[DanBC]

You need a small amount of karma to get the flag button.

You need a bit more karma to be able to change the colour of the top bar.

You need a bit more karma to get the downvote button.

I'm not sure whether your average comment karma is used to place your comment on a page.

[jaynos]

I worked really hard to get that downvote arrow, but then stopped caring much about karma and probably haven't actually downvoted anything (just like that the option is there). Now I'm off to change my banner color.

[ducuboy]

That's what I was thinking, is karma really worth the time and effort?

I understand how it helps the forum work well, but for the user doesn't seem much more than a vanity feature. Being able to flag/downvote is something I really don't care about.

[dragonwriter]

> That's what I was thinking, is karma really worth the time and effort?

Score on particular posts is a signal rather than a reward, IMO, and, no, if you are expending effort specifically in order to boost your karma score, its probably not worth it.

[ducuboy]

Oh, and you need 200 of karma to create a poll.

I'm still not there yet, and I lost a lot of karma because of it. This is a post of mine that got 31 points - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8339667

And it was picked up by somebody with more karma that created a poll about it and gained 71 points on that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8339900

That was a bit unfair..