I agree it's annoying and probably a problem, but I think there's still less groupthink than on most forums I've seen. I do agree that it can definitely be frustrating; I have a post I want to write up on the value of starting things sooner rather than later, and I was all set to start typing it up back when I had 19 karma (you need 20 to make a full post), but then I started posting in this thread, and my karma score drifted back down to a single digit. It's doubly frustrating because I can't tell if people legitimately think my posts there are without merit or if they're just using it as an agree/disagree button. If they do think my posts are terrible no one has said as such.