> I'd like to see the karma system dispensed with entirely
Totally agree with that. Comments should be judged on their merits, not the number of points they have gained or lost. Disagreement should be expressed using actual words rather than "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". Removing comment karma would slow people down as they scan comments: rather than just looking for the highest-rated ones, they would have to look at the meaning of all of them. Bitch-slapping commenters with a down-vote doesn't add anything to community or discussion. Clicking the "me too!" upvote button doesn't help that much either.
Keep a flag for "spam", "inappropriate" or "offensive" and leave it at that. People who habitually misuse those buttons should lose the ability to use them at all. People who are constantly (and justifiably) reported using them should have their account limited in some way, maybe limiting the frequency or number of comments they can make.
(I mean comment karma, specifically, not submission karma.)
Totally agree with that. Comments should be judged on their merits, not the number of points they have gained or lost. Disagreement should be expressed using actual words rather than "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". Removing comment karma would slow people down as they scan comments: rather than just looking for the highest-rated ones, they would have to look at the meaning of all of them. Bitch-slapping commenters with a down-vote doesn't add anything to community or discussion. Clicking the "me too!" upvote button doesn't help that much either.
Keep a flag for "spam", "inappropriate" or "offensive" and leave it at that. People who habitually misuse those buttons should lose the ability to use them at all. People who are constantly (and justifiably) reported using them should have their account limited in some way, maybe limiting the frequency or number of comments they can make.
(I mean comment karma, specifically, not submission karma.)