if you have 500 downvotes and 500 upvotes, you're more useful than someone with 0 and 0, even though both of you have a total 'score' of 0.<p>I could even go further and say you're more useful than someone with 500 'score' because you're authentic and spark discussion, not censoring yourself just to say what people want to hear to get upvotes (though this is more relevant to reddit than hn). I think something similar is what twitter's algorithm does (which is why I can sometimes spend 3 hours a day on it and <i>not</i> regretting it).<p>so, the new math is:<p>-500/+0 < -0/+0 < -0/+500 <?< -500/+500 < -500/+1000<p>some subreddits' rule where you can't post if you don't have a karma above x is fundamentally flawed. I'm sure who invented this concept actually meant that you need to contribute by x before posting, not that the number on your profile needs to be above x.<p>it's Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure<p>on the other hand, I think this might be a threads (woke) vs twitter (based) thing, which is probably impossible to solve rn because people themselves are divided. basically it's about being nice (karma is a single number) vs being useful (karma is an irreducible vector like [-33, 50])<p>in my experience, systems that go from a scalar to a vectorial representation tend to be more efficient/useful
<i>I could even go further and say you're more useful than someone with 500 'score' because you're authentic and spark discussion, not censoring yourself just to say what people want to hear to get upvotes</i><p>Counterpoint: You post carefully and thoughtfully trying to ensure you post valuable information and not just the first thing that comes to mind. And the community responds accordingly.<p>Interested in reading from you as to what was the trigger for this post.