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Comment by camtarn | Hacker News Reader

Has anybody analysed how karma works for submissions that make the front page? It feels like there's either a rate limit on how much karma you can earn from a submission, or the amount of karma earned per upvote is inversely proportional to the number of upvotes, or something.

I've noticed that I earned 1 karma for 1 upvote for the first few upvotes, and also 1 karma for 1 upvote when the article's been off the front page for days but people are still reading and occasionally upvoting it. But in between it's definitely not a 1:1 - maybe more like 10:1 or even less.

It feels like there are probably some really interesting rules involved :)

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To my knowledge, upvotes which are suspected to be inauthentic do not count toward the overall karma gained (I have no citations, which is why I did not include it in the list)

Do you ever notice that you'll lose two points on a comment at the same time, then later they'll come back? I see that relatively often (once every couple weeks), and on completely uncontroversial comments, which is how I started noticing it. I wondered if it was some vote manipulation detection, where they've linked two accounts voting similarly and nullified their upvotes, but later clear them so they votes are reapplied. In any case, it's always two together (which is why I don't think it's an accidental downvote), and seems to be close to the same time if not the exact same time.

Not all upvotes count toward karma, for several reasons, mostly a composition of various anti-abuse measures.

I'd be interested to see which kind of abuse. As stated in my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442242 I am not knowingly participating in abusing behavior. So, if its not voting rings initiated by me, would it be voting rings initiated by others? Or posting topics which are mainstream on HN?

I've also noticed this and would like to know more. I feel like this didn't happen on HN 5 years ago, but it does now.

I always wondered if maybe it keeps track of who has voted on your submissions in the past, and only gives you karma if the voter hasn't voted on you before.

Not sure whether it's influenced by your existing karma. My perception (with sample size of one) is that when my karma was lower I accrued at closer to 1:1, whereas now definitely not accruing at 1:1.

Same with me. However, rules may have changed over time and I am only slowly accruing karma.

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