>We find that Reddit users with higher status overall (higher karma) [...] are significantly more likely to receive help
There could be a common cause to these two factors (a certain way of writing, for instance), that could explain the correlation. I can't imagine someone basing a judgement on a stat reported on someone's user page.
GP means that things like being an effective communicator and knowing how to play to the crowd will factor into karma and into asking a question that gets answered.
That doesn't mean score-viewing doesn't happen, but it isn't likely to be the only mechanism at play.
Reddit Enhancement Suite, a ubiquitous browser extension, shows the link karma, comment karma, and account age of any username that you hover over.
So, it's totally possible that, like others have said, people deciding which request to fulfill take karma/account age into consideration to avoid gaming the system with multiple accounts.
That seems fairly self explaining. By the definition of having more karma, they're better acquainted with the site and have successful experience appealing to the audience.
I'm sure it could be a factor (nothing's preventing someone from doing that, after all) but my original point was essentially as characterized in this post below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793607
The tone of the article, I think, was suggestive of a causal relation, which surely doesn't (necessarily or plausibly) hold.
even if it is "threshold" its simply a binary relation and not an explanatory variable at the margin. so, yes...you might be able to weed out some data...but of what is left its unliklely to differeniate, except by proxy (as alluded to in the other comments) for something else.
beside the other reasons, a simple alternative might also be that users with high reputation usually are known by the regulars. If you recognize someone’s name for posting a lot of interesting stuff on your favourite website you probably help him out before other guys.
There could be a common cause to these two factors (a certain way of writing, for instance), that could explain the correlation. I can't imagine someone basing a judgement on a stat reported on someone's user page.