Re:Ask HN: For users with 10k+ karma, how much time do you s...
by perihelions on Thursday May 25, 2023 @08:02AM
(#36069657)
The depressing truth is few people read the substantive comments you write about stuff you're knowledgeable in and passionate about. True karma comes from least-common-denominator garbage like movie references. Upvotes are a death spiral for noise amplification.
Just looking through my own first page, I see: 0 upvotes for a geometry proof I drew up in Asymptote*; 10 upvotes for a mediocre Arnold Schwarzenegger pun; 0 upvotes for tracking down an authoritative etymology relating to "eel"; 1 upvote for contradicting a frontpage Stackoverflow physics answer which was actually wrong but no one noticed. It's a strong inverse correlation.
*(This exception isn't "HN-wasted" time because I go out of my way to find useless problems to solve in $language/$library/$tool. It's the most productive way to learn them).
Just looking through my own first page, I see: 0 upvotes for a geometry proof I drew up in Asymptote*; 10 upvotes for a mediocre Arnold Schwarzenegger pun; 0 upvotes for tracking down an authoritative etymology relating to "eel"; 1 upvote for contradicting a frontpage Stackoverflow physics answer which was actually wrong but no one noticed. It's a strong inverse correlation.
*(This exception isn't "HN-wasted" time because I go out of my way to find useless problems to solve in $language/$library/$tool. It's the most productive way to learn them).