The recent implementation of a -5 karma penalty for replying to comments that are at -3 or below has clearly met with some disagreement and controversy. See http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/eb9/meta_karma_for_last_30_days/7aon . However, at the same time, it seems that Eliezer's observation that trolling and related problems have over time gotten worse here may be correct. It may be that this an inevitable consequence of growth, but it may be that it can be handled or reduced with some solution or set of solutions. I'm starting this discussion thread for people to propose possible solutions. To minimize anchoring bias and related problems, I'm not going to include my ideas in this header but in a comment below. People should think about the problem before reading proposed solutions (again to minimize anchoring issues).
This seems intuitively likely, and is likely true in many cases. In the end, if you don't have good commenters, there may not be much to be done about it on a technical level. However, it's not obvious to me it applies here. For example, the entire karma system is a technical solution that seems to be, if not ideal, better than nothing in dealing with the social problem of filtering content on this site and Reddit.