This is exactly the interpretation that I formed of Karma after my brief exchange with... with... I forget who, but it was an Eastern European Gentleman. In it, he said he downvoted a comment due to it being vague and repetitious. So, I did a quick study of those comments that were strongly upvoted and discovered that the vast majority had contributed something to the dialog.

Although, not having a lot of Karma has led me to be rather slow to post anything as a main blog post where the Karma seems to have more weight (if I am interpreting this correctly). I do have something I have been working on, but the "Karma to Burn" does make me hesitant to post something that could send my karma score into the negative.