Sunday, November 26, 2023

How do the karma points on Hacker News work?

 

Recently, I paid attention to my karma points on HN. I submitted an article that got around 100 upvotes. But then I realized that my karma points rose only about 40 points...

This made me pose this question to Kagi's FastGPT: Can you explain to me how the karma points on Hacker News work?

The answers that Kagi's FastGPT gives are generally very high quality because they come with source references included:

Karma points on Hacker News are a measure of how popular a user's submissions and comments are based on upvotes from other users. Each upvote a user receives adds to their total karma points.

It is currently unknown exactly how many karma points equal 1 upvote, with some context mentioning it may not be a 1:1 ratio [1]. Having more karma points allows users to downvote other submissions and comments once they reach a certain threshold, which is not explicitly stated. [2]

Karma points do not directly correspond to a user's ability to submit links or comments, which is determined by account age and whether the account has been flagged before. But generally, users with high karma points have established themselves as regularly contributing positively to the site. [3]


  1. Open secrets about Hacker News | Hacker News
  2. Hacker News Parody Thread | Hacker News
  3. The Evolution Of Hacker News | TechCrunch