Ask YC: Redo the Leaderboard

I think people put too much importance on karma. Personally, I don't really care. I check my RSS feeds 3 times a day (when I have breaks) and I post stuff I find interesting. It literally takes a second to contribute to n.yc (hint: look into bookmarklet link) so why not help a site that I like? So yes, I've accumulated a lot of points. I haven't checked the score in weeks but I assume I'm still in the lead but if pg reset my points, I wouldn't mind at all.

I think people think that pg will look at your YC application differently if you have a high karma on the site. I have no idea if that's true (never applied) but some people have said that they had high karma and didn't get accepted. So YMMV.

I'd worry more about my app, idea, biz plan than to worry about karma when applying. I doubt pg will accept you just because you contribute to n.yc.

I agree, not sure how easy it would be and if it would upset the people at the top.

what's the point of this voting stuff ?

Kierkegaard did his studies more than 150 years ago, maybe it's time to use his findings in our life.

I'm planning multiple lists ranked by different criteria. For now it will be off the Lists link at the bottom of the page.

The problem is not as urgent as you might think, though. In a site that's growing, you get a de facto karma decay, because a top submission gets more points than it would have 6 months ago.

Karma Decay Function

Everyday everyone's karma gets multiplied by n where 0<n<1. (0.9 seems good)

Perhaps soon I will release my karmaBot (tm), it subscribes to the rss feeds of programming.reddit.com, techcrunch, and xkcd, and auto reposts all stories to news.yc

We will soon takeover the world! ! !! ! muahahahahaha

"The point system should encourage participation. If we reset the point system every quarter (3 months) or every YC funding cycle, and then give permanent awards to the leaders, then all of us, leaders or laggards, have more reason to participate positively."

Just to add a different voice to the matter, I don't subscribe by this philosophy. I don't care about my karma points and its existence doesn't affect my motivation to participate. I upvote in appreciation, and post to share. It's the crowd, and the crowd's ideas, that matter. I don't use the leaderboard at all, and in that sense, it is "utterly meaningless" to me whether it disappears or not.

I support this idea. I'll make my comeback yet.

I think the problem is the karma score conflates submitting articles and posting comments. I think the two should be separate.

I'd also like to see a weighted score something like (karma from posts) / (1+log10(total number of words in posts)).