I think the concept of being able to see your "points" at all is non-constructive for communication. Why should it matter to you if other people up or down vote your comments and submissions? So through a knee-jerk feedback mechanism you can best mold your future communication to fit with what will get you the most points?
If the purpose of commenting and submitting is not to amass the most "points" possible then they shouldn't be displayed.
On that topic, I wonder how difficult it would be to make a bot which used machine learning to scan through comments to pick up phrases or words which were highly voted, then have it put together comments based on those.
I can't find it right now, but there was a link a few months back that did some kind of text analysis for the most-"popular" HN users or so. Anybody else a clue what I'm thinking about?
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I think the concept of being able to see your "points" at all is non-constructive for communication. Why should it matter to you if other people up or down vote your comments and submissions? So through a knee-jerk feedback mechanism you can best mold your future communication to fit with what will get you the most points?
If the purpose of commenting and submitting is not to amass the most "points" possible then they shouldn't be displayed.
On that topic, I wonder how difficult it would be to make a bot which used machine learning to scan through comments to pick up phrases or words which were highly voted, then have it put together comments based on those.
I'm sure you could be very successful.
I can't find it right now, but there was a link a few months back that did some kind of text analysis for the most-"popular" HN users or so. Anybody else a clue what I'm thinking about?
Yes, the one that also rated their posts by emotion and other criteria? I can't find it either but you are not crazy, it did exist.
If I'm not getting any votes or other feedback, I take this as evidence that I'm shouting into the void and wasting my time.
"Points" of any kind are detrimental to internet communities.
This codinghorror post explains it nicely: http://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental-...