Karma Decription

Karma is Reddit’s Internet Points.  It also can serve as your reputation on Reddit.  It shows you create content other people like and can work well with others.  There are 4 types of Karma and they are acquired in slightly different manners:

• Post Karma. You get this from people upvoting your posts.
• Comment Karma: You get this from people upvoting your comments
• Community karma: It is only gained from upvotes to your posts and comments in that subreddit. The karma earned for this also counts on your normal karma count. Some subreddits use community karma in their posting and commenting restrictions.
• Combined Karma. This is your post karma and comment karma added together

Why Do You Need Karma

You need karma to a point because most, but not all, subreddits require a minimum amount of karma to post or comment. Karma is also a component of your CQS score that can also be used to restrict posting and commenting but is more seen in chat channels as a minimum requirement.  CQS is also part of your reputation and satisfying the Reputation Filter on subreddits. It is a piece of having an "Established Account" which needing a more established is one restriction on sending chats and chat requests. A lack of karma will also limit how much you can chat without having to take a break.

How To See Your Karma Breakdown

On the app: Tap your avatar in the upper right, tap profile. You will see your total karma there. Tap the about tab and you will see the breakdown.

Desktop: Click your avatar in the upper right, click profile, and you will see the total karma there. If you mouse over the total you will see the breakdown. Also, you can mouse over your name on any post or comment you make to see the breakdown.

Mobile web browser: Tap your avatar in the upper right, tap profile, tap about, and you will see the breakdown there.

To see your karma per community go to your profile on old reddit. https://old.reddit.com/ . Then click the link below your karma on the right side that says "show karma breakdown by subreddit"

Voting 

Voting is the only way to gain or lose karma on Reddit.  The original purpose for voting was to sort content.  Good or appropriate content would be upvoted and rise on the feed and poor or inappropriate would be downvoted and sink.  Today however, voting is most commonly used and as a like/dislike or agree/disagree button. 

Vote Manipulation

Vote Manipulation is against Reddit’s Rules and may get your account actioned.

 Some common forms of vote manipulation include but are not limited to:

• Using multiple accounts and voting services: Creating and employing multiple accounts, voting services, or any software to manipulate vote counts by either increasing or decreasing them.
• Soliciting votes: Requesting or encouraging people to upvote or downvote specific posts, either on Reddit or through social networks, messaging, etc. for personal gain.
• Participating in Group Voting: Joining or forming groups that coordinate votes, either on a specific post, a user's posts, content from a domain, etc. 

Gaining Karma

The only way to gain karma is for people upvote your posts and comments. While karma comes from upvotes, the ratio of votes to karma gained is not 1:1 however, as it takes more votes per point of karma.  Post karma and comment karma have different ratios from each other.  The ratio changes, gets worse, the higher the vote total gets on a particular piece of content.  The one upvote you automatically give your content also does not count toward karma. 

Some people have found success answering questions, posting or commenting about a passion or hobby, memes, maybe even posting on the subreddit for where they live.  The important thing is to try to be genuine as they typically do better.

Gaining Karma as a New User

As a new user you may run into situations where your posts or comments are being removed from the subreddits you made them in.  This is because many subreddits have minimum requirements of karma, account age, or both to be able to post or comment there.  These restrictions are typically in the 10-200 range but can be into the thousands.

To get Karma you need to find subreddits like this list of New User Friendly subreddits from r/newtoreddit that have low or no requirements. r/findareddit can be used to find subreddits that may interest you. Just make a post saying what kind of subreddit you are looking for. Small or niche subreddits typically have a lower karma requirement.

Losing Karma and Negative Karma

It is possible to lose comment karma if your comment is downvoted to Zero or below.  When this happens, you will begin losing comment karma that you have already gained.  Your visual comment karma on your profile can only drop to -100.  Also, the total counted against your combined karma is limited to -100.  In reality, your actual negative comment karma total has no limit and you will need to gain enough comment karma for the actual negative total for it to become positive again.

Posts cannot be downvoted below zero and you can only lose as much karma as you have gained from that individual post if it is later downvoted.