> A group of people who spend waaayyyyy too much of their life on those platforms and by now identify with it way too much get power-hungry.
Though, what is "waaayyyyy too much"? Someone who consistently responds to a question on SO every day or checks 10 pages on WP for language issues every day?
And are long timers really power-hungry or just fed up with discussing the same things over and over again? (Not saying the latter is better.)
I'm sure what you say is true for some, but I think the vast majority is actually civilized and most of the time quietly doing their thing for a project.
What I am missing with most "power awarding" algorithms is a time factor: Respect has to be earned again and again and some "powerful" person who has been inactive for a year can easily come across as condescending to someone who has been very active and engaged in a project for just the last 9 months and thus does not have more than baseline respect for the old timer because s/he never saw him/her in action. An example of a, in my opinion, better solution would be to lose 10% of your karma for every month of inactivity on HN (just an example, I don't think HN suffers from the problems described) or removal of the "auto patrol" flag for users who have been inactive on WP for some time.
Though, what is "waaayyyyy too much"? Someone who consistently responds to a question on SO every day or checks 10 pages on WP for language issues every day?
And are long timers really power-hungry or just fed up with discussing the same things over and over again? (Not saying the latter is better.)
I'm sure what you say is true for some, but I think the vast majority is actually civilized and most of the time quietly doing their thing for a project.
What I am missing with most "power awarding" algorithms is a time factor: Respect has to be earned again and again and some "powerful" person who has been inactive for a year can easily come across as condescending to someone who has been very active and engaged in a project for just the last 9 months and thus does not have more than baseline respect for the old timer because s/he never saw him/her in action. An example of a, in my opinion, better solution would be to lose 10% of your karma for every month of inactivity on HN (just an example, I don't think HN suffers from the problems described) or removal of the "auto patrol" flag for users who have been inactive on WP for some time.