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noodle

could you elaborate more? i'm not 100% following. huge difference as compared to what, or in what sense?

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I'll take a stab a reframing the OP's question.

Why not start posts at zero karma instead of one?

Does the current initial karma setting (1 point) affect user behavior in any way?

In many subreddits, a single up vote would send a submission to the front page.

Would these be subreddits where there were not that many votes being cast? Or not many links being submitted?

Yes, they are less popular ones. In many of them, the upvote from your submission alone is enough to send the entry to the front page. This happens with subreddits that are more popular than you might suspect.

All this appears to encourage submission and voting by giving you unreasonable power.

time is a consideration, at least in part. don't know enough about how its taken into consideration at reddit, or here on HN, but it clearly plays an important part.

fewer votes over a very short time will tend to weigh more heavily than more votes over a long time.

Reddit's ranking algorithm: http://uggedal.com/reddit.cf.algorithm.png

and HN discussion of it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231168

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