Ask HN: Is 311 Karma Points good?

Never liked the idea of karma myself - most people _do_ care about it (particularly in HN or reddit where low karma posts are hidden) so they will either not speak their mind or parrot some popular opinion to reap rewards. Combine that with a threading model that puts top posts at the top and you pretty much only see popular/echo chamber posts.

HN is a bit better because sometimes you get the rare, unpopular opinion that is well-researched and explained so it makes it to the top.

IMO the best format for discourse is a traditional imageboard/forum where all posts "weigh" the same. It has negatives (nested quotes, thread derailment that you can't hide) but I prefer it to the HN/reddit model.

The only difference for me is that at some point, I got the ability to downvote comments. I'd like to think that gives me a tool to shape discourse, but honestly, submitting topics and making comments is a more effective way to do that in my opinion.

Karma is meaningless.

I bet a lot of people are self-censoring to avoid being downvoted... Unfortunately this is probably leaving out a lot of potentially great "against the grain" comments and ideas... Not to mention the herd mentality, once someone is downvoted is more likely to get downvoted again... Also I had a case of a bully who would go every day and downvote all my postings on purpose...

Why are you even thinking about it? Do you want to have the ability to downvote? In that case you should probably have a higher karma. Instead try to participate in useful conversations so that you may learn something from it. Karma just for the sake of it is really meaningless.

I wish I could disable participation, or at least disable all indications of its existence (number around your name, downvote indication, etc.)

Karma is part of the echo-chamber strategy, a way to enforce public opinion over wider perspectives that might rock the boat. Funny thing is that it actually kind-of works the other way, since any post/comment that gets a lot of down-votes is probably on to something fundamental. You are not a number, don't let them trick you into behaving like one.