of have to learn the norma before you can apply them.<p>Sometimes people can using voting for the wrong purpose. In general, it seems to work well.

If karma is a prinicple, then only the one person know why its reciveig bad karma. And when its given from a system, admins, users or an AI, then its worthless. Only makes me think, who the f. you are, to judging (my) other peopels thoughts, words, meaning or intentions, life. Better go 5 stars system wit 1-2 Extra points. helpful or not, funny and bad behaveiour, or maybe toxic, whatever. Just read about a better definition, so wich sort of karma this system think its used? ? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Karma" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Karma</a>