Any solution relying on karma is doomed to fail imo.
Karma is easy to min-max. I've gotten good at it. Only ~1200 karma but I'm averaging over 10 per post. It's easy with a bit of practice.
None of my comments are particularly good. They typically express a mostly safe opinion in a mild manner. I don't like to make non-root posts as they rarely get upvotes and I hesitate to post in a large thread (like this one) as it's easy to get buried.
I don't even know why I post this way to be honest. I was mostly just curious to see how high I could get my average. The bar to get upvotes on HN seemed really high at first and I wanted to be a good poster. Now I see the road to karma is paved with safe, fluffy comments.
I will corroborate this, from the POV of someone who has been here a long while. (> 13000) Commenting and downvoting has gotten less thoughtful around here of late. I especially note that there's a lot of knee-jerk downvoting by people who seem to read carelessly.
I think it started with the 500 karma requirement for downvoting. I wanted the ability to downvote so I min-maxed my comments to get there quickly. After that trying to increase my average is just a way to see if I'm improving.
I don't view it as conforming or trying to gain acceptance. It's more like a silly game. It does have potential value as it's good practice for interacting with the media and making company blog posts.
I don't think the fact that people conform is surprising. What is, possibly, surprising is that someone laid it out there - that they are being a conformist.
Typically, in my experience, people aren't that honest with themselves.
Karma is easy to min-max. I've gotten good at it. Only ~1200 karma but I'm averaging over 10 per post. It's easy with a bit of practice.
None of my comments are particularly good. They typically express a mostly safe opinion in a mild manner. I don't like to make non-root posts as they rarely get upvotes and I hesitate to post in a large thread (like this one) as it's easy to get buried.
I don't even know why I post this way to be honest. I was mostly just curious to see how high I could get my average. The bar to get upvotes on HN seemed really high at first and I wanted to be a good poster. Now I see the road to karma is paved with safe, fluffy comments.