zlacker

You think it's a good idea to penalize people for commenting? How does this help people new to the scene? "Thanks for joining in the conversation, here's a penalty" This only rewards people who have been around in the scene for a while, while penalizing all the new people.

>>rexree+(OP)
Penalizing comments is also a more graceful solution than invite-only, because I doubt Jason Fried or Joel Spolsky care too much about their karma score here; the only people this dissuades are people who are commenting to game.

>>rexree+(OP)
People who have been around longer also know better what the community expects.

>>rexree+(OP)
It's not penalizing, it's just acknowledging seniority. Sort of like how on Slashdot you can't vote on other peoples' comments until you accumulate enough karma.

>>roadno+34
> acknowledging seniority

Why is seniority good in and of itself? Privileging seniority seems anti-democratic and anti-newbie.

>>tptace+c2
It doesn't dissuade anyone who doesn't care about their karma, or who feels strongly enough about what they want to say.

A karma penalty is a very soft slap on the wrist, at best.

It won't stop trolls, or assholes, or anyone with an agenda.

Subtracting a fixed amount of karma also gets less effective the more karma one has accumulated. So people with a lot of karma will be able to get away with more than people with less karma.

This has an upside, in that it allows more valued members of the community to express themselves more freely. The downside is that they can act like assholes without much repercussion. If the community winds up rewarding them for acting like assholes (by, say, upvoting their assholish comment) then that's even worse.

Of course, any community that not only tolerates but encourages assholes is not a community I want to be part of, and I've left a number of communities over that sort of behavior.

But there are other solutions short of "love it or leave it". I describe one such alternative in another comment in this thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405266