[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is the point of "karma" points on HN?
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       Ask HN: What is the point of "karma" points on HN?
        
       I see them everywhere, on Reddit, HN, and other forums. In
       specialized forums, it makes sense to show user
       points/stars/whatever because other users can then form a better
       opinion about the recommended products/services/etc.  But I'm
       having a hard time justifying karmas on HN. I would rather see the
       number of upvotes/downvotes to find out whether a comment is
       generally accurate and correct or not (or whether the comment
       conforms to most people's idealogy).
        
       Author : behnamoh
       Score  : 5 points
       Date   : 2023-03-15 21:15 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
       | fardo wrote:
       | There are several uses. They are (Edit: not, see below) used for
       | post ordering, but do provide a reputation signal within the
       | community for other users and moderators, provide a mild
       | directional incentive towards producing quality, provide a way to
       | gate certain features to longer, more experienced users such as
       | downvoting or post flagging/vouching, and improve retention by
       | adding the light gamification of "going for high scores".
        
         | Someone wrote:
         | > They are used for post ordering
         | 
         | Are they? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html:
         | 
         |  _Do posts by users with more karma rank higher?
         | 
         | No._
        
         | ClapperHeid wrote:
         | >provide a reputation signal within the community for other
         | users...
         | 
         | But you can't see other users' karma... unless you go digging
         | into their profiles. So it doesn't really provde any readily
         | visible indication of reputation.
        
       | compiler-guy wrote:
       | HN users with Karma over a certain amount can downvote comments.
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | I agree with you except my stipulation is that you must reply to
       | a comment before you can downvote it.
       | 
       | But also, keep in mind that limiting downvotes to max -4 is how
       | HN is able to maintain quality in many ways.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | anonymousiam wrote:
       | https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
        
       | h2odragon wrote:
       | After you get 100k imaginary internet points or so (it varies)
       | you get inducted into the Global Seekrit Society that Runs
       | Everything. The parties are _amazing_.
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-15 23:03 UTC)