Has your HN karma score helped you in any way?

While I no longer post as frequently as I did in the past, I like to think of my karma score as X other people thought that a story I shared or, to a much lesser degree, a comment that I wrote had a tiny unit of value or interest to them.

I lurked for many, many months before I started contributing, and I encourage all of you out there to share what you like and what you know.

I’d also be lying if I said secretly knowing my karma score was high when the topic of HN came up didn’t cause me to smile mentally. Even if if the topic revolved around how “HN is toxic, brogrammers” etc because I felt that these people can’t see beyond their own biases to see the real community that dang and scbt actively take no small part in taking care of.

Being a tiny part of the HN community is something I am thankful and grateful for. I wrote about it earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18509717

I hope not. Not for me for sure.

Every time someone downvotes me it literally makes me feel like shit for like a day.

This includes reddit as well.

I’m not saying I’m looking for upvotes and I’m not on Facebook so it’s not about being “liked”.

When I’m downvoted I’m so afraid I have offended someone or I said something extremely fallacious.

It has gotten to the point where I have contemplated not ever participating again which is a shame because I’m nervous (assuming I’m not an extreme fringe case) there is some sort of convergent sheep opinion when there should be diversity in thought.

So if someone came to me and said hire me and look I have xyz karma on xyz platform I might even be less inclined to hire given how much I feel it has poisoned my own thought.

No, not in the slightest. Well, aside from fluffing up my ego a little bit I guess, and I'm not sure that that is a good thing.

HN karma has helped with one place I worked but that was after I had already been there. They noticed on my private computer and said "cool" and it was a form of social credit.

Other than that, the karma is essentially "interesting" but ultimately irrelevant. HN upvotes seem to be only used by people who align and agree with you. Not whether you've added something substantial to the discussion.

On the flip side, I've found that HN downvotes are used by people disagreeing with you without them needing to explain exactly why. I've even had people say I've broken the rules but upon examination I can't actually see the transgression. (So it was useless feedback on their part).

In some cases I've been accused of various things and had people demand to know where I work or to not use a throwaway account ("man up and use your real account" or similarly useless statements). They clearly intended to dox me and were thwarted in their attempt. Then they got angry.

The downvoting power is sort of 'useful'. I reserve it for the worst comments, not just stuff I disagree with. But you don't need super high karma for that.

The good thing about a downvote is a single DV in a busy thread makes the comment a lot less visible. So if it's spammy or offensive it quickly sorts it out. I'll do a downvote + flag.

It works for keybase.io :D enables you to identify yourself in the platform. I need karma 2, +1 this comment :D Thanks

I've been here for over 7 years and I still can't downvote. I like it this way

SO karma would be much more helpful. And Once you reach a certain critical mass they grow by themselves.

Black mirror future is here already

What do you call “high karma”?

I think not

nope