What is the point? Looking at it, the idea implies a requirement where a scarce resource is depleted in order to contribute.
The hopeful goal is that quality of contribution goes up, since you are spending a scarce resource.
In order for this to matter at all and drive behavior, the amount of that scarce resource required to be spent must be significant enough to matter, -or non-trivial (what that amount is I don't know, but that is immaterial).
Here is the problem:
While the goal is changing posting behavior for the better, this system might have unintended consequences that have the opposite effect. Users may just start posting lowest common denominator (Hacker News version of it anyway) posts in order to just snag upvotes so that they always have plenty of karma to post. Essentially, it could encourage "karma-whoring" posts, and comments across the site could devolve in the aggregate if this behavior is adopted in any significant amount.
We all know about certain other social sites and the kind of chaff karma-farming brings in. HN mitigates this my keeping karma hidden among other things. This idea though, seems like a different mechanism that could easily encourage that behavior.
What is the point? Looking at it, the idea implies a requirement where a scarce resource is depleted in order to contribute.
The hopeful goal is that quality of contribution goes up, since you are spending a scarce resource.
In order for this to matter at all and drive behavior, the amount of that scarce resource required to be spent must be significant enough to matter, -or non-trivial (what that amount is I don't know, but that is immaterial).
Here is the problem:
While the goal is changing posting behavior for the better, this system might have unintended consequences that have the opposite effect. Users may just start posting lowest common denominator (Hacker News version of it anyway) posts in order to just snag upvotes so that they always have plenty of karma to post. Essentially, it could encourage "karma-whoring" posts, and comments across the site could devolve in the aggregate if this behavior is adopted in any significant amount.
We all know about certain other social sites and the kind of chaff karma-farming brings in. HN mitigates this my keeping karma hidden among other things. This idea though, seems like a different mechanism that could easily encourage that behavior.