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There are several uses. They are (Edit: not, see below) used for post ordering, but do provide a reputation signal within the community for other users and mode
by fardo 4y ago
There are several uses. They are (Edit: not, see below) used for post ordering, but do provide a reputation signal within the community for other users and moderators, provide a mild directional incentive towards producing quality, provide a way to gate certain features to longer, more experienced users such as downvoting or post flagging/vouching, and improve retention by adding the light gamification of “going for high scores”.
- ClapperHeid 4y ago>provide a reputation signal within the community for other users... But you can't see other users' karma... unless you go digging into their profiles. So it doesn't really provde any readily visible indication of reputation.
- a2800276 4y agoDon't underestimate the power of boredom and procrastination...
- Someone 4y ago> They are used for post ordering Are they? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html: Do posts by users with more karma rank higher? No.
- zamadatix 4y agoI think the post is referring to user karma and the gp is referring to comment karma (which is used for ordering, along with comment age, flags, and some other factors according to the FAQ). But comment karma is already hidden to other users anyways, why it's displayed to the user is to I guess let them know if their comment was considered constructive or not.
- supriyo-biswas 4y agoThis is just a hunch, but recency and the degree of controversy of the comment (votes:comments ratios) are also considered in ordering threads.