
Ask HN: How many points you have - praving5
I have been contributing to HN from last 2 years or so and have just 268 karma points. How many you have and what you do?
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anotheryou
The HN-ranking algo is not ideal. If you hit a popular discussion early you
get way more points because you float on top of those who come later.

I fooled arround with it for a bit and now I'm at 740 points (still less than
one karma a day). But mostly through consistent commenting and most of my
comments remain at 1 point XD. Helping out with a wesite hugged to death by
posting a google cache link makes people happy though.

but yeah, nobody cares about internet points.

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partisan
You made me notice that my ranking right now is 1337, which is 1337. That is
an average of 0.64 per day. I previously cared, but only because I was
learning to hear and trust my inner voice, neither of which I was ready to do
when I started participating on HN. Sharing my opinion here and having it be
appreciated by others has been a large confidence booster.

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dyukqu
Likes/ followers/ views/ karma points - all these counters make us users
anxious even if we don't have some serious (a.k.a money) business to do with
our online presence. I doubt if we will ever get used to it and I doubt
whether the _broad availibility_ of these counters/ analytics services is
worthy. The context, the knowledge we get, the contributions we make should be
_the point_ , IMO.

Getting down to your question, you need to be informed (a.k.a. confident) or
curious about the topic of the thread you're contributing to get karma points,
I guess.

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Kevin_S
36 karma, joined 1061 days ago. Lurked casually probably 2 years before making
an account.

I'm only just now graduated from college and working as a consultant, so never
had a ton to add. Also I'm not technical, don't code, so a lot of the topics I
read about here I am not close to qualifying to comment on.

Though it would be nice to get enough karma to downvote, probably gonna take
10 years to get there haha!

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taway_1212
I created this throwaway account (mostly to vent) about a month ago, and I'm
already at 126 points. I think people appreciate the sincerity of someone who
does not need to self-censor himself?

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marvy
2 years? Your profile says that your account was created 205 days ago.

~~~
NameNickHN
Well, OP said "or so" and sometimes half a year seems like eternity in the
wrong circumstances. ;-)

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gus_massa
It's usually easier to get a few points with a comment about something you
know. What is your area of expertise?

[I guess you know, but I'll remind you anyway. Try to avoid jokes and
oneliners.]

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joshstrange
I've been on HN for about 5 and half years. I rarely pay attention to my
"karma" except for on a per-comment basis and only if it's negative as it
normally means I was misunderstood or I misunderstand the downvotes and I edit
or reply to a child to try and resolve the misunderstanding. Aside from that
it doesn't really matter, most of my comments are completely ignored (no
comments, no votes) and that's normally due to commenting on low-traffic
posts, "late to the party", or just not something anyone found useful. Most of
my "karma" comes from a handful of posts I've made on topic I am highly
informed/involved with, when being very open/genuine, or useful tips/info.

For example in last 2 years (After 2 years I got tired of scrolling through my
history):

[32] Talking about a field I know a good bit about:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10150020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10150020)

[38] In response to people freaking out over nodejs numbering:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10477878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10477878)

[49] In response to SV entitilement:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13062611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13062611)

[49] Being open and opposed to "Things were fine back in my day"-thinking:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182611)

[57] How I use GMVault:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12987670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12987670)

[57] Talking about Bittorrent Sync:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534850)

[58] On a new taxi app and how that article was overly-glowing:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10676957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10676957)

[66] Wishing for VR virtual desktops:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9701776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9701776)

[88] Complaining about google not hiring the homebrew dev:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695416)

[114] Responding to a snarky blog on how "easy" it is to build an app:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12137433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12137433)

[217] Response to FBI's stupid statements on encryption:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9661936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9661936)

For each one of the comments I made above there were probably another 5 that
got 1-5 votes and then another 20 that never got a single vote.

Like I said at the start I don't pay much attention to it at all and if you do
you probably are on HN for the wrong reasons. Just comment when you have a
valuable opinion or information to add to a discussion and let the chips fall
where they may.

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pizza
created: 2724 days ago

karma: 3079

