From the previous discussions of this, I still maintain that a possibly minor code change would be worth investigating to reduce the moderator load: only allow upvotes to affect user karma, instead of both upvotes and downvotes. The overwhelming complaints seem to be not so much that comments are downvoted, but that user karma can drop precipitously as a result of a downvoting campaign. Preventing negative votes from affecting karma greatly reduces that.

Where we disagree is interesting for discussion's sake; where we agree is interesting for community building.

That said, I don't have a clear idea on whether we need to do something about 'inability to post due to negative karma' if this change is implemented.