Your User Page
Let's look again at the links and buttons that appear in the upper-right corner of every Reddit page:
You'll notice a few items here. First, there's our username, accompanied by a little number in parentheses. That number is our karma score, which we'll look at in a moment. Clicking our name will take us to an overview of all of our activity on Reddit:
We haven't done much yet, so there isn't much to look at! But in the future, after we've made some posts and comments and voted on some items, all of that information will be here for us to look at. The tabs across the top of the page organize this information in helpful ways.
In the sidebar, we see a few more items: our "New User" trophy (which will only last for a week or so), and our karma score.
The cumulative total of all the upvotes and downvotes for every link you post and every comment you make is translated into your personal karma scores. There are two kinds of karma: link karma, for those items you post to Reddit (not counting self-posts); and comment karma, for all the comments you make in discussion threads. Your karma score is a general reflection of how much you've contributed to the Reddit community, but that's about all. Karma scores, no matter how high or how low, don't bring any benefits or consequences to users.
Looking back at the top of the general Reddit page, next to your name you see a little grey envelope icon:
Whenever another Redditor replies to a link or comment you've posted, or sends you a direct message through the website, this envelope icon will turn orange to alert you that you have a message waiting. Clicking this envelope icon will take you straight to your Reddit inbox.
Next to that, you can see a link to your preferences menu.
Next to that, you can see a link to your preferences menu.
Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can choose all of your preferences on the Reddit website, including language choice, display and messaging options, and privacy options.
Between these tools, you have a lot of control over how Reddit works for you.
So now you've got the basics down! You can manage your account, you can submit links and comments, and you can vote on items posted by other users. You're ready to jump in!
Wait... there's actually a little bit more to show you to help make your earliest experiences with Reddit more enjoyable and worthwhile.