I generally think that not having a karma count is overall beneficial. Based on all the negative outcomes of the variations we’ve seen in other services (Facebook’s like, Twitter’s follower count and blue check, Reddit’s karma), I feel like overall it degenerates into negative pressure that causes people to choose clout and popularity over genuine, meaningful engagement.

That being said, I am not a member of a marginalized community and have not experienced the positive effects it can have, so I have no expertise in this area. Take my words above with that in mind. Using something like karma to keep out trolls and protect community members is a very valid positive use case. Using it not as an indicator of clout but rather an indication of safety or empathy (general “niceness”) is, I think, a beneficial use of a karma-like tracker. There are good reasons to have a karma count.

Perhaps a better implementation of “karma” might be a metric not based solely on likes or upvotes, but rather something that is conferred by each individual community, and shared by like-minded communities. That way, the karma would be qualified in various spheres of communities as opposed to a site-wide popularity contest. That would make it difficult for people in a troll forum, who get lots of karma from like-minded trolls, to use that karma to get into other communities where their karma would be considered “bad karma”. If I, as a mod, looked at a prospective user and saw that all their karma came from communities that are antithetical to mine, I could assume they’d probably not be a good fit for my sub.

If there is to be the idea of karma here, I hope that it would be more nuanced than just “this person knows how to get people to engage with them”. I personally am not wanting karma to become a thing here, at least the way it was implemented on Reddit. I don’t believe that the majority of people are capable of using it primarily for beneficial reasons as it currently works.