I would like to combine your two suggestions like so: Posts in discussion still earn 1 karma per vote. But as soon as a post gets at least five or so points it transfers to promoted. And then you get 10 karma per vote the post receives after getting promoted.
Posts in promoted are visible to people reading discussion, but readers can choose to see only promoted posts.
That way you have a smaller downside risk (if your post is received poorly you only lose one karma per downvote), but you can still get more karma if you write a substantial post that people like.
I really like the suggestion of making it so downvotes only cost 1 karma on toplevel posts. But it seems weird to have the marginal karma from an upvote suddenly switch from 1 to 10 as soon as you get at least 5 points.
I would like to combine your two suggestions like so: Posts in discussion still earn 1 karma per vote. But as soon as a post gets at least five or so points it transfers to promoted. And then you get 10 karma per vote the post receives after getting promoted.
Posts in promoted are visible to people reading discussion, but readers can choose to see only promoted posts.
That way you have a smaller downside risk (if your post is received poorly you only lose one karma per downvote), but you can still get more karma if you write a substantial post that people like.
I really like the suggestion of making it so downvotes only cost 1 karma on toplevel posts. But it seems weird to have the marginal karma from an upvote suddenly switch from 1 to 10 as soon as you get at least 5 points.