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Comment by nickpsecurity | Hacker News Reader

There also seems to be a mechanism where high-karma users boost a story more than one point. It would support Julian's point even more. I was at one point just boosting stuff in New that I thought people would be interested in across various topics based on prior front page results.

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There also seems to be a mechanism where high-karma users boost a story more than one point

I've never heard of such a thing. What makes you think high karma influences the value of a vote? Have the mods talked about it?

Ive noticed a link in new that stays at 1pt a while go up a ton after I upvote it. This means either it stayed dead followed by a bunch of simultaneous upvotes or the site gives extra weight to high karma users. I dont upvote enough stories to be sure which it is. I just see points go up tens of votes second I upvote most submissions.

Most things in new don't get any votes at all so you're going to see lots of volatility there (nor does the ranking there matter much). The ranking computation is also not necessarily instant although maybe it is, I don't know. But I don't think this is any evidence of high karma users having some kind of supervote. If you could move items on the front page with a single vote (or with your mind), that would be another thing altogether.

Your last sentence happened a few times. It's what originally got me wondering. Let's also remember they have routines looking for people gaming the system. That could affect both timing and what effect a karma boost would have in visible results after a vote refreshes.

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