The karma system discourages duplication and it is worth its weight in gold just for that. Imagine if the 50 people that agree with a comment felt the need to chime in. Whereas with karma you upvote and are done with it.
To a newbie, karma voting patterns have huge instructional value (at least they did for me)
Why assume that everybody that upvotes now would take the time to "me too"?
If anything what I see again and again is that some comment takes a quick lead in upvotes in a topic and dominates the conversation afterwards, despite being often followed by more interesting comments.
Comments
The karma system discourages duplication and it is worth its weight in gold just for that. Imagine if the 50 people that agree with a comment felt the need to chime in. Whereas with karma you upvote and are done with it.
To a newbie, karma voting patterns have huge instructional value (at least they did for me)
HN without karma wouldn't be HN.
Why assume that everybody that upvotes now would take the time to "me too"?
If anything what I see again and again is that some comment takes a quick lead in upvotes in a topic and dominates the conversation afterwards, despite being often followed by more interesting comments.