...he said, and then refreshed HN.

Propose HN: 'Countless' experiment – hiding all karmic integers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267

Perhaps someday we'll get a week without them.

I hope not. I actually miss seeing the karma count on individual comments, it made skimming a lot easier.

No chance. HN’s goal is to have every effective programmer in the world checking it at least once a week. Anything that gets in the way of that is de facto bad.

(I’d love to be surprised, though.)

You can get the same effect with a Tampermonkey script I wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200

It even scrambles the karma count in your profile, so there’s no opportunity for karma to affect you.

Everything in moderation, right? Including games we play for imaginary Karma. I must say, though, I generally like the way HN does it. It isn't nearly as in your face and I don't find that motivates my behavior very much.

If I get too many positive karma posts in a row I start worrying I'm censoring myself too much. Positive karma usually means I'm just saying the most mainstream thing and that's boring.

The proposal is to see if site behavior changes as a whole when integers are removed. Individual opt-in doesn't permit such a test, nor does permitting opt-out.

It’s so fascinating to see how easily a human brain can be hijacked by status. I wonder if there’s a way to harness that power for improving individual performance...

There is and it's very effective ... A company I worked in briefly used to have this badge system to honor people that go the extra mile at work, and people were very keen on getting those even though it didn't have any financial compensation behind it

Um that is kindof missing the point. A badge is nothing more than a number expressed in symbols, so you demonstrated just another variation of how to hijack the brain, even if you just read an article showing it to you with numbers...

If "improving individual performance" means to you that you perform better at your job, you are already lost.

I'm sorry but if performing better at your job doesn't improve your individual performance, you need another job!

Napoleon Bonaparte: “Give me enough medals and I'll win you any war”

Also true if you exclude the bit about medals.

And this is why everyone in Russia speaks french to this day!

Elementary shchool teachers use it all the time. Just some stickers and a leaderboard in the classroom and it works wonders for behavior and achievement.

I have noticed that it doesn't have much effect after a while. The students are like, meh, someone gets an award every week, and eventually it rolls around to my turn unless I really screw up.

The effect on parents seems bigger, which is a good thing, I suppose, since parents then give their kids to some positive feedback.

For monthly things, it does have some effect.

I participated in some of them before due to the visibility. People from your class may know you but others, not so much. In the absence of time and other signals, management would often pick someone who is highlighted to represent something.

A lot of big people at those events generally don't mind giving contact information to young kids asking for help as much.

From there, you can effectively build a nice list of people that you can leverage in future for your resume or career.

It's like free consultation you otherwise would need to buy later.

Interesting idea. I have a very confident and talkative kid who is not shy about approaching adults. I bet he could collect lots of contact information.

Thats only if the points are simply participation awards. They only have value if winning them is not for granted.

Indeed, such mechanisms exist in the form of raises, promotions, bonuses, etc.

> Be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.

Jeff Atwood on Coding Horror. (He can't be the first person to have said this, though.)

Unless it's their weight.

You’d be surprised