By default on reddit and lesswrong, posts start with 1 karma, coming from the user upvoting themselves.
Actually, on LessWrong, I’m fairly sure the karma value of a particular user’s regular vote depends on the user’s existing karma score. Users with a decent karma total usually have a default vote value of 2 karma rather than 1, so each comment they post will have 2 karma to start. Users with very high karma totals seem to have a vote that’s worth 3 karma by default. Something similar happens with strong votes, though I’m not sure what kind of math is used there.
Aside: I’ve sometimes thought that users should be allowed to pick a value for their vote that’s anywhere between 1 and the value of their strong upvote, instead of being limited to either a regular vote (2 karma in my case) or a strong vote (6 karma). In my case, I literally can’t give people karma values of 1, 3, 4, or 5, which could be useful for more granular valuations.
This is tangential, but I think I understand why you can’t pick a value for your vote. The idea behind giving high-karma users stronger votes was that a high-karma user having the same level of approval for a post is stronger evidence of the post’s quality. Something that Alicorn likes-but-not-enough-to-strong-upvote has a better shot at being good than something that new_user_420 likes-but-not-enough-to-strong upvote.
Actually, on LessWrong, I’m fairly sure the karma value of a particular user’s regular vote depends on the user’s existing karma score. Users with a decent karma total usually have a default vote value of 2 karma rather than 1, so each comment they post will have 2 karma to start. Users with very high karma totals seem to have a vote that’s worth 3 karma by default. Something similar happens with strong votes, though I’m not sure what kind of math is used there.
Aside: I’ve sometimes thought that users should be allowed to pick a value for their vote that’s anywhere between 1 and the value of their strong upvote, instead of being limited to either a regular vote (2 karma in my case) or a strong vote (6 karma). In my case, I literally can’t give people karma values of 1, 3, 4, or 5, which could be useful for more granular valuations.
This is tangential, but I think I understand why you can’t pick a value for your vote. The idea behind giving high-karma users stronger votes was that a high-karma user having the same level of approval for a post is stronger evidence of the post’s quality. Something that Alicorn likes-but-not-enough-to-strong-upvote has a better shot at being good than something that new_user_420 likes-but-not-enough-to-strong upvote.
This is indeed one of the major considerations.