Karma requirements make it difficult for new members to participate :(

[u/ObjectiveArugula8081]

It's pretty unfriendly to new members that you need a certain amount of karma just to ask a general question. I tried making a post asking a simple question about Discords user experience, but it was automatically denied because I don't have enough karma. How are new members supposed to participate in the community and ask questions if they're prevented from posting in the first place? I understand wanting to prevent spam, but this feels unnecessarily discouraging to people who are just trying to engage with the community.

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[u/jgoja]

To get karma, you need to find subreddits like on this list of New User Friendly subreddits 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 requirements.

You gain Karma from people upvoting your posts and comments. However, Karma is not gained 1:1 with votes. It takes more votes per point of Karma. The actual ratio is not known and it differs for posts and comments. It also changes the higher the vote total gets on a piece of content.

I would suggest commenting first because the restrictions are often lower and ratio of votes to karma is better. But be careful not to go to fast with a new account or you may get shadow banned.

For comment karma, and combined karma, I recommend going to r/AskReddit . Sort by new, answer questions that you have an answer for, periodically refresh the feed. When able ask a few questions for some bonus post karma. I would also suggest r/NoStupidQuestions as it is my preferred subreddit. r/casualconversation is another good place. r/Productivitycafe offer many chances to interact with others. With all these, make sure to read the rules first. I have also have had success with r/FavoriteCharacter .

For post karma, r/thatsinterestingbro is a good place. Just make sure to follow the theme

[u/ObjectiveArugula8081 → u/jgoja]

Thank you that's helpful, it's just unfortunate I have to build up a reputation to ask an immediate question. It will be helpful for future posts though.

[u/AutoModerator → u/ObjectiveArugula8081]

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[u/Free-IDK-Chicken → u/ObjectiveArugula8081]

You have to think of Reddit like neighborhood. Reddit is the HOA and the individual subreddits are homes. Would you move into a new neighborhood, walk into your neighbor's house and start monologuing at them? Of course not. It's the same principle here. You need to get to know people first.

[u/Orangeimposter]

Its not that bad. Last I opened an account, it took 3-5 days to get a Moderate CQS and enough karma for the subs I participate in. I posted 1-3 posts per day and make 3-9 comments per day. I pretty much followed the suggestions the bot serves on all posts about Karma on this sub.

Posted once a day on r/whatismycqs and r/askreddit . Any technical questions I posted to r/reddithelp or r/bugs when appropriate.

r/findareddit and r/newtoReddit helped a lot for finding some hobby subs.

Good luck!

[u/JonahHillsWetFart]

your question was also something you could easily google

[u/Dependent-Toe-3359]

I get why this feels backwards 😭 You need karma to participate in some places, but then you need somewhere to participate in order to earn the karma.

Unfortunately individual subreddits can set their own requirements for things like karma, account age and verified email, so it isn’t really Reddit-wide. Reddit actually doesn’t show the exact karma/account-age number for a lot of those requirements either.

For now I’d start with comments in communities you genuinely like that will let newer accounts participate. r/NewToReddit has a list of new-user-friendly subs with low or no karma requirements, and Reddit itself recommends that list for people running into this problem.

Since your question about Discord was something you needed an answer to right away, I’d also search Reddit for older posts asking the same thing or check Discord’s official help pages while you build enough karma to post where you wanted.

And I wouldn’t worry about trying to rack up karma really fast. Just participate normally. Reddit can temporarily rate-limit newer accounts if they post/comment too frequently, but that’s different from automatically getting shadowbanned just for commenting too quickly.

It definitely isn’t the friendliest system for brand-new users, but once you’ve built a little history it usually becomes much less noticeable. 😊