Trolls abuse this to severely dilute sincere discussions by feigning ignorance and inserting bad information. If you don't know who they are, and can't see their history, you have no way of...
I don't think you should judge anyone by either their karma or their comment history, but by the actual contribution you are reading at that moment.
Trolls abuse this to severely dilute sincere discussions by feigning ignorance and inserting bad information. If you don't know who they are, and can't see their history, you have no way of knowing if it's a sincere and attentive person who deserves the time and effort of an answer. You can make a reasonable argument that even a troll deserves a sincere answer; sure, the first time. But it wears people down to keep putting their energy into wasted replies, and eventually many of them will burn out and degrade to low-quality participation. In a community too large to recognize most people by username, you need to take steps to reduce the harm inflicted by trolls, and post histories help more than they harm.
Definitely agree about visible karma. The discussions absolutely need voting (if you eliminate voting, early comments get highest visibility automatically, without even the simple necessity of anybody liking them), but not with visible scores.
Trolls abuse this to severely dilute sincere discussions by feigning ignorance and inserting bad information. If you don't know who they are, and can't see their history, you have no way of knowing if it's a sincere and attentive person who deserves the time and effort of an answer. You can make a reasonable argument that even a troll deserves a sincere answer; sure, the first time. But it wears people down to keep putting their energy into wasted replies, and eventually many of them will burn out and degrade to low-quality participation. In a community too large to recognize most people by username, you need to take steps to reduce the harm inflicted by trolls, and post histories help more than they harm.
Definitely agree about visible karma. The discussions absolutely need voting (if you eliminate voting, early comments get highest visibility automatically, without even the simple necessity of anybody liking them), but not with visible scores.