I just stopped myself from commenting on a thread because I was worried for my itty bitty karma score. I'm new, so my karma score is tiny. I'm new enough to know that I might not know all the relevant context, so I stopped myself in case what I was going to say was too obvious.

I wish that newbies could have a protected period from being downvoted to the pits of negative karma if the new person is clearly giving an honest effort. But at the same time, downvoting trolls makes very good sense. I realize it's not practical to separate out new people from potential trolls. So for now, I find that I am being very, very careful.

Nevertheless, do we want the new people to feel the need to be careful? (Yes, I know that other sites do this: I have a decent karma on slashdot. Is it what this site wants?)