It's only a race if you feel that you are losing it, simply don't assign too much weight to karma. Treat it like an odometer, it's more a function of how much time you spend on HN than anything else.

Correction if I may. It's more a function of how much the community values your contribution.

Not really.

If one throws an hojillion low-quality posts up in a day, a few of those will be ranked +1. That grants frequent posters a ludicrously high karma score for what amounts to little overall contribution to the 'community'.

In a way, it's almost an MMORPG -- the longer you stick around and 'grind', the higher your score gets.

In my experience, spamming low-quality posts, not counting the bottom [-8,1] and top [30, inf] gets me an average of about +10 each. The trick is to keep posting comments small (readable at a glance), intriguing (just enough to warrant an upvote), and non-controversial points early on in a popular thread.

If you can't be one of the first commentators, it's best to reply in a way that puts your reply as close to the top as possible - replying to anything "below the fold" is a terrible investment.

[Aside: yes, I'm ashamed to care about karma enough to think these things through, but somehow, I just can't help it]

I think about these things too, but because I'm trying to prevent them from being necessary.

Unfortunately these are hard problems. I've been thinking about them since early Reddit and still don't have solutions.

And then you publically complain about being downvoted?

Only if I think it'll get me more upvotes ;)

Take a look at the top 50 and see their average submission and comment score.

I can't agree. I almost certainly don't "deserve" the amount of karma I have - I've just been around a long time.

Karma accumulates automatically over time - the only thing quality might affect is how fast it accumulates, and even then just posting more would probably get you there faster.

Karma is just a sign that someone spends too much time here.

I don't feel this karma issue decreases the overall quality of the frontpage.

Exactly.

And how will you define popular blogs? By visits, by registered users?

If they are popular its popularity comes from good content, that should be shared here in HN. Sorry, but I disagree with your idea.

It just doesn't matter. If it's bad enough it'll be flagged. Adding arbitrary and reactive rules to the system is only going to hurt it.

If karma matters that much to someone let them have it.

And not everything by techcrunch or mashable garners karma either; it has more to do with the currency and importance of the story.

#adjusted for local definitions of what is important, obviously.

My suggestion: Make Karma (and other points) COMPLETELY invisible in the system. Make them invisible in the UI, the system uses them behind the scenes to rank and order data, but never display them.

I like seeing the individual karma points on links, if I see an interesting link with a lot of karma, it shows that a lot of individuals found it interesting, as with the opposite. I find it helpful.

I don't see how that addresses this problem. Even if people can't see each other's e-peen, they will still seek to embiggen their own.

yes please...

but it isn't going to happen.

don't worry about it

Yeah, this is a good idea, that's why Digg has become a main stream place where just a few well known URLs get submitted and front page all the time while the little guy gets no attention.

We shouldn't penalize such submissions though, that's wrong as well. They should just count less. Like 50% or only the points above 20 should count.

Or something like this:

if url already popular 10 times this week

karma = karma - 10

Whoa, this is possibly the first post complaining about opportunity-negative-karma, which, in my opinion, violates the guidelines by technically complaining about being down-voted.

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