If I’m understanding you correctly, sure. Just truncate all reported net karma scores for comments and posts at zero (while still recording the actual score), and calculate user total karma from reported karma rather than actual.
The suggestion gets made from time to time. Some people think it’s a good idea, others don’t.
More generally, no mechanism that allows a community to communicate what they do and don’t value will serve to prevent people whose contributions the community judges as valueless (or less valuable than they consider appropriate) from being upset by that judgment being communicated.
The question becomes to what degree a given community, acknowledging this, chooses to communicate their value judgments at the potential cost of upsetting people.
If I’m understanding you correctly, sure. Just truncate all reported net karma scores for comments and posts at zero (while still recording the actual score), and calculate user total karma from reported karma rather than actual.
The suggestion gets made from time to time. Some people think it’s a good idea, others don’t.
More generally, no mechanism that allows a community to communicate what they do and don’t value will serve to prevent people whose contributions the community judges as valueless (or less valuable than they consider appropriate) from being upset by that judgment being communicated.
The question becomes to what degree a given community, acknowledging this, chooses to communicate their value judgments at the potential cost of upsetting people.