Ask HN: How Upvotes Work | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How Upvotes Work

6 pointsulrischa13 comments

I know this topic is tricky to ask (because of potential downvotes), but I would really like to better understand how upvotes work on HN. I have read some posts about it but all is still very nebulous to me. E.g. if I submit this here there will stand: 1 Point. But I never get this point. Would really be thankful if some could give me more insights how it works without punishing me for asking this.

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Tangentially related: the gravity algorithm is

  (upvotes) / (hours-since-posted + 2)^gravity 
  
  where gravity is a constant, 1.8 for HN.

So, over time, kinda step-wise on the 60, 120 min mark since posting, gravity's grip increases and pulls the score back closer to zero.

Is this how HN upvotes works?

Yes, you sort [and rank] them by the values you get from that equation.

Each post start with "1". Imagine that it's your own vote. But that is not added to your total karma.

When someone else upvote the counter says "2", and your karma should increase.

No it does not always.

Votes on submissions are +0.5, so it takes two upvotes to count as one. Comments get you +1

Comments from me to other submissions or comments to my submissions?

There are two distinct ways to earn karma.

1. Submit links or things like Ask HN. Those submissions can get upvoted by others. You earn +0.5 on each upvote.

2. Comments. You earn +1 each time someone else votes up your comment.

You don't get any karma for voting on someone else's thing.

So submitting alone brings no point also there stands 1 point, right?

Correct

If I remember you do in fact get 1 karma just for commenting if you are below a certain karma level (in the 100s). This op should get that.

I never heard that and it's not in [1], so I guess it's incorrect. [1] is an unofficial collection of HN details, but minimaxir keep it up to date.

[1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

Could it be that the points are not calculated in realtime?

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