Ask HN: What can you with a lot of karma on HN

5 points·SimplyUseless··5 comments

Since there is a interesting thread on HN about how people get karma.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552122

It would interesting to see what is this karma used for?

I have 80628 karma. That and £4 will get you a coffee in London.

Edit

Less cynically, it reassures you that you are "in sync" with the HN culture. It is correlated with the idea that what you post and/or what you say is found interesting and/or useful to those who hang out here. There are things I post that I think are important, but which get little or no attention. There are other things I post that get lots of upvotes but which I think are less important. That's the way it goes - we have smart-phones to look at pictures of cats, and argue with strangers.

However, as the article you reference says, mostly it says that you've been here a long time, and posted many times. In short, it's cumulative.

And now I have 80629.

There's a minimal karma level required to get the flag button.

There's a somewhat higher (500? 750?) karma level to get the downvote button.

There's a karma level to get the ability to change the top bar colour.

I'm not sure if karma is used to place comments on a page - someone with high average karma may find their comments appearing higher on a page (and then rising or falling based on votes on that comment).

Other than that, nothing.

We essentially have

1. Upvotes & Downvotes on articles and comments (This is what HN wants - insights by crowdsourcing)

2. Reputation (this is the fruit the users want)

3. Gaming (HN gaming the users by rewarding/denying the fruit) - Reward (unlocking site features)

I was hoping it'd allow me to come back as a giraffe.

Have I come to the wrong site for that?

Nothing

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