Poll: Where does your karma mostly come from?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2368679

by erehweb • 15 years ago

8 22 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Peroni2• 15 years ago

There's a Redditor called Sure_Ill_Draw_That who sums up the whole karma thing quite succinctly:

http://i.imgur.com/7gNZW.png

j792• 15 years ago

Even better is when you realize SIDT is loaded with karma...

Honestly though, I find a ton of content too heavily dictated by it. On reddit, it's routine to see [deleted] posts, or nonsensical one-liners, all with the purpose of propping up (or preserving) their karma. When you've got 1000 comments with 900 of them referencing the current popular (or obscure) meme, it just gets old. I've heard there are some sub-reddits that are worth subscribing to, but I've found HN a better alternative. The content and conservation seems much more filling here.

modoc2• 15 years ago

Comments, although disappointingly I always seem to get a big karma spike for throwaway one-liners, and what I consider my more contributing/interesting comments tend to be ignored. I know I'm not the only one, but it can be frustrating.

spoiledtechie• 15 years ago

then maybe, just don't do the one-liners?

modoc2• 15 years ago

But then everything I say would be ignored:)

stanleydrew• 15 years ago

This is generally what happens as the audience grows. See cable news for instance.

imr• 15 years ago

I try to comment on only things in the newest section. Inevitably, someone has already made a similar comment on front page items. This strategy and sporadic commenting keep my karma comfortably low.

epochwolf• 15 years ago

Snarky comments routinely provide me 5 or more votes if properly timed. I haven't tried to exploit it.

jokermatt999• 15 years ago

When I feel I absolutely must post a snarky one liner, I try to add on an actual decent comment at the end of it. It gets the joke out there, but hopefully doesn't add to the noise.

3pt14159• 15 years ago

A couple of my blog posts were very well received, but I've noticed that often times (although not recently so who knows) I can't downvote someone that has a higher average comment score than I do. Which in turn gives them a higher average comment score... So besides the rep you get when you stay active in a community you also get an edge for your total karma to go up. But then again, I love the content here, so something must be working :)

jdludlow• 15 years ago

I'm not sure that I understand you correctly. Are you saying that you wish you could downvote someone simply because he has more karma than you do?

roryokane• 15 years ago

No, I think 3pt14159 is saying that though he can downvote comments and links by most people (because he doesn’t like the content), he can't downvote links or comments by those who have a higher average comment score than him (even when he dislikes the content). Since I am unable to downvote anyone, I can't comment on whether HN really does have this rule.

CWuestefeld• 15 years ago

I was thinking of this question from a different angle. I sometimes feel guilty because a large portion of my karma comes not from technical or business topics, but from more social commentary things.

xiaoma• 15 years ago

I occasionally get downmodded pretty hard for presenting a reasoned argument with citations, especially . Populist one-liners every now and then more than make up for it, though.

ry0ohki• 15 years ago

My jokes almost always get downmodded :)

RiderOfGiraffes• 15 years ago

Well, out of curiosity I've gone and checked. In the last week or so I've made 30 contributions. These give me:

    3 points for a single bare comment
   89 points for three polls 
   13 points for three submissions of a site I'm associated with
  285 points for links to other sites.

In that week I've gone from about 19750 karma to about 20230, so that's an increase of about 480. That means I've got around 100 points from comments over the past week.

Not sure that helps, but you did ask.

njharman• 15 years ago

Stupid Question:

How do you know where your karma comes from?

Peroni2• 15 years ago

Well it appears that 100% of your karma comes from comments as you haven't submitted anything.

shutton• 15 years ago

I'm new, just comments at the moment

u48998• 15 years ago

I don't give a you know what for karma!

jtheory• 15 years ago

My general answer is "I don't get karma", because I generally read Hacker News Daily (10 top-rated articles from the previous day), so though I do comment sometimes, my comments are almost never modded in any direction, as everyone else has moved on. I don't post things -- there's more material worth reading on the front page than I can get through already.

Every once in a while I get into an interesting conversation in a subthread somewhere -- where a commenter is actually checking back -- but karma comes from the masses, not from individual conversations.

It doesn't matter much, though -- I don't have enough karma to downvote, but I'm not inclined to downvote much anyway -- so it's pretty irrelevant.

Are there other bonuses that high karma earn you, besides bragging rights? On Slashdot (I still go back to visit now & again...) I seem to have the right to disable ads, but obviously that wouldn't apply here.

Poll: Where does your karma mostly come from?

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