The 50 Plus Comment Karma Penalty Easily Explained

I’m seeing some people – even many with 5 and 6 figure stacks of Moons – confused about the karma penalty after 50 comments, so I’ll try to elaborate that it’s easier to understand.

Your first 49 comments in a day are not penalized. Comments 50-54 start with -1 karma, comments 55-59 start with -2, 60-64 with -3, etc. This continues until each comment starts with -25 karma.

The thing is, you do NOT actually go into the negatives, those karma deductions are only the amount of positive karma required for you to offset the negative. If you do not offset the negative, your comment’s karma will be 0.

Most people should be aware of this but your own, initial upvote that each comment starts with does NOT count towards earning karma.

Example 1: Comment #62 only has 1 upvote, therefore, this comment’s karma will be 0, not -2.

Example 2: Comment #69 has 6 upvotes, therefore, after overcoming the karma penalty of -4, you’ll be +2 karma for that comment.

This is a very good system, as you can go ahead and comment 400+ times a day as long as you realize that after comments 65+ it’s highly likely that you’ll be netting 0 karma for those comments. It’s great because if someone is just chatting away in a thread they don’t have to worry about being penalized, provided they’re content with not earning anymore that day, while also being a great deterrent from anyone who would try to put out 1000+ comments a day if the penalty didn’t exist.

TLDR – the karma penalty is only the amount of positive karma required to start earning on those comments, not an actual negative penalty.

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