My favorite one is for those people who get enough karma to have pg's phone number in the top right corner of the header - pretty cool

I'm surprised there isn't a rumour about a secret HN board accessible by invitation only.

Those of us on the Board don't like to brag.

I thought HN was just a holding area for people not cool enough for lobste.rs anyway?

The first rule of about the Secret HN Board is: You do not talk about Secret HN Board.

The second rule of Secret HN Board is: You do not talk about secret HN Board.

I think you just started one.

I'll propagate it.

There is no HN cabal...

(Sorry for the other-other-other-site reference)

I thought this was a reference to the backbone cabal of the '80s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbone_cabal

Yes, but indirectly.

It was a relatively common theme on Kuro5hin (back when it had more than 2 stories per year...) that there was no K5 cabal (in reference to the backbone cabal)

I was never a heavy usenet-er, so the K5 reference is the one that stays in my mind.

There is a YC participants only board though, isn't there?

I think you have to have higher karma than pg. He doesn't qualify for his own number.

Wait, that number is "karma" ? I thought it was that Bitcoin thing...

Is that a thing? I don't seem to be able to do that with 18k+, so if it exists there are only a couple dozen people that can.

Can't tell if you're trolling or if I need to hurry up and get a lot more karma!

I have 10K+ and don't have either feature, so probably trolling.

The only milestone I remember hitting was downvoting, around 500.

(Then again, I also have never had flagging power either - I know people get this removed sometimes, but I don't remember ever having had it. Weird).

I have flagging, but nowadays to get it on a comment you need to click the permalink button on a post to get it.

And I'm glad of that, because up until now I've sent in 1 legitimate, intentional report and 10 or so cases of fat fingering the button on a mobile device (not catastrophic because of the unflag option, but still...)

Huh, I never noticed the flagging on comments before.

Are you able to downvote? I'm curious what the karma threshold is for that.

500 is often reported but is incorrect. As of today, it appears to be 501.

711 days ago, when there was a thread about karma levels and I just hit 500, I encountered the same phenomenon. I received a response saying that you don't get to downvote threads created prior to crossing 500. (Obviously, can't verify that, but here's the thread for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3812967)

I just hit comment down voting within the past few karma. So around 775

It was 500 when I hit it, but occasionally goes up. Not sure what it is now.

I hit it at 500 a few weeks ago. Ok, not sure exactly but definitely not more than 510 :)

What algorithm are they using? Is the source open?

HN is in fact open source (an older version of it anyway): http://arclanguage.org/

However much of the "secret sauce" is, well, secret.

YC was founded in 2005, so if you do the math...

HN came in March of 2007.

That's probably when it officially launched. Some accounts are older than that, though (such as pg's account which was created in October 2006.)

How much karma do you need for that?