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This has multiple unintended consequences.

Forget commenting on anything that won't hit the front page.

Also forget commenting later on in a story when it gets stale. Best to hit a hot story when it is fresh and a lot of other people will be piling on later.

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Noted in a submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467427

You seem to imply that people primarely comment to get an orange highlight. I don't think the majority of users are that stupid.

Give people a status symbol and they invariably try to attain it.

I'm amazed that you would have a karma system, special colored status indicators, and yet people would still claim that it doesn't affect user behavior.

That's the point, guys. If the karma/colored system didn't affect user behavior, it wouldn't be there

Create a game, and people will play it as a game. Put a number next to someone or a color and people will change behavior to change the color/number. Especially hacker/gamer/competitive males, which are clearly represented pretty well here at HN.

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