Why not focus on something more productive then Karma points? Your startup, job, school, hobby, significant other?
I can guarantee you that none of the successful people on here care about Karma points. (Unless, of course, your definition of success is having tons of Karma points.)
I don't care about my karma a great deal (although I've written about a personal karma-related goal before for me to gauge how engaged I am in this community, it's a guide for me rather than a score per se).
I care about other people's startups, but not spam.
I'm glad you care so much about my success, and your comment was well received. But, I do all those things too.
The point of the story wasn't about the karma points themselves, but rather how to use them as a unit of measurement to improve the community as a whole, and the quality of an individual submission.
The reason I take the time to do it, and take away from the other important things in my life, is because I've always believed anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time. To me, it would be a waste of time to just submit blindly and not care about the quality of my stories and how they'll be received by other members.
And, for the record, no where in the story did I insinuate that more karma = success on HN, or that people cared about the pts. themselves. I don't consider my measly 1,500 pts. to be a major milestone compared to others, and it's certainly not the reason I am successful in life of on HN.
This is probably an example of the old George Carlin joke about driving: everybody that drives slower than you is a idiot, and everyone that drives faster than you is a maniac.
I'm perplexed -- a top ten karma person posting that having high karma is a sign you spend too much time on the site. Do I upvote that? Sets off a recursion alert.
As for "does karma matter" -- if it didn't matter, we wouldn't have it, sandwich or no. Study after study has shown that if you give people arbitrary rewards, they'll work to gain them. Perhaps there is a lesson in there for startups, no?
Nah, I usually just post if I have something to contribute. And like others have pointed out, there's no point worrying about Karma past a certain level anyway... it's not like the stuff really buys you anything.
Then again, maybe there's a micro-currency / digital cash based startup waiting to be had here... "Spend your HN Karma Points Now!" LOL.
What does Karma really matter for? The only way to see it is to look at someones profile. I can't imagine the leaderboard is that big of a deal except to the person on it. And even then, I can imagine that it's not that big of a deal to those people.
If someone wants to become a HN power user, the key seems to be participation. Participate and people learn your handle, people learn your views and story, and sometimes you get to connect with similar people in real life. It's kind of neat.
Why should anyone care? If you base your value of someone's opinion on their karma then you aren't really thinking for yourself. Someone with 1000's of karma points (even hundreds) just means they've been around a while, spent quite a bit of time, and had enough posts that resonated on the front page. Dig through posts that get few comments and you'll find some gems (they've just been overlooked).
And, really, what is the value of karma? Comment first and be insightful or funny - likely to get points if it hits front page. Comment late and be insightful or funny - likely to get a couple of points if it stays front page. Comment on anything not on front page - likely to be overlooked and even if you are insightful you may not get any karma, even from the OP.
Karma is kinda silly and even talking about it is sillier.
Decently large karma means there would be a lot of comments to browse through though which can give you an idea about the person. To a point be knowledgeable on startups and the tech scene is an advantage but yeah there is a point where time is better spend getting something done.
My karma is almost entirely from comments. Karma is a function of time and participation. If you comment a lot, you'll get points because chances are someone somewhere will like what you said.
I care a lot more about the names of people than internet points. I've commented on threads here only to realize days later I was interacting with the creator of a major programming language. Some people are interesting enough that I've bookmarked their comments page.
Not to mention all the fringe benefits a decent karma score can bring you ... well not really the karma score itself, but the activities you do to get said score. It's really just putting "How useful you are to the community" into a cold hard integer.
Being useful/known/etc. in the right communities has been a pretty damn important thing since forever.
As always, what matters is what you do with all of this. Just having it by itself doesn't mean a thing.
Gotta figure out why you want the karma in the first place. It's more fun if you don't worry about the karma. That way you can actually be interesting. Because to gain karma you have to align yourself with the dominant voices instead of being unique. Alignment makes for ideological echo chambers. So chasing karma will make you like the people that upvote your content and comment on your posts.
If you look at the front page right now you should be able to see what kind of content is popular and you can submit similar content to gain karma.
People enjoy debating the finer points of programming languages so that's usually a popular topic. Similarly, JavaScript frameworks and drama around that stuff is also a good bet.
Then there is science and physics. That usually does well. Evolutionary psychology and neuroscience is a good set of categories to pick from. Usually articles around intelligence in either category do well.
Then you have your typical startup stuff and economics/politics related topics. Those topics also do pretty well especially when there is a libertarian slant or anti-libertarian slant (because people enjoy debating the finer points of the political philosophy involved and how it helps or hinders the entrepreneurial stuff people are involved in).
Well I am in luck because I also don't need my wife's approval to use HN karma points. Besides, they are close to worthless! (Although I've often wondered if there would be a secondary market for people with high karma I have to admit..)
I can guarantee you that none of the successful people on here care about Karma points. (Unless, of course, your definition of success is having tons of Karma points.)
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