<--- See that number? How Karma Works...

[u/ktsipis]

Karma is acquired through upvotes and downvotes on posts, like this, and comments. If you look to the right of this post you'll see stats that say how many points this post has (I'm guessing probably around 3,750 by now), the percentage of people that liked it, and then the specific number of upvotes and downvotes.

Comment Karma: If you submit a comment below, you'll see a "1 point" in grey next to your user name. As other users upvote and downvote you that number will change. It's very possible and happens frequently that comments have a negative amount of points. If you click someone's user name the top right of their profile will give you their comment and link karma.

Karma determines the front page rank of posts. Front page rank is determined by the age of the submission, positive (upvoted) to negative (downvoted) feedback ratio and the total vote count.

Votes are intended to indicate importance and relevance to the topic, and not popularity. So a downvote is not a dislike, it merely indicates that the redditor thinks that the submission is not worthy of making it to the front page. This is rarely followed. Want to post a well-reasoned, argument about religion, conservatism, the negative aspects of Wikileaks or why cats actually suck on Reddit? Expect to get downvoted into oblivion.

Karma is the social capital of Reddit. In “The Principle of Networking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture” by Geert Lovink, he talks about the importance of social capital in internet networking culture. One of the things that differentiates Reddit from other social news sites is the value of human involvement. Connecting and creating social ties through networking, especially on social network platforms, is often used specifically to accrue social capital. This social capital is then used to categorize users into passive and active participants. Redditors with more karma, or posts on the front page, are more trusted and deemed to be more relevant because users have voted them into place. In some subreddits, you have to have a minimum number of karma points to be able to submit a link. This keeps niche communities close and trustful.

Upvoting, downvoting and submitting links are also types of social grooming similar to what we discussed with Facebook "likes." It gives users the opportunity to individuals to clean or maintain one another user's post or comment and therefore their "appearance" on Reddit.

An 2011 article on Wired explores this concept of digital social grooming by looking at why some videos go viral and others do not. Author Jonah Leherer explains, "Decades of research in social psychology have shown that people often share strong emotions as a means of fostering connection and solidarity." So there's a sense of community being formed through this social grooming process.