Three streams, one ratio, five levels. Decays. Dampened against pile-ons. Honest about its multipliers. This page is the policy.
Karma is not a single number. We expose three so the page can tell different stories about the same person, and so high-volume posters can't drown out thoughtful ones.
Upvotes earned on threads you started.
Upvotes earned on replies you wrote.
Lifecycle of proposals you filed.
A ratio, not a stream. The percentage of your karma-eligible upvotes in the last 90 days that came from cells other than your own. The number that distinguishes a popular voice from a heard voice.
The 35% threshold gates Steelman+. Falling below it starts a 30-day grace window before the badge lapses.
bridgingScore = upvotes_from_other_cells_90d ────────────────────────── upvotes_total_90d
Recomputed nightly from the same audit log that drives your karma streams. The 90-day window keeps the score current without rewarding old viral moments. Opt-in public from your privacy settings.
Five levels, computed from total karma and Bridging Score. Lower tiers don't lapse — once you've earned them, they stay. Steelman and Atlas can lapse with a 30-day grace window.
Karma decays over 18 months: full value for the first 6, then linearly to zero. The point is to keep the leaderboard honest about the present — not to punish you for an old viral thread.
A vote earned today is worth its full value for 6 months. After that it decays linearly to zero over the next 12 months. Old karma never haunts you — the leaderboard is always about now.
Recomputed nightly. Your active surface refills it whenever you post.
The number on the page should mean something. So we apply five mechanical rules at karma calculation time — and tell you about them here.
Server-side, before karma is ever recorded. An upvote from the post's own author counts socially as zero and earns zero karma.
An upvote from a cell other than yours earns more karma. Captures the harder-to-earn signal of agreement across ideology lines.
If a thread receives more than 8 upvotes from one cell within 30 minutes, additional same-cell votes within that window count 0.25×. Stops pile-ons from inflating karma.
Accounts younger than 7 days vote at half weight, can't DM, and can't file proposals. Lifts automatically at the 7-day mark.
Your cell identity is locked for a week after every quiz retake. Prevents reputation laundering by hopping into a more credible cell.
One person can give one other person at most 5 karma-earning upvotes per day. Further votes register socially — but earn zero karma.
Twelve to start. Five auto-tier badges follow your level. Seven achievement badges are awarded by event triggers and are repeatable where it makes sense.
Joined.
Karma ≥ 50.
Karma ≥ 250.
Karma ≥ 1,000 and Bridging Score ≥ 35%.
Karma ≥ 2,500, Bridging Score ≥ 35%, and one shipped proposal.
First reply on a thread ≥3 cells away that earned ≥10 upvotes.
Wrote a reply that the OP of an opposing-cell thread upvoted.
One bug-category proposal reached shipped.
One feature-category proposal reached shipped.
Among the first 1,000 accounts.
Hosted a READING-tagged thread that got ≥20 replies.
Five+ quizzes spanning twelve+ months.