Hacker News Reader

Comment by xwdv | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, my karma here on HN used to be at least double of what it is now. But at some point there was a change in people’s moods, and now it has been slowly eroding over time. I suspect someday it will be zero, or worse.

My writing style and sharp criticisms of damn near everything hasn’t changed much, except perhaps knowing I’m going to be downvoted makes my wording more bitter. I suspect it is the HN crowd which has changed, and has an axe to grind. I will not be allowed to hold certain opinions anymore without being punished.

View on HN

I'm in the very same boat.

The solution to low karma — if, indeed, you care about such things, is to make productive comments. Most of us have heard all of the simple one-liner thoughts before, we want something that might be insightful and novel. And politics-adjacent threads like these are not the place to earn karma, because lots of people will always disagree. But it’s an excellent place to lose karma.

A lot of us go to places like HN, Ars, TechCrunch because they’re something of a refuge from intractable boring political dilemmas. Solving technical problems, old war stories, discussing software and language features, sharing historical curiosities: those sorts of things earn karma.

That’s not to say politics is unwelcome here, but these threads make it so much easier to accidentally offend another. I’m highly involved in a US political party, but I rarely bring it up here because it’s unproductive. That said, go vote!

> The solution to low karma — if, indeed, you care about such things, is to make productive comments.

Fwiw my most upvoted comments are typically my lowest effort comments. Typically either low effort "me too" type confirmations or sarcastic quips that happened to be in favor of whoever was browsing the thread. [What I beleive to be] my more productive, thoughtful, on topic comments tend to mostly get ignored. This has been the case everytime I've tried to use this site. I beleive the the best way to get karma is a mix of proper timing / estimating what the popular opinion / point / etc. will be in a given thread. There are also certain topics and subjects that no matter how well you approach them will typically get you trashed.

Yes, sometimes the quips work the best. But that's also harder. Comedy relies on a good sense of humor, timing, and making sure you read your audience. It can be done, but it's not easy, and no one wants HN to turn into Slashdot of yore. Sometimes I've written jokes that end up with 1 or 0 karma after a lot of votes -- you can only farm karma this way if you're good and lucky.

I think people have a tendency to confuse productive comments with long comments, which isn't helpful either. I find I am most convincing to other people when I speak three to five sentences. If people truly wanted the essay format, they would have actually read the OP!

Not sure what you're on about but I wasn't complaining about my karma.

The moods and necessity for sugar coating everything has only gotten worse - exponentially so, if you ask me - in the last decade.

Karma is a reflection of that. I don't care about fake internet points.

I've never had a lot of karma as I don't comment that often and certainly haven't posted an article. But I suspect that my opinions would soon seen what little karma i do have, disappear.

"Unfortunately “anti-racism” has been weaponized as a shortcut for silencing anyone who may at one point have said something that could be interpreted as racist or even not anti-racist enough. No thanks. Rather be labeled as a racist and keep my free speech than silenced by some mob authority."

This kind of comment was not surprising to find in your history's first page.

And it’s 100% accurate with the current political and cultural climate.

why so snarky? argue with it.

Thanks for illustrating my point.

This non-response comment perfectly illustrates the point being made. Well done.

Did you have something of substance to add?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com