I don't like the word "karma" because it's often, for better in worse, group affinity (and we are most often trajectories rather than pure insight). I often find minority views and unexplored paths interesting, even when they're obviously wrong.

One time I made a negative comment about Lord of the Rings, and I think I lost a thousand points. Does it really make sense that my karma as a complete user drops so much because of one specific comment? Blasphemy, but maybe Reddit's per-subreddit score makes more sense.

I can promise I don't craft my comments for karma, though many people deserve their high 'karma' because they offer genuinely great contributions.

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skulk 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I thought HN caps negative score at -4?

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dang 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It does, and has for many years.

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vid 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe they do now, but I remember losing a lot more than that for that comment. I recall it was just after I made a comment that received a lot of upvotes, which were more than wiped out by having a critical view of the ultimate morality of LoTR. Then again, my "karma" currently at 1066 after 12 years goes up and down by points at a time, so a few points lost will be felt more than for people who have tens of thousands of points.

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dang 3 days ago | parent [-]

I assume https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17247823 is the comment? Barring some catastrophic bug that we never heard about, those posts wouldn't have subtracted more than a few points from your account karma. Your other posts in the thread also got some downvotes, so they would have added a few more. But it couldn't have been a thousand or even a hundred because there were only a few dozen votes on those posts in total, and many were upvotes.

I don't think you should have been downvoted for that post though! It was an interesting comment. (Though perhaps it was more provocative before the edit you mention there.)

	▲	vid 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you dang! I guess it felt like a thousand lost points cumulatively in the moment, but knowing some people, especially such a thoughtful person as yourself, appreciate diverse posts makes a high karma score wonderfully inconsequential.

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m101 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

My karma gets hit for having views against green energy and conservative leaning economics. There is a problem here with high karma correlating with being in the same echo chamber as everyone else.

I mainly want to get to the downvote threshold so I can also exert an alternative influence (as I'm in the minority I think). It's been many years...

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reaperducer 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There is a problem here with high karma correlating with being in the same echo chamber as everyone else.

I think it depends.

My observation has been that people on HN value facts and first-hand knowledge, and reward such.

Because of that, I believe that someone who has been on HN for a long time with a lot of karma must know something, or have lots of experience.

Someone who has been on HN for a long time and has low karma makes me think that they don't have much knowledge to contribute and I view them more skeptically.

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HankStallone 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I find that following a few rules helps to keep my heterodox views from hurting my karma too much.

1) Keep them to myself most of the time. Pick my spots, in other words, and don't just toss off quick replies every time I disagree (who's got that kind of time anyway).

2) Don't make a factual claim without a link to back it up, even (maybe especially) if it's something everyone knows. There seems to be enough respect for the process of researching something and backing up your claims here, that people are less likely to downvote a fact they don't like to hear if you make the effort. (This is one thing that distinguishes HN from Reddit.)

3) Make the case dryly and impersonally. People are less likely to be triggered by disagreement if they don't feel like you're laughing at them or calling them stupid.

4) Include a "to be fair" balancing point if you can do so truthfully. For instance, if you're criticizing the Democrats, point out where the Republicans are also wrong on something.

Of course, none of this would be necessary to keep my karma positive if I were left-leaning, but that's okay. Communities should be allowed to lean whichever way they want, and there's nothing wrong with dissenters having to work harder to fit in.

	▲	rpdillon 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is exactly how I try to operate, and amazingly, it doesn't just work on hacker news, it works in real life!
	▲	pjc50 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I would add that oblique approaches work better. You can sort of assume that everyone on here has (a) played this game before and (b) already seen the day's talking points on the rest of social media. Re-litigating that here is just a waste of time. Your (2) is absolutely critical here; the bystanders will upvote posts that have links to good sources that tell them things they didn't already know. Which is good! That's what the site is for! Also remember: you can't convert the person you're arguing with. But it's the (invisible) audience who are handing out the scores.
	▲	tempestn 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Those are great points. As well as backing up facts with references, I would add, don't state an opinion without facts and reasoning to back it up. And I agree that without doing these things, some opinions are more likely to draw down-votes than others. TBH I indeed probably am more likely to down-vote a badly made point if it's one with which I disagree. But really, everyone should be doing these things, regardless of karma concerns.
	▲	ThrowawayR2 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The delay timer option for submitting posts on HN's user configuration page is also helpful for that. Sometimes I will find myself making a post but then realize after a couple of minutes that it's not really worthwhile and then delete it before it ever becomes visible to other users.