Ask YC: How do the Karma points work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: How do the Karma points work?

1 pointsenthil_rajasek3 comments

How are some comment points negative?

What is the difference between new and newest?

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When you get more karma you can vote comments down. That's how they go negative.

New (in the title bar) and newest (in the URL) are the same.

Does anyone know what algorithm the karma point system follows?

If you're asking about front page ranking. it's been released with arc2, and looks like this:

  (= gravity* 1.4 timebase* 120 front-threshold* 1)

  (def frontpage-rank (s (o gravity gravity*))
    (/ (- (realscore s) 1)
       (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity)))

  (def realscore (i) (- i!score i!sockvotes))

  (def item-age (i) (hours-since i!time))

Which is summarized, also in the code, as "[net] Votes divided by the age in hours to the gravityth power."

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