I empathise. We definitely mature over time :) And we all have bad days.
If we can bring the HN kind of interaction approach to more sites, we'll call ourselves successful. Dan and co provide an inspiration through this site. Someone commented below something about automating dan, and... dan, if you read this, I laughed, but kinda ;) At least, bringing a chance for or what we can of the general HN approach to other spaces.
Re specific users or karma, everyone is equal. Comments are judged on their own merits, within the context of the topic they are about (the API allows adding more context, such as other comments in the thread, which isn't shown in the demo.)
We've played around with the idea of building a kind of reputation over time, ie allowing people to build a score. If so, it's important to note that's not based on the content of what was written (eg specific political views) but based on how well, how healthily, someone expresses it. That line does blur because some opinions are inherently unhealthy, and cannot be expressed in a way that respects others, demonstrates decency / humanity, etc, but within the spectrum of 'being a decent person and just trying to interact well including while disagreeing' we specifically do not want to police topics. We want instead to encourage, and in future maybe try to build a rep, for how well someone engages with others.
And returning to your question, if we did that, every comment would still be assessed standalone. We want people to grow, kinda like you were talking about. If someone expressed themselves poorly a year ago and behaves more healthily now, now is what should be reflected.
If we can bring the HN kind of interaction approach to more sites, we'll call ourselves successful. Dan and co provide an inspiration through this site. Someone commented below something about automating dan, and... dan, if you read this, I laughed, but kinda ;) At least, bringing a chance for or what we can of the general HN approach to other spaces.
Re specific users or karma, everyone is equal. Comments are judged on their own merits, within the context of the topic they are about (the API allows adding more context, such as other comments in the thread, which isn't shown in the demo.)
We've played around with the idea of building a kind of reputation over time, ie allowing people to build a score. If so, it's important to note that's not based on the content of what was written (eg specific political views) but based on how well, how healthily, someone expresses it. That line does blur because some opinions are inherently unhealthy, and cannot be expressed in a way that respects others, demonstrates decency / humanity, etc, but within the spectrum of 'being a decent person and just trying to interact well including while disagreeing' we specifically do not want to police topics. We want instead to encourage, and in future maybe try to build a rep, for how well someone engages with others.
And returning to your question, if we did that, every comment would still be assessed standalone. We want people to grow, kinda like you were talking about. If someone expressed themselves poorly a year ago and behaves more healthily now, now is what should be reflected.