Being an active participant on HN has been very helpful to me professionally. HN karma, on the other hand, has not. The only thing that ever came from karma for me was a TechCrunch interview about HN.

There are great commenters who are very well-known who don't rank anywhere on the leaderboard. 'pbsd is a well-known cryptographer. 'tzs is the best commenter on HN. 'carbocation is a doctor/medical researcher.

Being engaged and available is important. The leaderboard is a really warped assessment of that. HN should get rid of it, along with the whole karma system.

An easy start: continue scoring comments, but stop revealing per-user karma totals.

I don't think anyone needs an AMA from me or Patrick McKenzie. The Ries AMA is interesting because he isn't a regular, and has interesting things to say.