Comment by robomartin
13 years ago
Well, pg isn't on that leaderboard. Not sure what karma means or what it's worth other to the user than giving one the ability to down-vote (which should require posting a reason for having done so, but that's a different thread).
As a tool or "quality score" that aims to control and keep a forum from derailing this kind of a scoring system has probably done OK. Not sure if it is solely responsible for these effects on sites like HN and SO, but there's not denying that the signal to noise ratio is far better than for example USENET S/N or some forums out there (vBulletin or phpBB type).
Having operated a forum before I can tell you that it can be an absolute nightmare (I was using vBulletin) on many fronts. HN seems to be able to maintain decent quality.
I believe he has a special rule to take himself off - his karma would put him at the top, and I think he used to be on it.
Yeah, he was definitely at the top before, and now he doesn't appear at all. I'm pretty sure you're right, and he coded in a rule to remove himself from the list.