@ 100 Karma, my observations of the HN community

(OK – since Karma is cumulative, it largely represents quantity of contribution not just quality. The round number is a point of reflection, not pride, so I don’t want to spark a discussion about the merits or not of the karma system.) I recently received my 100th Karma point, and decided to go back through my user history (go through searchyc.com for it all) to see what the HN community has and has not seen worthy to support through the voting process. 100 points is a fairly small data set – I’ve made 12 submissions (median 1 point, mean 2.92) and 48 comments (median 2, mean 2.58), but this is opinion only – does it reflect your experience? What we like most: Techcrunch – 15 points. Topped only by a pg article in the list of sure-fire ways to get to the front page, true to form my most popular submission and the only one to generate discussion was a techcrunch article. Ourselves – 5 of my top 10 comments have been in an Ask YC / HN discussion; one of the others was a line about when we all make it big. What we don’t support: Self-aggrandizing – I’ve submitted 5 of my own blog posts, including two recently that I wrote specifically for HN about diluting the quality of a community, and nobody’s upmodded any of them. (I accept, this could be me) Lack of evidence – absolutely a good thing. I noticed early on that comments based on weakly explained opinion get no love. This was a shock: offline I’m often hired as a business authority and my opinion is treated as such, but on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog. Repeat: good thing (and taking this on board has led to higher median/mean in the past 30 days, which shows I’m a better quality contributor to the community). Anyway – is this a fair reflection? Or am I self-aggrandizing again?