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Ask HN: How is karma calculated?
Hi everyone, I was just wondering how karma is calcutated here at HN.
I was sitting at -42 karma, over a dumb comment I made that was heavily downvoted. I posted a link today, that has not been upvoted at the time of this writing, and I'm now back at 1 karma.
How did this happen? How is karma calculated?
- dang 12y agoWe implemented a moderation feature code-named "redemption" that puts a user's karma back at 1 when it got blasted by downvotes over something venial and they are clearly a good user otherwise. We did this to try to compensate for some bad side-effects of the change we made earlier this year to count more downvotes than we used to. That was necessary and it worked, but like a lot of medicines, was not completely benign. Our intention is for both of these things (the medicine and the compensating mechanism) to be temporary.
- marcofiset 12y agoThank you, that makes a lot of sense!