Comment by cullenking

14 years ago

I have been giving alot of thought towards this problem lately, and am beginning to lean towards the rather undemocratic side of things. Meaning, not all comments or story submissions on a site like HN are equal - some users consistently hit the ball out of the park and some consistently say things that should be be said. Karma systems based on upvotes obviously detect this, however upvotes only apply to a specific comment/article, and don't follow an actual user. How do you make that power user totally invested in your site? Just rely on points? Make them a moderator? Flag "elite" member posts with a different background color?

Perfect timing for this article, as I am about to launch a niche news aggregator as side project. Trying to decide how best to handle the reputation system...

2 comments

cullenking

ursablanco 14 years ago

You wouldn't be the first to twig to the idea that democracy is not the way to achieve the best of something - but that's not its intent - its intent is to provide some degree of fairness. And even then, it's willing to trade fairness for everyone for merely a guarantee of fairness for a majority.

If you locate a reputation system that produces better quality or decently filters better quality, please brag about it, I'm sure you'd have a success on your hands.

Mz 14 years ago

Here are two rules that I took from a quality forum I once belonged to which have their merits:

  1) Speak from firsthand personal experience.
  2) Or cite your sources.
  (3) or both)

My view is that you really should not be aiming to put certain individuals on a pedestal. You should be aiming to foster an environment with a high level of quality of conversation. If you put too much emphasis on specific members, that only makes it more likely that it will kill your site when they leave. Having the right rules, practices and culture in place is harder to do but more resilient. I don't care how idealistic, humble and/or brilliant any individual is, when some place starts catering overly much to that person's ego, it gets to the point where no one can disagree with them without all hell breaking loose. This is not a good way to foster good conversation and at some point it will start driving away good people.

Even on Hacker News, the most highly voted comments tend to come over and over from the same people. I have no reason whatsoever to believe that those individuals are simply always brilliant every time they open their mouth. I have every reason to believe that the karma system encourages members to jump on the bandwagon and upvote certain people simply for being those people. Having been the person on the pedestal, I think there is a serious downside to being on that pedestal and I actively seek to avoid being placed there. The only thing I have found that works well and consistently as an antidote to being consistently attacked is to deflect public praise. The one and only thing I know for sure is that the more some people heaped public praise upon me, the more other people felt the need to kick the crap out of me, prove I did not know everything, and try desperately to bring me down a notch. Conversely, not publicly thanking people for saying nice things about me, turning a deaf ear to it, and actively asserting that I don't have all the answers has dramatically reduced the degree to which I end up on the receiving end of ugly assaults.

(I cringe when I see other people having public praise heaped upon them. The fall is highly likely to come sooner or later and most people don't really know how to deal effectively when their adoring fans suddenly turn into a rabid lynch mob, a la how Britney Spears seemed to just get crazier and crazier the more desperately she tried to get back her status as America's Darling.)