[sixstringtheory]

HN bestows various abilities once you pass certain karma thresholds. It's the only site I know of that does this and I think it really helps keep a better community.

It's a direct counterexample to the other comments saying karma is meaningless and isn't or shouldn't be used as a proxy for trust. It might be misplaced trust in some cases, but it is trust nonetheless.

[cestith]

Slashdot and StackOverflow give you more capabilities with a higher reputation. Slashdot likes to give moderator points to people with higher reputations, and to people who metamoderate frequently which is itself guarded by reputation. Your votes are recorded at StackOverflow with no real reputation, but they only count for or against a post if you yourself have a high enough score - I forget what they call your reputation/karma/whatever there.

[sixstringtheory]

Ah, how could I forget StackOverflow?? Thanks for reminding me.

[minimaxir]

The highest threshold for unlocking features HN is at 501 karma (comment downvoting), which is not a lot and is mostly there to limit abuse.

More importantly, it doesn't affect the submission ranking algorithm at all.

[greycol]

I hear that if you reach rank 50 or above on the HN leaderboard you gain the ability to have your posts appear with <blink> in rainbow colours but those who have it are too wise to use this power.

More seriously these posts got me interested in what features besides downvoting would be added at various karma levels which led me to your git page on the topic. Linked here for others interested:

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

[sixstringtheory]

I appreciated your joke because the latest trend I hate about reddit are the party-parrot-esque avatars. I immediately scroll them off the screen, couldn't care less what they have to say. (I say this as a lover of the party parrot, but, time & place people...)