

Ask HN: Highest upvotes your comment has ever received? - krat0sprakhar

Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;m a long time lurker and have recently started commenting on HN. Recently I posted a rather trite comment[0] and to my surprise got 16 upvotes whereas my other well written (IMO) comments got just a couple. Just out of curiosity, what are your top voted comments and how much karma did they earn?<p>[0] - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8670396
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32faction
My highest upvoted comment[0] was a thought I had reading an article by the
New York Times: "Space Tourism Isn't Frivolous, or Impossible". This was
around the time that Virgin Galactic and NASA/Orbital Sciences had their
tragic accidents.

I basically said that spaceflight is where the airline industry used to be;
rough around the edges, expensive, inherently dangerous. But the airline
industry today is safe and inexpensive compared to how it was back in the day.

Spaceflight is still at a young stage so unfortunately I will say that the
Virgin Galactic tragedy, and the NASA/Orbital Science launch failure will not
be the last accidents to come. In fact, we will need more accidents to
understand where we are going wrong.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8555643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8555643)

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angersock
I believe my highest voted comment was a bit of screed concerning things my
generation believed (as sampled in my peer group). It was decently written and
thought-out.

The vast majority of my highly-upvoted comments (subjectively) are clever
jokes or something similar. The fact of the matter is that the submissions
I've made (especially technical ones) tend not to gain much karma, nor very
many carefully thought-out posts.

Furthermore, the posts that usually _are_ well-thought out and carefully
worded often actually perform _worse_ than the flippant ones, because I'm
typically making a point or exploring a topic in a way that makes people
uncomfortable. This is especially true now that the community has heeded pg's
(really shortsighted) directive that downvotes are for mere disagreement (and
unarticulated disagreement/disapproval at that!).

There are a number of ways of gaming the system if you think a bit, ranging
from the obvious (downvote other posts to increase your chances of getting
points) to the non-obvious (upvote posts you don't agree with so that you can
get a solid word in edgewise) to the absurd (constantly watch the new section
and try to mass submit your posts all at once before the throttling filter
catches on). Quantity has a quality all its own.

You're better off just posting like a sane person, though. You'll enjoy
yourself more, your posts will be better regarded, and you'll have a more
positive effect on the community.

tl,dr: it's just internet funbucks, so don't lose sleep over it.

