Before the orange names, I refrained from commenting if I thought it was likely my comment would end up being downvoted to 0 points or less. Now, I'm likely to refrain from commenting if I think my comment won't get upmodded to 5 points or more (4 upvotes), because anything less would be net-negative on my average karma target of 3.5.
I see this as having a similar effect as initializing each post to -3 points (or maybe -2.5). I'm afraid this may lead to fewer genuinely thoughtful comments that might lack a populist appeal because the poster thought twice about posting at all.
Maybe if people are thinking more about what they write, we might gain an awesome comment instead of a trivial one.
Maybe we might get far less comments, making it easier to notice awesome comments.
Maybe awesome people get more interested in a more interesting site and start making additional awesome comments.
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The orange name system fundamentally rewards quality over quantity. That is a step in the right direction for a system that has always been stupidly simple. Well, the commenting system was so simple that this change is quite large in the scheme of things.
I see this as having a similar effect as initializing each post to -3 points (or maybe -2.5). I'm afraid this may lead to fewer genuinely thoughtful comments that might lack a populist appeal because the poster thought twice about posting at all.