Although others object to karma displayed prominently next to a username, I'm wouldn't be against it --if-- the karma was more meaningful. The problem is that

Although others object to karma displayed prominently next to a username, I'm wouldn't be against it --if-- the karma was more meaningful. The problem is that karma score combines points for submissions and comments. Those are very different activities to combine into a single mathematical scale. (Yes, I know that's also how other sites like Reddit works and a single score is "simple".) Upvotes for submissions is saying something about the userid's curation and/or the type of topic. Some topics are "hot button" and attract upvotes even though the actual writing within the article/blog is substandard. Upvotes for comments is saying something about userid's generative mind. His/her brain has an opinion and the fingers type it out. As an analogy, karma combines upvotes for how a disc-jockey selects (curates) music with the upvotes for how a musician performs live music. This doesn't invalidate the DJ's effort but combining the scores means we lose more information than we gain. I suppose the higher level abstraction we can use to justify a "composite" score of 2 very different activities is the concept of "participation score". In that way, karma==participation. In that case, does showing a participation# add useful information to the posts?