There's something about the numbers I can't figure out. Look at the top three HN contributors by karma[1]:

      username    words       karma
  1.  tptacek     4,310,896   416351
  2.  jacquesm    3,841,209   237961
  3.  ingve       2,273       215283

How did ingve get to #3 with just 2 thousand words, whereas tptacek and jacquesm authored 3-4 million words? Looking at his 14-year history, it's true that he hasn't written that much. I suppose one possibility is that his writing is 1000x better at earning karma. But I'm going to hazard a guess that it's the quality of his 3-4 submissions per day that brings up his karma when one of his submissions is a hit (I think that submissions do count toward karma).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders