Since there is a interesting thread on HN about how people get karma.<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552122<p>It would interesting to see what is this karma used for?
I have 80628 karma. That and £4 will get you a coffee in London.<p><i>Edit</i><p>Less cynically, it reassures you that you are "in sync" with the HN culture. It is correlated with the idea that what you post and/or what you say is found interesting and/or useful to those who hang out here. There are things I post that I think are important, but which get little or no attention. There are other things I post that get lots of upvotes but which I think are less important. That's the way it goes - we have smart-phones to look at pictures of cats, and argue with strangers.<p>However, as the article you reference says, mostly it says that you've been here a long time, and posted many times. In short, it's cumulative.<p>And now I have 80629.
There's a minimal karma level required to get the flag button.<p>There's a somewhat higher (500? 750?) karma level to get the downvote button.<p>There's a karma level to get the ability to change the top bar colour.<p>I'm not sure if karma is used to place comments on a page - someone with high average karma may find their comments appearing higher on a page (and then rising or falling based on votes on that comment).<p>Other than that, nothing.
We essentially have<p>1. Upvotes & Downvotes on articles and comments
(This is what HN wants - insights by crowdsourcing)<p>2. Reputation (this is the fruit the users want)<p>3. Gaming (HN gaming the users by rewarding/denying the fruit)
- Reward (unlocking site features)