I get the feeling that LW has a lot of lurkers with interesting things to say, but who are too afraid to say them. They may eventually build up the courage they need to contribute to the community, but this system would scare them off. They don't yet have enough data to predict how well their posts would be received. We need to be doing the opposite and remove some of the barriers to joining in.
On the other hand, trolls don't care that much about karma. They'll just exploit sock puppets.
Yeah, LW would probably not be the place to try this. I would guess that most potential karma systems only truly function correctly with a sufficient population of users, a sufficient number of people reading each post. LW has atrophied too much for this.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.
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