Personally, I'm not such a fan of the lack of transparency on HN, because it makes the manipulations of the moderators very opaque and shady. My previous accoun

Personally, I'm not such a fan of the lack of transparency on HN, because it makes the manipulations of the moderators very opaque and shady. My previous account got slowbanned despite the karma accumulated over years. If you're going to run a place like that, overrule the community and keep them in the dark, you might as well ditch karma altogether (or make it 100% invisible and just use it as an internal aid). Otherwise you're just encouraging behavior you clearly don't want. I'm not arguing the right or wrong about the way HN is run, I just don't see the point in having karma at all here.