If I had a few thousand karma points, I don't think I would sweat it. As it stands, by karma I am indsitinguishable from a newbie. I suspect I have a few thousand upvote and a few thousand downvote, but I'm not sure. In my opinon, someone with a few thousand upvote and a few thousand downvote is a very different thing than someone with very few votes of any sort, but the current system labels them the same.
by karma I am indistinguishable from a newbie
Not sure what you mean by this. You have all the posting rights any 10k+ karma user has, short of admins. Presumably you evaluate other forum contributors by the content of their writings, not by the number of karma points.
Several people posted recently in a thread on women, mostly espousing feminist views - only to find that someone had declined to respond to their post, but instead browsed their history and downvoted every single comment or article they had ever posted.
I have two questions:
1. Why would you come to a site like this and pollute the karma system? How does it make you smarter? How does it make anyone else on the site smarter?
2. What would be a good technical workaround? In my mind, some system that detects mass-downvoting and flags a user for review would be preferable, but what should happen then? Should the system be more lenient to higher-karma posters? Who should perform the review process? What should be done with those whom the reviewer ascertains are abusing the karma system? I would prefer some kind of lesson that is more corrective than retributive - it seems to me that people who would perform this behavior are exactly the sort of people who need some of the lessons that this site provides. Any ideas?