<i>Some headline numbers: I've been on Hacker News for well over 5 years (I joined on July 2, 2007)</i><p>Ha! when I wrote that it was 5 years... now it's > 8 years. I think the same conclusion still applies: <i>"So, to answer my original question about how I ended up with that much karma: slowly, consistently, over years by submitting things that people like."</i>
A few observations from someone in the "Top 10" for 8 years now:<p><pre><code> - You're never as good as your upvotes.
- You're never as bad as your downvotes.
- Karma ebbs & flows with the audience, which changes dramatically.
- I sense no correlation between karma & quality of real life.
- I sense little correlation between karma & quality of contribution.
- I sense heavy correlation between karma & volume of participation.
- I sense very heavy inverse correlation between karma & real work completed.
</code></pre>
(Back to work)
This could be simply answered with a single answer that applies to any community - just post whatever panders to the average community member if you care about irrelevant counter in your profile.
>>" It's content that's king. That's good news for Hacker News because it indicates that what matters there is content and not game playing". <<<p>If that were the case I should have much more Karma. The fact is many times I posted a submission, only to see it slip off the headline in 0.2ms. Then a few days later, someone else (with more Karma) posts the same thing and it stays on for 2 days ... I'm not complaining, simply stating that it is not as cut and dry as the author mentions.
I keep meaning to reverse-engineer my own submission stats to find out where this nearly 9k karma comes from. A good trick is to post a solid counterpoint as a reply to the currently topmost comment: people are more likely to vote on comments near the top.
Those blog posts about HN trends and stats remind me a bit of stuff about SEO. Lots of tricks and hacks, but essentially it boils down to relevant content.<p>So yeah, you can probably gain a bit of an edge by posting at a certain time of day, or using specific keyword etc. but nothing beats an interesting post or a great comment.
Means that the karma system is good.<p>Anyone can point out what are the features that can be unlocked with more karma? I'd like to know what I'm missing.
I sometimes wonder if there are people here (as on reddit) that try to game the system to get upvotes... seems ridiculous as there's no functional purpose of accumulating upvotes here.<p>I assume that a lot of the top posters spend a large volume of time submitting and commentating on HN-- myself included.