Dang is going to have 65,535 karma points soon

[subsubzero]

Congrats Dang, you have done a wonderful job so far and moderate one of the most fantastic online communities out there. I am sure most of the job feels somewhat thankless but I want to let you know I(and many many other users on this site) appreciate your hard work and dedication.

[ghayes]

Maybe a good time to link to the New Yorker article on Dan’s work at Hacker News: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

Thanks again Dan for being so patient and building one of the best online communities ever to exist.

[rurp]

Hear hear! I have been on this forum for a number of years now and am continually impressed by the level of discourse. Dang deserves the lion's share of credit for that. Thank you for all that you do Dang!

[codeddesign]

If by “finest” you mean a Reddit mob mentality for tech, then yes I completely agree with this statement.

[faefox]

“Should be there in an hour,” he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought: “Wonder if dang's reached 65,535 karma points. He was due about now.”

Chuck didn’t reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck’s face, a white oval turned toward the sky.

“Look,” whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

[dang]

I periodically cut the karma total on my account. Now I think I should set it to -1.

  (when (is (karma "dang") 65535)
    (add-karma "dang" -65536))

Edit (after skimming the thread): here I was thinking my joke was original...I forgot who I was dealing with here.

[mattrighetti]

I’ve been around for just a year or two but I can say that I’ve never seen a moderator so calm, moderate and thoughtful as dang. It’s nice to see that there’s still people like that out there.

[busterarm]

I've hurled abuse at him AND questioned his integrity and not only did he not outright ban me but also he persisted in trying to get to the root at my issue to see if an improvement could be made. More than once.

I still have issues with the community-at-large, but certainly not dang. He's someone thanklessly making the best of an impossible job to do.

[JadeNB]

> I’ve never seen a moderator so calm, moderate and thoughtful as dang.

In other words, you've never seen a moderate-r moderator.

[startupsfail]

I’ve recently started noticing another entity, with similar calm and moderating qualities. Which now makes me wonder where it had picked up its cool.

[roflyear]

Dang has his faults too. People shouldn't be idolized.

[jader201]

For those that have missed it before, here’s a good write-up on Daniel Gackle (dang):

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

[jakzurr]

I liked that article - didn't see it until late 2020, but it's from 2019. Thanks for posting the link.

[nnx]

65,535 karma points ought to be enough for anybody.

[armchairhacker]

dang deserves way more than 65535. Angry corrupt reddit moderators have more!

[m463]

I think you mean 655360.

640k :)

[HaZeust]

The original quote from Gates was 640,000 - a six-figure number - but I still got a chuckle!

[jimmySixDOF]

Dang gets 17bit Status !

[93po]

thanks for the hearty laugh!

[jtode]

This brings on the Window To Ultimate Power, whereby for the time between his first point after 65,535 and the point after that, anyone who creates a new account with 0 karma is instantly elevated to admin status.

It's an imperfect system of power.

[blackqueeriroh]

I only started reading HN about six months ago, after spending the last ~5ish years hearing about how terrible and toxic a place it was and how I should just stay away.

Well, I should’ve joined sooner, because I stay up way too late every night catching up on the world through HN. I’ve not found a more intriguing and interesting place on the internet, and I‘ve been online nearly every day of my life since 1993.

This post is an incredible testament to the community that’s been built here, and to you, dang. Here’s to karma forever and a sincere thanks for all you do.

[hoofhearted]

Thank you for everything you do Daniel! You are a legend :)

I contacted HN awhile back after reading PG’s essay on Schlep Blindness for the 18th time while noticing how janky Paul’s website had become.

I was hoping to receive an answer as to why such powerful information wasn’t being displayed better. Instead, I received a reply back from Daniel which sparked laying the groundwork for a prototype.

I’ve made a ton of progress, and I’m currently building out content for an upcoming release here on HN.

I plan to post a SHOW HN for Elegant around May 27th, a significant date for Wordpress lol.

Again, thank you for everything you do and have done Daniel!! Much appreciated!

[eddyg]

Reminder: Dang stands for “Dan G.” (seems like a lot of people don’t realize that!)

[tastysandwich]

I must admit, for a very long time I thought he was Vietnamese, as Dang is a Vietnamese name.

Interestingly, I'm finding it hard to shake that initial visual image, even though I know it's wrong. Brains are weird.

[marak830]

I see it as two ways: Dan G - his name and Dangit, what stupid thing did I say for him to tell me for about now.

[beezle]

You mean its not him trying to get around momma's no cursing rule? ;)

[user3939382]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65,535

For anyone wondering

[raldi]

I would not have any fear of superintelligent AI if it were trained solely on dang's writing.

[Beldin]

When I write this, DanG is at 63,770 karma. Granted, he is active and therefore accumulates karma faster than a mostly-lurker like me. Still: 200 points of karma would not be soon for me. I doubt my karma will grow with 200 points in 2023, actually. For me, more than 3 upvotes on one comment is a lot; about half of them don't get any vote (up nor down).

Apart from the obvious (content not worthy of vote) it could also be due to timing: arriving late on popular posts (like this one); posting at times when the majority of HN is not active here (I'm posting from Europe). But I didn't think that effect would be huge...

Anyway, point is that 200 karma is a lot in my experience. Either I'm doing this HN thing quite wrong, DanG is doing it superbly, or "soon" is quite a stretch. Perhaps all three simultaneously?

[Xeoncross]

Thank you Dang! Moderation has kept this place intelligent and curious.

[codetrotter]

It’s a neat number.

It is the maximum value of an unsigned 16-bit integer.

[splatzone]

Thank you @dang, you are the best forum moderator I’ve ever encountered and deserve all the praise you get

[gabereiser]

Do we have a Dang2K problem? Will we have to introduce "Dang" levels like dan levels of Go? Once you hit uint16_max you get a "dang". uint16_max dangs. I like this approach. Congrats Dang.

[mulmen]

He’s not the top karma user so no.

[michaelsshaw]

Nah man, just add exactly one more bit(somehow) and ezpz see ya in 2039

[nostromo]

Interesting that he’s not listed on the top users list:

https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

[skissane]

I wonder why it does't display the number for the top 10?

It isn't some kind of secret, you click on the username you see it.

[AftHurrahWinch]

@hn_throwaway_99

72. hn_throwaway_99 51136

A particularly respectable throwaway account. :)

[splatzone]

Yet another HN feature I had no idea existed!

[gus_massa]

pg is also not listed. He still has enough karma for the 4.5 spot.

[ceejayoz]

TIL this exists. Gah.

[unyttigfjelltol]

Does HN overflow to zero when dang gets there?

[overthrow]

When dang reaches maximum karma, the simulation ends.

Goodbye friends, we've had a good run. I'll see you in the next one.

[rationalist]

No, the account with the most karma is over 374,000.

https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

[semiquaver]

I knew HN ran on a relatively modest machine but a 16-but CPU would be genuinely impressive.

[Koshkin]

Only the downvoting can save him.

[phendrenad2]

They should store karma points as floats, so it won't overflow, it'll just loose precision.

[xwdv]

Dang,

Although no moderator is ever perfect, your approach to moderation has been the best I’ve seen yet, and I only wish other moderators could emulate your style.

Best.