Re:Propose HN: 'Countless' experiment – hiding all karmic in...
by dang on Sunday April 28, 2019 @09:26PM
(#19775098)
> HN already boosts comments from high-karma users
That's not true. That is, if you're talking about the HN software, it does nothing like that. Ranking algorithms don't look at karma. Karma is used for things like spam filter exemptions and turning on flagging (at > 30) and downvoting (at > 500).
Re:Propose HN: 'Countless' experiment – hiding all karmic in...
by AnimalMuppet on Friday April 26, 2019 @07:31PM
(#19762670)
I do the same as ansible. But, to answer your objection, I do it because I recognize the name as someone whose opinions I have noted as being worth listening to. I don't base it on their karma numbers.
HN already boosts comments from high-karma users. Then people like yourself come in, see them and boost them further because of the poster rather than the content, so the top of every discussion is perpetually filled with the same names.
If anything, a good experiment would be to obscure the usernames and then see if "good commenters" still get the same share of votes - this time based on the actual contents rather than their glorious posting history. It this happens to be true, bring back the usernames. If not, then see how to remedy this.