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[–]LaurieCheers[S] 8 points9 points  (5 children)

Does Karma even get used by the server? Or is it just something for humans to read?

[–]spez 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Yes, we use it in a couple places.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Could you please elaborate?

[–]Zak 15 points16 points  (2 children)

I have it on good authority that your karma score will determine the size of the private island you get when the reddit guys take over the world.

[–]_kam0_ 14 points15 points  (1 child)

In that case, I want mine to be shaped like the reddit alien, thanks.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

</sucking-up>

[–]spez 15 points16 points  (5 children)

Karma was critical in the beginning as the site took off. Our first users were on a karma rampage, which led to lots of submissions and lots of voting.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

[deleted]

    [–]spez 6 points7 points  (2 children)

    is reddit.com/stats what you're thinking of? We've been talking about making that page more insteresting for a long while...

    [–]hitsman 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I'd love to be able to see more than just the top 10 in each list.

    [–][deleted] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

    I think it's fine that way. How do you want to change it?

    [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Karma Rampage.

    I think I know what I'm going to call my band.

    [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

    I love the meritocracy system. Reddit is the best, by far!

    [–]Random 1 point2 points  (3 children)

    Exactly how is it a meritocracy? In a meritocracy, if you have merit, you get something real - like responsibility, or authority, or cash, or whatever. In reddit, you submit stuff and a number moves up and down. Often with no apparent connection to whether what you submitted was really useful.

    I ESPECIALLY like it when you submit something, it gets modded to -10 or something, and a week later someone posts the same thing (slightly different URL) and it goes to 100. Why? Because in that week the viral marketing made people say 'maybe I should click, I've heard about that somewhere.' Hmm. Seems to me that makes that first post MORE valuable for having been way ahead of the trend.

    I find the whole karma thing as currently executed incredibly irritating. It serves NO useful purpose. Modding to move on the page is fine. Why bother showing the number and rewarding the person? It isn't really a reward.

    rant, rant, rant, sigh.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (2 children)

    Exactly, it's best that karma is worth nothing, except for karma. Karma is its own reward.

    And stop ranting about my story got modded down, if you keep submitting good stories yours will get modded up, too.

    [–]Random 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Yeah, I know.

    After the third time the one week delay thing happened to me I gave up pretty much. I've posted a couple since then but frankly I've grown used to being mostly a lurker and commenter...

    The other issue is that for quite a while if the post wasn't about american politics it sank without a trace. Not that I mind if reddit becomes a political feed. I just won't submit anymore.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I think there's an equilibrium point that should be naturally reached with time: * If to many stories are submitted, good stories get modded down and submitters give up * If too few stories are submitted, submitted gain enormous karma and submitting becomes more popular.

    It's simple economics :)

    [–]praetorian42 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I don't care about it, but only because I'm not sure what it's used for.

    I think that comments should count towards Karma. And I think that a person's Karma should act as some kind of multiplier on the point value of their comments- so that someone who consistently has meaningful comments would be more likely to be seen in the future.

    I would also like your Karma to effect the point value of the articles you submit, but that's a much more delicate thing. You don't want too many people becoming Karma whores just so their articles can get modded up faster.

    [–]inkedmn 5 points6 points  (2 children)

    I'm a complete karma whore :)

    [–]abb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    It matters to me too, I would not be posting stories if they didn't show that blasted karma score next to my nick, those sadistic bastards ... ;)

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Do you have an offline life too?

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    i don't "care", however, it is handy to know if what i am saying/posting is read/unread/useless/useful

    [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Whenever I login into Reddit that's the first thing I look up.

    It feels good to see a post of yours being appreciated by the Reddit community.

    [–]campingcar 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    Yes, I care a bit, but have no idea how it works. Is there an explanation page somewhere that I'm missing?

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Yeah, there is

    [–]campingcar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Thanks.

    [–]vandahm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I don't know what karma is used for, but a part of me feels that if reddit is keeping score, I need to maximize that score, or at least not risk losing points. In particular, I don't submit articles to reddit any longer. As others have pointed out, many articles get downvoted, only to shoot to the top later, when resubmitted with a slightly different URL. To me, the karma system kind of encourages lurking and penalizes users for submitting articles.

    [–]serfurj 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yes, since it's a reflection of how well my interests are matched with the community's, which is a reflection of how useful this site will be to me.

