Ask HN: How is karma calculated?

2 pointsmarcofiset2 comments

Hi everyone, I was just wondering how karma is calcutated here at HN.

I was sitting at -42 karma, over a dumb comment I made that was heavily downvoted. I posted a link today, that has not been upvoted at the time of this writing, and I'm now back at 1 karma.

How did this happen? How is karma calculated?

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We implemented a moderation feature code-named "redemption" that puts a user's karma back at 1 when it got blasted by downvotes over something venial and they are clearly a good user otherwise.

We did this to try to compensate for some bad side-effects of the change we made earlier this year to count more downvotes than we used to. That was necessary and it worked, but like a lot of medicines, was not completely benign.

Our intention is for both of these things (the medicine and the compensating mechanism) to be temporary.

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense!

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