> why don't we apply PageRank for every user based on the upvotes they receive for the comments they leave on any post Absolutely not, think about the incentiv

> why don't we apply PageRank for every user based on the upvotes they receive for the comments they leave on any post Absolutely not, think about the incentives this creates! Imagine yourself to be an adversary, how would you game this system? Easy: spam low-effort highly agreeable comments across the site. The more the better, they're basically guaranteed to get some upvotes and boost your karma. Now, with your newfound power, you can shape the HN front page to your will. Instead of the front page being a signal of quality, it would be correlated to the posters' karma. And because the front page is a limited resource, you basically get a crappier version of Twitter where relatively low-karma accounts have practically no chance to get on the front page even with high-quality posts, and high-karma accounts will be able to roll their front-page posts into even more karma. This is pretty much one of the biggest flaws of major social media websites today: they concentrate power in a few users with massive influence.