Your third point is compelling. Psychologically, it diverts attention away from a specific number, and toward a general concept of "goodness", segregated by cl

Your third point is compelling. Psychologically, it diverts attention away from a specific number, and toward a general concept of "goodness", segregated by club. Then, rather then concentrating on getting the next karma point, users try to enter certain club, and each club has a general identity to it (with the top being those who provide thoughtful, intelligent responses, and typically only speak when they have something to say). Creating different clubs (creating classes of users) isn't arguably bad so long as there is easy mobility between classes based on merit. The natural question is how and whether to indicate the "class" or "club" a user is in. Make it public? Indicate it in comments? PG tried a red dot next to high-karma users some time ago, then scrapped it; maybe there's some other way to reward users based on club achieved.