If the average karma score was ever going to be perceived as important it needed to update at regular intervals rather than every few days in a background process. I don't think mine changed at all during the period it was up there.
because that can become a rather expensive query when traffic increases on the site. And while the "expectation" is that the number is in real-time, even caching the query might not help much taking into account traffic patterns.
I think that what the parent is saying is that if you can already denormalize your total karma score it can't be much harder to also store the total number of comments and when you want to get average score divide (total karma / total num comments)
I believe the average karma was more complicated than that. It's something like the average of the last 50 comments, discarding the lowest and highest. So it's a sliding window that the total karma can't reflect as simply.
I think it would have had a reinforcing effect if there was an immediately visible change. It may not have been reinforcing something so great, however.
Good riddance. Too much visual noise, too little value.
Once you're a regular, it's hard to change your karma avg that much. OTOH karma points can go up or down one point and that's an instant visual sign people agree/disagree with you. Then you go right to the threads to know where.
Random musing: What if karma was kept as a way to sort comments in each thread, and to maintain a threshold for the ability to downvote, but was concealed from the user?
i.e. I can upvote or downvote someone, but not see the current score their comment has, or their overall karma, or my own.
What happens then? Do we stop our subconscious trepidation over whether we will be downvoted and begin posting whatever pops into our heads, thereby improving HN, or do we begin posting a bunch of crap because karma no longer matters, thereby worsening HN?
having it be a trailing fifty comments actually increases the incentive to avoid writing anything that won't get upvotes. Ultimately, you have to step back and ask whether you're trying to encourage upvotes or not. Upvotes are useful for helping readers choose what to read in a thread. But just because voting is useful for guiding the behaviour of readers... Does it automatically follow that we wish to guide the behaviour of writers?
The current system of total karma encourages people to avoid comments that will get more downvotes than upvotes. Avoiding more downvotes than upvotes is not exactly the same thing as avoiding comments that won't get upvotes.
But there is a different game with the average, which is to find popular comments and flow.
it also reduced the value in commenting on old but important threads because they would not be as popular.
I think any simple average is wrong. Would you buy a stock based on it's average selling price over the last year, and compare year to year? Plus in stocks there is risk. I wish karma was more of a market, and had intrinsic value.
I can see it on everyone else's profile, but not my own.
I would guess that they found it to be useful information to have about others, but also wanted to eliminate the incentives created when people try to push up their averages. It also becomes a much more accurate indicator when people aren't gaming it. Of course, you could still game it by having a friend tell you what it is, but that's probably more trouble than most people are willing to go to.
I can still see other users' average score in their profiles. That feature was added at the same time as average score in the corner. If your hypothesis is correct, wouldn't they both go away?
If you want to throw gaming mechanics into HN, sure. But then you get a situation where the only people who are able to keep up good karma scores are those who comment really frequently (or, I suppose, irregularly but always get tons of upvotes).
If the average karma score was ever going to be perceived as important it needed to update at regular intervals rather than every few days in a background process. I don't think mine changed at all during the period it was up there.
why does it need to be updated in a background process, vs counting how many comments someone has made as well as their total?
because that can become a rather expensive query when traffic increases on the site. And while the "expectation" is that the number is in real-time, even caching the query might not help much taking into account traffic patterns.
I think that what the parent is saying is that if you can already denormalize your total karma score it can't be much harder to also store the total number of comments and when you want to get average score divide (total karma / total num comments)
I believe the average karma was more complicated than that. It's something like the average of the last 50 comments, discarding the lowest and highest. So it's a sliding window that the total karma can't reflect as simply.
That's true, mine never changed either.
I think it would have had a reinforcing effect if there was an immediately visible change. It may not have been reinforcing something so great, however.
Good riddance. Too much visual noise, too little value.
Once you're a regular, it's hard to change your karma avg that much. OTOH karma points can go up or down one point and that's an instant visual sign people agree/disagree with you. Then you go right to the threads to know where.
Once you're a regular, it's hard to change your karma avg that much.
It was only the last 50 comments, I believe. But it did update too slowly, as other people are saying.
Random musing: What if karma was kept as a way to sort comments in each thread, and to maintain a threshold for the ability to downvote, but was concealed from the user?
i.e. I can upvote or downvote someone, but not see the current score their comment has, or their overall karma, or my own.
What happens then? Do we stop our subconscious trepidation over whether we will be downvoted and begin posting whatever pops into our heads, thereby improving HN, or do we begin posting a bunch of crap because karma no longer matters, thereby worsening HN?
Average karma triggers one behavior: you can submit a lot to get karma points (no negative effect), and to keep you average up, you comment only when you think you'll be upvoted... It reinforces a HN readers cliché conformism (even if it is the conformism of being contrarian) about what one thinks HNers like.
I think it's solely based on recent comment karma, with at least the high outliers discarded.
having it be a trailing fifty comments actually increases the incentive to avoid writing anything that won't get upvotes. Ultimately, you have to step back and ask whether you're trying to encourage upvotes or not. Upvotes are useful for helping readers choose what to read in a thread. But just because voting is useful for guiding the behaviour of readers... Does it automatically follow that we wish to guide the behaviour of writers?
The current system of total karma encourages people to avoid comments that will get more downvotes than upvotes. Avoiding more downvotes than upvotes is not exactly the same thing as avoiding comments that won't get upvotes.
But there is a different game with the average, which is to find popular comments and flow.
it also reduced the value in commenting on old but important threads because they would not be as popular.
I think any simple average is wrong. Would you buy a stock based on it's average selling price over the last year, and compare year to year? Plus in stocks there is risk. I wish karma was more of a market, and had intrinsic value.
As far as I can understand, it recalculates too slowly (I haven't noticed any change in my avg since it appeared)
I can see it on everyone else's profile, but not my own.
I would guess that they found it to be useful information to have about others, but also wanted to eliminate the incentives created when people try to push up their averages. It also becomes a much more accurate indicator when people aren't gaming it. Of course, you could still game it by having a friend tell you what it is, but that's probably more trouble than most people are willing to go to.
They were talking about the upper right corner of the screen. It's still on profiles.
Presumably, news.arc just restarted; the average score in the corner was (IIRC) just a temporary hack punched into a REPL.
I can still see other users' average score in their profiles. That feature was added at the same time as average score in the corner. If your hypothesis is correct, wouldn't they both go away?
You sure? I swear I saw it there before.
I'm positive: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853821.
i didn't find it that useful, since mine didn't change at all.
but I think it might still have some merit for those with less than 200-500 points, so that they'll try to give better comments
Just noticed too. I never really saw the relevance anyway.
Rather than average karma, would perhaps recent karma be more valuable? Karma from just the past X days?
If you want to throw gaming mechanics into HN, sure. But then you get a situation where the only people who are able to keep up good karma scores are those who comment really frequently (or, I suppose, irregularly but always get tons of upvotes).