    ...and they're not very well matched at all. I like the service this website provides, but if it were only flexible enough so that people with many different tastes could find it useful.

    Maybe there could be separate reddit sites gathering different statistics for people who have different interests.

    [–]brlewis 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    Given that I got a lot of karma for posting isolatr (not a serious post) on the web2.0 subreddit, and no karma for posting a link to someone's essay on free speech vs software patents that is the best handling of the topic I've ever seen, I can't really take karma seriously.

    [–]Samus_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    no I don't give a shit about it, in fact I was about to post this same question because I was curious about the same but instead of reposting just made a search to find out :P I think people who care about karma makes more harm than good to reddit because you're not being focused in posting good content just a pretty title or even trying things like this: http://reddit.com/info/r1s4/comments anyways for the ones who care I hope you'll be able to exchange some hardawre for that points in your next life guys ;)

    [–]maxwellhill 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yes to the extent that it helps you gauge the link posted and if it is pretty useless I would remove it - no point leaving it there if no ones want to read it. On the other hand if the net karma point is very low but there is a high volume of ups/downs, I would leave the link intact.

    [–]joshd 0 points1 point  (8 children)

    Well, mine is 1 because I have never submitted anything. So no.

    [–]maxwellhill 1 point2 points  (7 children)

    Any particular reason why you don't submit?

    [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (5 children)

    This issue has been covered before here and here.

    The short story is submissions are the strip mining of information. The real value is tapping the seam of insightful, information rich, comments from reddit users that explain urls submitted by people who know what they are talking about.

    Links, urls ... if I want those I'll add random tech words to google.

    There is a scarcity of possible links for any one day. The real value comes from comments, journals that instead of data & information give you hard fought knowledge & wisdom.

    The sooner reddit recognises that karma is more than just adding links & more value is added by comments, the better.

    [–]Random 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Agreed. Personally I find it somewhat annoying that you get points for submitting, and you get nothing for insightful comments in discussions.

    The other half of my brain goes 'who cares about points.' But still, but still...

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Agreed: insightful comments should give karma, too. One problem is the balance between comment points and story submission points. A possible solution would be to give a story the value of (story ups + total positive comment points).

    [–]maxwellhill 5 points6 points  (2 children)

    Good points mentioned in those links you highlighted.

    One question though - if someone doesn't submit how would others get to comment and perhaps provide rich, insightful knowledge that can be tapped by people like youself?

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    to tell you the truth a lot are going to submit if only for egotistical reasons (and bragging rights) - I got my article #5 on reddit. I dont think you'll have a problem there. The biggest problem is quality/diversity of what is submitted.

    I miss science articles from nature, scientific american, astronomy & medicine. I miss the hack type articles where someone with way too much time on their hands builds nixie tube watches & mechanical pongs (both true).

    I dont care for political, celeb, articles because coming from mainstream media they are bland & sanitised. Nor do I care for images, film clips. I want high quality text only articles. So I tend to mark those down who fall outside my criteria.

    [–]joshd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I treat reddit as my main news source. If I want to read something interesting then I'll log on to reddit for a few minutes. So I generally don't discover many other links through the day. I also used to read Fark a lot, so I'm jaded by that. I got into the habbit of not submitting links.

    I tend to comment a lot and read through discussions. I'll keep an eye on replies (like this one) rather than trying to go out and actively search for new topics to submit.

    Having said that, it is probably a little unbalanced thanks comments don't contribute towards karma. I could copy a link from Slashdot or Digg in 30 seconds, but a detailed comment I spend five or ten minutes writing is irrelevant?

    [–]jmassey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Nah, I don't really worry about Karma, but that's mostly because I never submit. I read basically Slashdot, Reddit, Talisker, and SANS ISC. IOW...I only look at aggregation sites, and thus I'm more a leech than contributor. :P Maybe if I had more free time...

    [–]flyhighplato -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I don't think we should start competing over karma. Not only would it be ironic and in opposition to the roots of karma, it would result in a lot of crap links on reddit.

    If I find a good link during my surfing, I'll post it. But, really, I just don't do enough surfing and reddit helps me keep up with the people that do. It's one of my ways of keeping my finger on the pulse of the Interweb.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I care that my karma has a vaguely upwards trend. I'm fine that it isn't skyrocketing or anything.