I think the minimum karma for posting (20) is too low. My fear is not an influx of shoddy posts. Rather, ~20 karma is too low because many first posting attempts don’t go well even if the user could eventually make lots of positive contributions. Often, the work isn’t up to our expectations and we’ll vote the post down to −2 to −5 (or sometimes worse). But since votes on posts are worth 10 karma the author’s karma total just gets decimated. Thirty karma isn’t a big deal to posters with totals in the the thousands, but a −3 to someone with the minimum requirements to post puts them lower than where they started. The numerical representation of the effort they’ve put in participating and trying to understand the content here is wiped out. Add to the fact that publishing here is really intimidating to begin with and the fact that we can be kind of mean: there is a decent chance that low karma posters whose first posts don’t go over well won’t come back (or won’t comeback for a long time), like in a video game when you die and haven’t saved. I fear this will happen if it hasn’t already (I won’t single them out but looking back there are one or two cases where this may have occurred).
With a higher karma level the hit from a bad post can be comfortably absorbed and people won’t feel so bad, it’s like having to restart the level instead of the game. Plus waiting probably increases the chances the post will go over well. We could leave this up to the discretion of individual posters but it seems likely to me that many people won’t properly anticipate the reaction they will have if their karma hits zero or below.
Also, if a power or award is easy to get it just isn’t as exciting when you get it.
I think the minimum karma for posting (20) is too low. My fear is not an influx of shoddy posts. Rather, ~20 karma is too low because many first posting attempts don’t go well even if the user could eventually make lots of positive contributions. Often, the work isn’t up to our expectations and we’ll vote the post down to −2 to −5 (or sometimes worse). But since votes on posts are worth 10 karma the author’s karma total just gets decimated. Thirty karma isn’t a big deal to posters with totals in the the thousands, but a −3 to someone with the minimum requirements to post puts them lower than where they started. The numerical representation of the effort they’ve put in participating and trying to understand the content here is wiped out. Add to the fact that publishing here is really intimidating to begin with and the fact that we can be kind of mean: there is a decent chance that low karma posters whose first posts don’t go over well won’t come back (or won’t comeback for a long time), like in a video game when you die and haven’t saved. I fear this will happen if it hasn’t already (I won’t single them out but looking back there are one or two cases where this may have occurred).
With a higher karma level the hit from a bad post can be comfortably absorbed and people won’t feel so bad, it’s like having to restart the level instead of the game. Plus waiting probably increases the chances the post will go over well. We could leave this up to the discretion of individual posters but it seems likely to me that many people won’t properly anticipate the reaction they will have if their karma hits zero or below.
Also, if a power or award is easy to get it just isn’t as exciting when you get it.