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Comment by devteambravo | Hacker News Reader

You'd be surprised. Even if you're aware of it, you may start noticing a post you like made be a high-karma person. Confirmation bia sets in, and very soon, your subconscious is engaged. This stuff was build that way by design.

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I dunno, I usually go out of my way to avoid looking at people's scores on places like that. Even my own if I can help it. HN is hard, it's right in the corner there, but I really don't tend to look at anyone else's scores. Same with reddit or other sites I use with those systems.

Don't get me wrong, I get the little dopamine rush and enjoy getting points and stuff, but I look at the whole thing the same way as a high score board on a video game or something.

I've never looked at anyone's points. It's pointless. Pun intended. It's not a descriptor of anything of value. Essentially I take information on reddit as it is, and use my own critical thinking skills to judge the opinion or value the opinion has to me. Sometimes there is great information, sometimes it's just people trolling. Everything is taken with a grain of salt.

Maybe it's also because you guys know how to write scripts like that. I don't know how to do that so I earn my karma in the way it was intended. If I happen to notice someone's karma on Reddit, usually their history will quickly show you what's up.

Now you made me curious about your opinion of karma on places like stack overflow.

Stack overflow i've got mixed feelings about. I've seen it work well sometimes, with the highest quality answer being voted to the top. Other times, it seems the top answers are not the best or just a bunch of pointless arguing.

I've never participated much in any of the stack overflow communities other than passively. I tried asking a question once that I hadn't seen on there but I got downvoted and told off so meh...I just stick to searching and passively reading mostly. I have thought of updating some older answers but they were usually locked and closed to discussion.

Interesting. Seems like a complex problem to get a community right as it scales.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

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