In my experience, if I do my homework and show it (e.g. links in the post), I can be not merely contrary but actually wrong, and still get awarded paperclips for effort. I presume this is a vote for "more like this", i.e. posts that put in effort.

Well, that, or the effort makes you look like you're right. You could be right and a vote is translated as, "Yes, more of this," but an alternative would be, "Wow, sources, looks smart and probably right."

Or, people just don't follow the links but upvote because they're passing by and there's links with attract attention and a click of the mouse.

(Not poo-pooing your effort, just suggesting alternative interpretations.)

Best thing to do about it, I think, would be to point out that putting effort into your comment will get you paperclips.

Probably. But suppose you want to increase your paperclips per unit of effort. Then that point won't really help.

If someone wants to up their account karma per unit of effort, there are ways.

• Rather than writing one long comment, splitting it into two gives you the chance to garner two upvotes per fan instead of one. If your comment is a mix of good and bad points, dividing it may separate the gold in your comment from the lead.

• Putting a lot of effort into your comments can backfire, because hard to write can mean hard to read. If your long comment isn't read, it probably won't be upvoted.

• Repetition works. If you notice that one of your comments got a lot of karma, repeating the performance can multiply your profit.

So: does effort pay off? I'm sure it does on average, but from what I've seen, the variation is very high.

Nothing substantive to say, but i do remember somebody recently suggesting that the karma "points" should be nicknamed "paperclips". It's nice to see somebody using this convention, it amuses me.