Comment by eitland

> Except all you earn is worthless non-exchangeable karma.

I think you look at it the wrong way:

For me that "karma" counter on the profile only roughly signals someones worth here: it might either be because they've been helping others for a long time or it might be because of tactical posting of a few interesting stories ahead if everyone else or even just grinding by trying out a couple of (non spam) stories a day or something.

The real value of HN comes from what I have learned over the years, and for many others from the business opportunities they have found as well.

Bonus: I think the only real value of those stupid internet points is to look at threads and see which ones are getting upvoted or downvoted.

If they are upvoted it signals that people found them useful.

If nothing happens that either means the comment was seen by others as correct but not very interesting or few people read it because discussion moved elsewhere.

If they get downvoted then either they:

- said something mean

- was wrong

- said something widely believed to be wrong

- wrote in a way that made people misunderstand your otherwise correct explanation

- you poked a wasps nest, saying something correct that angered many easily angered individuals.

In fact I think we could (not should) remove the accumulated scores from profiles and not lose much of value (though I think many glances profiles sometimes to get a feel for who the person they talk to are).