&#62; <i>I've lurked HN for a while, but haven't given back in any way until today. My friend enjoyed this piece and encouraged me to share it to a wider audience, so here you are.</i><p>Off-topic, there, you were warned, but I've never understood lurking HN, reddit, digg, or any other karma-driven web community since all it takes is an upvote or downvote and suddenly you are no longer lurking. I mean why not create an account to simply save what you like? I think there is this sensitivity towards karma that affects HN more so than other communities, both good and bad, given it's intellectual user base and it's alliance to pg. IMO, karma is merely an indicator of user input and a value the rest of that community (the hive-mind) assigns for each input; my point being that as long as you're upvoting and downvoting anything you're still contributing, not lurking.