HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why new user on HN starts with karma=1?

1 points by refut ↗ HN
Since Hackernews is for hackers, it's quite strange, from my opinion, to start counting from "1". For example, in almost all popular programming languages, the first element in the array is not actually the first. If you want to work with this element in the array, you typically need to call element with number 0 (a[0]). Are there any reason, why new user on HN have 1 karma after the registration? Is it a bonus for registration?

3 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 19.4 ms ] thread
mkal_tsr
Things that keep up the first world at night :-P

Maybe because everyone deserves a baseline non-zero level of respect by virtue of being a person?

refut
Agreed. But when i write code everyday, it become so common to use counting from zero than from 1.
jaredsohn
Perhaps it is was written that way accidentally because it matches how comments and submissions start with a karma of 1. (Comments/submissions likely start with 1 karma because you are essentially giving an upvote to yourself when you provide content.)