Just showing my age, I guess.
I think of it as a mailing list, and in particular, was copying the meta tagging usage of the old Extropians list. Probably lots of things would have been better, the first that come to mind are "Forum" or "Forum Software".
META pinged a few neurons, but seemed wrong, as it was used more to apply to comments about other comments or threads, and often moderation issues, but not about the software.
What's up with that?
In a discussion thread, I can karma vote on anyone.
But if I select a person to see all their posts, for some people, karma is disabled while looking at them, and for others, it's not disabled. Same thing if I look at their posts under the list of all my posts.