Ask HN: Karma Creep?

5 points by mbenjaminsmith 15y ago ↗ HN

I'm not a big HN karma watcher, but I've noticed a pretty strange phenomenon: Every so often I'll get a bump up of 1 or 2 points and, since it seems odd, I'll usually scan my first page of comments and find no noticeable change.

Anyone else experience this? Do people occasionally up-vote really old comments? Caching issue?

5 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 19.8 ms ] thread

dmlorenzetti 15y ago ↗

I occasionally up-vote old comments.

It works like this: I'll read a comment that I find really intriguing for some reason (love or hate, usually). Curious about the poster, I'll go to their "about" page and scan through their old comments, which I'll upvote using the same criteria as for new posts.

Probably once a month or so, I end up giving 3-4 upvotes to one person this way.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago ↗

And http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158116 probably made this effect stronger for a couple of days.

latch 15y ago ↗

I've seen this a bit, and tracked most of it to an old comment in a post asking for what features you'd like to see added to HN thread.

MikeCapone 15y ago ↗

Some old HN threads are linked in more recent threads or on blogs/websites. That could explain it.

makecheck 15y ago ↗

If someone re-posts a submission you made (same URL), your original is upvoted by 1 instead of posting a duplicate.