Kisil

I agree that we are too slow to point the blame at ourselves. It's healthy to be self-critical.

That said, there are programmers who are legitimately lacking both in basic skills and desire to attain those skills. It's orthogonal to the problem you're talking about, but these people do exist, and they're not as uncommon as one might hope. I can teach the difference between pointers and references; I can't teach you to care.

And I've said this before, but I'd love to see votes for [dis]agreement, even if votes for contribution/karma may be better hidden.

I would vastly prefer not to die at all, and science is moving us in that direction.

That said, I don't think death is necessary as a motivator to "make today count." Today is a motivator to make today count. The living is the thing. Every attempt I've heard to bring extrinsic meaning to life falls flat on inspection. You have to chase what moves you, and that doesn't change as a function of expected lifespan. At least, not much.

Side-note: Many users vote, or withhold votes, based on some sense of what the comment "should have scored." Awarding karma only for quality votes allows the reader to register assent/dissent without running up the score. There's a frequent problem where the first comment builds momentum just by being first; this change would at least partially address that problem.

How about separating "quality" and "agreement" into separate scores?

While it complicates the interface, it would be much more useful for both authors and readers. It naturally leads to measuring controversy - the most interesting comments would be those with high quality and mixed agreement. Having a sense of HN's opinion would direct posts towards areas of maximum contribution. It would also re-direct some of the pile-on upvoting from low quality but obvious/funny/mean/etc. comments, so they could drop down the page despite having some appeal.

Some example cases: a) I may agree with the snarky comment that calls out someone's obvious mistake, but I can simultaneously downvote for snark. b) I may disagree with someone's analysis of the iOS vs Android market battle, but I can now register my disagreement while acknowledging that the poster made a good point. c) I made a comment that came off as means-pirited, though that wasn't my intent. The quality downvotes are an unambiguous message, which I can't just write off with "I guess HN disagrees."

Services make sense when you add value on an ongoing basis. Since it's not only possible but pretty simple to build this as an app, it makes much more sense to sell it as an app.

More importantly, anything that depends on having active service is much less reliable, and an alarm clock should be reliable above almost all other factors.

I see this cash discounting frequently, and it makes sense, as it's easier (faster, more certain) for the doctor to take the cash than to deal with billing the insurance company.

And did you find out how many of the up and neutral clients also came from the yellow pages? That bit of information is useful only if it draws a distinction, e.g. what if the agency only had one working form of advertising?

(Of course this almost goes without saying, and I don't doubt you thought of it, but this is such a common logic error that I thought it shouldn't be left hanging in a public forum.)

Perhaps in an ideal world some people should self-select out of voting; I haven't thought enough about that ideal world to say. But HN in general, and this page in particular, is the wrong forum to push for such self-selection. I would be willing to bet that the average HN reader is better informed, and better qualified to understand that information, than the general population.

HN readers, please vote today.