How I ended up with so much Hacker News karma (2012)

<i>Some headline numbers: I&#x27;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&#x27;s &gt; 8 years. I think the same conclusion still applies: <i>&quot;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.&quot;</i>

A few observations from someone in the &quot;Top 10&quot; for 8 years now:<p><pre><code> - You&#x27;re never as good as your upvotes. - You&#x27;re never as bad as your downvotes. - Karma ebbs &amp; flows with the audience, which changes dramatically. - I sense no correlation between karma &amp; quality of real life. - I sense little correlation between karma &amp; quality of contribution. - I sense heavy correlation between karma &amp; volume of participation. - I sense very heavy inverse correlation between karma &amp; 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.

&gt;&gt;&quot; It&#x27;s content that&#x27;s king. That&#x27;s good news for Hacker News because it indicates that what matters there is content and not game playing&quot;. &lt;&lt;<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&#x27;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&#x27;d like to know what I&#x27;m missing.

Karma should be worth more in the past since there were fewer voters and fewer submissions.

I sometimes wonder if there are people here (as on reddit) that try to game the system to get upvotes... seems ridiculous as there&#x27;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.

You&#x27;re going to end up with a few more with this post

According to the current leaderboard:<p>11. jgrahamc 55788<p>In comparison:<p>100. DiabloD3 18551<p>:&lt;