"karma farming" is just another way of saying "playing to the base" on any site. No one actually thinks the points here are worth anything or worth tracking.

It started out on slashdot, the forum that invented the entire concept back in the late 90s.

karma is a term _used_ by reddit, but it definitely isn't exclusively used there. Outside of its hindu origin, it's used by quite a few forums that track user submission/comment votes as a user score, including hackernews.

HN user pg, aka Paul Graham, the (co-)founder of both this site, i.e. HN, and YC itself, the "parent" site, was probably the guy (or one of his early colleagues) who implemented the karma feature here on HN.

I am saying this because the feature has been there from pretty early on.

No need to believe me, go verify it yourself, by any means you choose.

And see:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EndlessKnot03d.png

Oh there is definitely something wrong with using Reddit after their API fiasco revealed how much disdain they have for their own users and moderators, but that’s besides the point