I'm a karma gamer for being disappointed when rational opinions are downvoted by people that make incorrect assumptions or whose opinion get in the way of a good discussion?
I didn't really ask for your judgement, but since you've taken it upon yourself... I don't "game" karma. The few posts that I've editted here to inquire about downvotes have usually resulted in a further discussion supporting my point, or at the very least opening up further discussion about areas of contention. As it often turns out, no one had bothered checking the child comment below me that said "No you're wrong because of [obvious statement].", when in reality it turned out that actual evidence or a simple screenshot proved my stance.
If I edit my post and point this out and inquire as to why people downvoted me without supporting their position...
That's me "gaming karma"? That's a sad stance. I should just let people say that Chrome 11 lacks H.264 support when a very simple test and very minimal amounts of research prove otherwise? What would you have me do, but edit my post and plea that people take a second to research what they think they know rather than just recalling the infamous blog post that was on HN for a week discussing a phase-out of H264?
School conditions us to care about numbers assigned to our work so it's an easy trap to believe numbers on comments represent correctness or truth. When things are graded incorrectly it's only natural to want to object. I feel the number more as readings of my ability to communicate effectively in the medium with the audience. I wouldn't take low scores personally as a reflection of your skill or domain mastery.
This is the third post on HN that has had massive numbers of people saying that they use the karma for posts to judge for correctness and to add relevancy to the posts. I have stopped reading many comment threads because comment volume is simply too high and I have no filter. It's not so much that I need the ego as I get aggravated that false information is spread to anyone.
It's been suggested before, but the actual problem here is that the functions of the up/down arrows are overloaded and used differently on other sites. Some people use them for correctness, some people use them for entertainment.
Personally, I think admitting defeat on the UI is the best option here. The arrows should become essentially placebos. Separate the mechanisms for rewarding insightful comments. Perhaps something more like the "thanks" mechanism in some forums where there is a scarcity to the votes--each user is allowed only 5 thanks/day whether they use them or not. The limit could be seniority based. But if I was running the site, I would leave the arrows and just give up on re-educating the masses to use the arrows differently and move on. It's a battle that cannot be won.
I didn't really ask for your judgement, but since you've taken it upon yourself... I don't "game" karma. The few posts that I've editted here to inquire about downvotes have usually resulted in a further discussion supporting my point, or at the very least opening up further discussion about areas of contention. As it often turns out, no one had bothered checking the child comment below me that said "No you're wrong because of [obvious statement].", when in reality it turned out that actual evidence or a simple screenshot proved my stance.
If I edit my post and point this out and inquire as to why people downvoted me without supporting their position...
That's me "gaming karma"? That's a sad stance. I should just let people say that Chrome 11 lacks H.264 support when a very simple test and very minimal amounts of research prove otherwise? What would you have me do, but edit my post and plea that people take a second to research what they think they know rather than just recalling the infamous blog post that was on HN for a week discussing a phase-out of H264?