zlacker

In order to give an incentive for fruitful conversations, it would be nice if the numbers of answers to a post, and their scores, were added to the karma of its author. Something along these lines could work:

    (sum (map (fn (score) 
                 (if (< score 1) ; don't penalize users if answers are domnmedded
                     0
                     (+ 1 (floor (log (score))))))
              children-scores))

This would only be granted to comments with a positive karma.

It could of course be computed offline after the thread has settled.

It would for reward people who ask questions that elicit either lots of answers or an highly upvoted one.

By using a logarithm, people would not be able to cheat by upvoting every answer to their posts (someting I automatically do out of courtesy, BTW, but many people don't).

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Another thing: When the comments scores were visibles, people would rarely get more than two or three downmods unless they were obnoxious. There was a rule either tacit or explicit, I don't remember, not to downmod people lower than that, and if they were, it was corrected by other members of the community.

I have the impression that the score go much lower now, and are sometimes fatal to new users, who end up hell-banned and don't get a second chance. It may be nice to display the scores when they are below one.