Karmic games

    Habr is a visited and indexed resource where I often found useful information on work. But there was no possibility of even commenting. Received an invite for the article, published (though not in a thematic blog). But, it turned out, the problems did not end there. It turned out that for passing publications on thematic blogs you need to play “karmic games” with someone for a long time (and tedious). There is a problem - you need to look for solutions.

    This article explores this problem and is forced because of their existence. It is transferred to a blog "Notes to Habr".

    In the same way as if a person is sick, he first of all thinks about how to cure the disease, and not continue to work, I can not continue thematic publications if they are not watched by those who need them, but, most importantly, from them the very possibility of these publications directly depends.


    So, someone is minus the karma.
    Here is a screenshot of karma at the time of writing. Screenshot of comments at the time of writing (carefully, long canvas, 310 KBa). spmbt.habrahabr.ru/blog - my articles. spmbt.habrahabr.ru/comments - my comments. As you can see in the screenshots (if they start to mess) and follow the links, I don’t write anything negative, they give pluses to the comments






    (although there were minuses, but they were then killed), my rating is growing. I didn’t specifically ask for a plus. I am writing socially useful information. Offline and offline, I didn’t ask anyone to influence karma, so the experiment looks clean. The only thing I had to publicly ask was to raise karma in the last comment for the very possibility of publishing this article, which I had prepared in the last few hours.

    For several days of stay on Habré, I observed a rather unexpected picture. Instead of calmly writing thematic articles and publishing them in the right section, I have an unnecessary “struggle for survival” with an incomprehensible, at first glance, for what reason voting anonymous users. In order to solve the problem, let's try to figure out the reasons together.

    I myself have sufficient experience publishing both on the topic of web development and on others (30 and 15 publications on the web in about 2 years).
    Here is a short history of publications on Habré.

    1. Google Code Playground . Feature article for the Javascript section. Most people don't need online debugging and publishing tools. I met a cold interest, karma first fell to -1 or -2, the article rating, I remember, too, but then karma straightened to +1, and the rating to +5.

    There are no other articles for thematic publication yet - they need time, work, experiments, presentation of material. Moreover, on the example of the first article, the doubt crept in that the thematic article obtained by some works would not be ruined by the inability to publish it in the right place (in the thematic blog).

    Okay. Suddenly, the topic of working with 2 mice on 1 computer appeared earlier that interested me. Quickly investigated the question and wrote about everything found.

    2. 2 or more mouse pointers on the screen . The experience of working with the existing program, its installation, the pros, cons. Must be in the Iron category of blogs. But, of course, I can’t put it there because of a little karma.
    Yes, the rating met a more lively response (up to +10), but karma (the purpose of publication) again fluctuated around 0, it was even -1. Moreover, it is characteristic that at first they tend to be minus. There was no addition of karma, moreover, he significantly risked dropping karma. Despite the fact that he did not do anything antisocial, as can be seen from the publications, and the article has a certain positive interest.

    Well, if such a cold interest in the topics on the "Iron", we try the third article, the news with useful links. Moreover, such articles are and are of interest.

    3. Opera downloads tripled. And so bad luck, karma + rating began to be lowered again, then the readers “picked up”, the topic came out of the heels and gained pluses, and karma rose to +1. But the next day, again, someone began to minus karma (not rating), and very critically. After 2 days from the date of publication, the chances of raising it are simply very small, but there is no possibility of a new publication.

    Zeroing karma 1 time is not a decision, because I then return to the same zero, and the possibility of returning to zero is one-time.

    In off-site discussions, you can find complaints that among the readers of Habré a certain group of people has formed that suppresses the consolidation of new participants through the suppression of karma. I think that very solid evidence is not necessary - it is enough to see the situation and make a small calculation: how many minuses per day are needed to suppress everyone. Everyone can change the karma or the rating of a topic (one for different people) as many times as the amount of karma had at the beginning of the day.

    On the day from March 5, 5 p.m. to March 6, 5 p.m. (the "Blogs - New" link just shows daily data) 32 articles were published. Of these, only publications from the category of gags received a high rating (more than +20) ( Habr jokes with a serious face , As I did not crack anything), the topic of interviews (interesting tasks at the interview are logical olympiad problems), one more thing, something about C ++ - more than +10, the rest is lower and minuses. Probably, some of the publications whose authors have gained karma 5 have already been transferred to other blogs.

    Assessment usually goes in the first 2 days, while on the 2nd day activity is 5-10 percent of the first.

    Thus, near-zero karma becomes a certain problem, because someone is definitely working to lower it. For example, my karma during the publication of 3 articles never increased above +1, and sometimes it was -2. Now, out of the 15 that affected karma, 7 gave “Plus”, and 8 people gave “minus”.

    As can be seen from observations of other participants, if karma already allows you to exit personal blogs, the publisher does not have further problems with karma, as it is read by a slightly different circle of people - following the "Thematic" link. The message quickly gains the threshold of publication on the main page, and there it is met by an even more friendly circle of people - they simply open the main page and know that many people already liked the messages.

    The catch, it turns out, is in a small layer of “ideologically minusers” sitting in the “Personal” section. It’s not the cons that harm the article, but the cons to karma. Because if karma was +5, there would be no more problems with minuses in the article (another section of blogs is other people). Cons are anonymous, but even if they weren’t, there’s still no way to ignore them.

    The methods of Habramechanics are, of course, progressive in comparison with traditional forums where moderators have to deal with spam. But in this case, they give an unreasonably high threshold for passing or the need to study the subtleties of mechanics and somehow deceive the laws.

    Suggestions (purely for theory, but it is worth considering at least for yourself - which rules of "mechanics" would avoid problems).

    1) constantly minus to reduce or nullify the power of minus, without preserving the stock of votes. (The same can be done for the pros).

    2) So that the minuses are not diluted with the “pluses” of your friends - enter a certain Page Rank(in the literal sense of Google), when the mutual or cyclic "pluses" are reset. (The same can be done for minuses. This is already going beyond the bounds of the topic, since those who have near-zero karma can neither plus nor minus. But just for this we need the first point - by minus the unrequited ones - to reduce the power of minus.)

    3) forum moderators usually have a line: reason for comment. In it, he must necessarily write the reason for which he made a remark (or removed it). This is necessary for internal reporting to other moderators. Minus one does not have such reporting, anonymously and seriously affects the ability of publication. There is no negative feedback necessary for the balanced existence of self-organizing systems. Therefore, if someone begins to restrict someone's rights by his minus, he must in return get himself the opportunity to lose something too. At a minimum, the weight of one’s minus or the ability to limit the rights of another for the same period for which it restricts the rights of the first. Now, as is clear from the rules, they can minus karma on a daily basis and this ability is limited by the miner's own karma.

    4) Since karma, in theory, is the total characteristic of a person, a direct (and immediate) influence on it, in theory, is unacceptable (about this, by the way, there is a situation in Eastern philosophy). Karma is the sum of individual “sins”: malicious or incompetent notes, an article of unverified content, an article with content that is not relevant to the topic of the blog or resource. It is much more logical to calculate karma from the ratings of articles, reviews and other activities (from the number of own minuses, too). And indicate the "vector of karma" warning where it will move.

    That's all for now. I hope that the problem raised will not only help me restore the spent karma under the current laws of mechanics, but also give a vector of discussion to the structure of the laws themselves.

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