For the person: it is a simplest way to see if you fit or not in this community.
For the community: quickly judge if the post or comment is spam or not.
I totally disagree. The best way to judge if a post is "spam" and if someone is a "spammer" is based on the content. I downvoted your post because it both is a poor form of reasoning and it is needlessly alienating to others.
I don't downvote often, and I don't have anything against you, but it is important that everyone, especially the lurkers, feel welcome here. My downvote is to show you don't speak for all of the community, since this response and my karma means your comment is self refuting.
Content based filtering is extremely expensive, just look at email. Reputation based filtering is quick and easy both for people and computers, but it has its own drawbacks, I agree.
How is it possible to know whether you fit into a community by looking at your Karma, especially if you are a newbie. If you aren't a newbie then you are already participating or observing the community anyway.
To illustrate another subtle point. Lets, take your karma and compare it with mine and compare mine with someone like nickb. Now what conclusions can I draw about whether I fit into this community.
Easy, you just have to take time since you've joined and # of posts and comments into account:
I can see that you joined a year ago but didn't gain much karma. That means that you're an old timer, but a lurker, who doesn't post or comment often.
nickb and other top 10 karma users define this community and they lead by example.
I joined just recently, because I somebody posted a story about my startup and I had to comment. But since that I've been posting stuff that people care about.
All this is visible by looking at the profile of the user, without knowing exact posting history. This is huge time saver for everybody involved.
So you suggest that all people who do not post often enough do not fit into the community. And that posting often is the metric to drive? And because, in our current example, you have a higher karma per day, you belong to this community as opposed to me? But if nickb was to read this comment then you and I might both be trivial?
Finally, as a supposed 'lurker', it might serve me better not to login and just read submissions instead of participating by voting. Clearly, voting and commenting are also measures of 'being in a community'. So as lurkers stop logging in they cannot vote and then voting drops making the submission rankings either volatile or static.
I agree, lack of karma shouldn't say anything negative about your inclusion in the community here. The info is free, so it's not like only major contributors belong.
In fact, if it were the case that only the high karma belong, there'd be nothing to contribute to and no high karma. People like kashif and the thousands of other lurkers are why this community exists in the first place, much more so than nickb or any of the other leaders.
Speaking for myself, I have a high karma because I'm a slacker. I consider it an inverse metric of my worth.
Simple: karma as a measure of your contributions to the community is not perfect, but it is much better than nothing at all. Do you know a better system?
The principal effect of karma here is not how it helps you judge your fit, but how it actively shapes the community/content. This effect was clearly visible on reddit as it was realized that the more sensational content was vastly more promoted in the reddit karma system.
So my question:
What is the value of high quality content ordering? Are the present ordering strategies on HN/reddit/[insert karma-based discovery site] good enough? Would the theoretically perfect ordering offer much more value than current systems?
Take a look at my startup, we're trying to push a different system for ranking stuff. I personally think there's a lot more value in it. But sometimes people prefer simple algorithms that are easier to understand, there's value in it too.
I like how you automatically assign a guest ID so visitors can try out the customization features right away, and think, "Hell, I'm halfway to joining -- might as well go the rest of the way now." The same thing could have been done invisibly with a cookie, but then the psychological hook wouldn't be there.
We're only talking about ditching karma, the running total for each user. We would still be able to upvote/downvote stories and comments, but those votes would only effect the individual story or comment, not the user who posted it.
Comments
Yes, I care, as a form of trust metric:
For the person: it is a simplest way to see if you fit or not in this community. For the community: quickly judge if the post or comment is spam or not.
I totally disagree. The best way to judge if a post is "spam" and if someone is a "spammer" is based on the content. I downvoted your post because it both is a poor form of reasoning and it is needlessly alienating to others.
I don't downvote often, and I don't have anything against you, but it is important that everyone, especially the lurkers, feel welcome here. My downvote is to show you don't speak for all of the community, since this response and my karma means your comment is self refuting.
keyword is "quickly".
Content based filtering is extremely expensive, just look at email. Reputation based filtering is quick and easy both for people and computers, but it has its own drawbacks, I agree.
By community I thought you meant the normal readers, not the moderators. For normal readers, it is easier to read a post.
How is it possible to know whether you fit into a community by looking at your Karma, especially if you are a newbie. If you aren't a newbie then you are already participating or observing the community anyway.
To illustrate another subtle point. Lets, take your karma and compare it with mine and compare mine with someone like nickb. Now what conclusions can I draw about whether I fit into this community.
Easy, you just have to take time since you've joined and # of posts and comments into account:
I can see that you joined a year ago but didn't gain much karma. That means that you're an old timer, but a lurker, who doesn't post or comment often.
nickb and other top 10 karma users define this community and they lead by example.
I joined just recently, because I somebody posted a story about my startup and I had to comment. But since that I've been posting stuff that people care about.
All this is visible by looking at the profile of the user, without knowing exact posting history. This is huge time saver for everybody involved.
So you suggest that all people who do not post often enough do not fit into the community. And that posting often is the metric to drive? And because, in our current example, you have a higher karma per day, you belong to this community as opposed to me? But if nickb was to read this comment then you and I might both be trivial?
Finally, as a supposed 'lurker', it might serve me better not to login and just read submissions instead of participating by voting. Clearly, voting and commenting are also measures of 'being in a community'. So as lurkers stop logging in they cannot vote and then voting drops making the submission rankings either volatile or static.
I do not understand your line of reasoning.
I agree, lack of karma shouldn't say anything negative about your inclusion in the community here. The info is free, so it's not like only major contributors belong.
In fact, if it were the case that only the high karma belong, there'd be nothing to contribute to and no high karma. People like kashif and the thousands of other lurkers are why this community exists in the first place, much more so than nickb or any of the other leaders.
Speaking for myself, I have a high karma because I'm a slacker. I consider it an inverse metric of my worth.
Simple: karma as a measure of your contributions to the community is not perfect, but it is much better than nothing at all. Do you know a better system?
That is not a response to the original chain of thought. Nonetheless, karma might be an unnecessary tool for the necessary effect.
Do you know a better system?
Yes, I am suggesting an alternate mechanism which uses only voting on submissions and comments while discarding individual karma.
The principal effect of karma here is not how it helps you judge your fit, but how it actively shapes the community/content. This effect was clearly visible on reddit as it was realized that the more sensational content was vastly more promoted in the reddit karma system.
So my question:
What is the value of high quality content ordering? Are the present ordering strategies on HN/reddit/[insert karma-based discovery site] good enough? Would the theoretically perfect ordering offer much more value than current systems?
Take a look at my startup, we're trying to push a different system for ranking stuff. I personally think there's a lot more value in it. But sometimes people prefer simple algorithms that are easier to understand, there's value in it too.
I like how you automatically assign a guest ID so visitors can try out the customization features right away, and think, "Hell, I'm halfway to joining -- might as well go the rest of the way now." The same thing could have been done invisibly with a cookie, but then the psychological hook wouldn't be there.
That's a very clever detail.
Hmmm..A better ordering system might improve things but I am not aware of any simple alternatives.
We're only talking about ditching karma, the running total for each user. We would still be able to upvote/downvote stories and comments, but those votes would only effect the individual story or comment, not the user who posted it.