Depends whether you’re talking intended purpose or actual function. The intended purpose of the karma system is to make low-quality comments less visible. It doesn’t do a very good job of that here; it does a better job in Reddit where there’s a larger userbase and threads are sorted by karma by default, since most people don’t read all the way to the bottom of a thread, but collapsing threads doesn’t do much.
The actual function of karma is to gently incentivize posting things interesting to the community, to somewhat less gently disincentivize content-free posts, and to not-at-all-gently dissuade persistent cranks and trolls and short-circuit discussions of things that’re really strongly disapproved of (the so-called troll toll, though most of its victims are not trolls). I don’t think this is a bad thing on balance—community can be undervalued in nerdy circles, so it’s handy to have a semi-mechanical way of encouraging it without everything degenerating into cat pictures -- but one shouldn’t mistake it for something it’s not.
I haven’t seen much evidence of widespread use of sockpuppets.
The actual function of Karma as you describe doesn’t bother me. I’ll continue voting as usual. The anti-kibitzing option just hides the votes so I don’t see them. For me I hope out of sight out of mind actually works for this problem.
Depends whether you’re talking intended purpose or actual function. The intended purpose of the karma system is to make low-quality comments less visible. It doesn’t do a very good job of that here; it does a better job in Reddit where there’s a larger userbase and threads are sorted by karma by default, since most people don’t read all the way to the bottom of a thread, but collapsing threads doesn’t do much.
The actual function of karma is to gently incentivize posting things interesting to the community, to somewhat less gently disincentivize content-free posts, and to not-at-all-gently dissuade persistent cranks and trolls and short-circuit discussions of things that’re really strongly disapproved of (the so-called troll toll, though most of its victims are not trolls). I don’t think this is a bad thing on balance—community can be undervalued in nerdy circles, so it’s handy to have a semi-mechanical way of encouraging it without everything degenerating into cat pictures -- but one shouldn’t mistake it for something it’s not.
I haven’t seen much evidence of widespread use of sockpuppets.
The actual function of Karma as you describe doesn’t bother me. I’ll continue voting as usual. The anti-kibitzing option just hides the votes so I don’t see them. For me I hope out of sight out of mind actually works for this problem.