[porus555]

Some honest feedback: I personally wouldn't switch to this from HN. The reason being that the main problems you're trying to solve (encouraging constructive discussions, influence farming, etc.) are simply not things that have been an issue for me on HN. If anything, I come to HN specifically because the majority of discussions are pretty constructive, and the karma points are hidden so no one really cares about (or can tell) a user's influence.

The rest of the benefits like markdown support are cool, but it's also kind of nice that the focus on HN is on the content versus formatting.

My two cents. Congrats on shipping!

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

In my experience, HN definitely has a problem with actively discouraging dissent, so some effort towards mitigating that is appreciated.

[enriquto]

> In my experience, HN definitely has a problem with actively discouraging dissent

Do you think so? The "punishment" for extremely unpopular opinions seems to be a few downvotes, which are bounded below by -4. Thus the net effect is that your message appears below others. I cannot see how this can be construed as "severely discouraging dissent", it seems rather mild to me. In any case, I am not afraid to express my strong dissent on any topic here, and if anything I find the downvotes that I get rather amusing.

[unethical_ban]

HN tends to keep non-Tech dissent to a minimum, or at least, if you have a differing opinion, you are held to a higher standard to defend it. I think that is a necessity for semi-anonymous online forums in this age - if you allow throwaway comments that seem anywhere from eccentric to absurd in order to troll the base, you lose the community. (reddit, 4chan, etc.)

I like that there are some standards here.

[airstrike]

As far as online forums go, HN seems significantly better than any other platform, considering we're also trying to self-moderate (i.e. excluding old-school forums with no voting / self-moderation features)

[meeseeks]

Appreciate the honest feedback, one of the reasons why fighting karma/influence farming may be useful is it mitigates automated posting.

Either way, again, really appreciate the feedback!

[qz_]

User karma is public, did you mean comment score?

[porus555]

I meant more that it's not visible in threads/posts.