> The solution to low karma — if, indeed, you care about such things, is to make productive comments.
Fwiw my most upvoted comments are typically my lowest effort comments. Typically either low effort "me too" type confirmations or sarcastic quips that happened to be in favor of whoever was browsing the thread. [What I beleive to be] my more productive, thoughtful, on topic comments tend to mostly get ignored. This has been the case everytime I've tried to use this site. I beleive the the best way to get karma is a mix of proper timing / estimating what the popular opinion / point / etc. will be in a given thread. There are also certain topics and subjects that no matter how well you approach them will typically get you trashed.
Yes, sometimes the quips work the best. But that's also harder. Comedy relies on a good sense of humor, timing, and making sure you read your audience. It can be done, but it's not easy, and no one wants HN to turn into Slashdot of yore. Sometimes I've written jokes that end up with 1 or 0 karma after a lot of votes -- you can only farm karma this way if you're good and lucky.
I think people have a tendency to confuse productive comments with long comments, which isn't helpful either. I find I am most convincing to other people when I speak three to five sentences. If people truly wanted the essay format, they would have actually read the OP!
Fwiw my most upvoted comments are typically my lowest effort comments. Typically either low effort "me too" type confirmations or sarcastic quips that happened to be in favor of whoever was browsing the thread. [What I beleive to be] my more productive, thoughtful, on topic comments tend to mostly get ignored. This has been the case everytime I've tried to use this site. I beleive the the best way to get karma is a mix of proper timing / estimating what the popular opinion / point / etc. will be in a given thread. There are also certain topics and subjects that no matter how well you approach them will typically get you trashed.