I mean that the sort of people who would let someone's karma stats alter the way they responded to a post are already idiots, and having the karma system or not wouldn't change that.
I think you're forgetting the problems we had the last time we had a karma system. They were very specific to the existence of a karma system.
We had people who took karma really seriously, and people (by which I mean "me") who liked to deliberately provoke the people who took karma really seriously. Like Yyler is doing, except without his johnny-come-lately confusion.
I'm going to do my part to avoid that happening again -- by which I mean I'm not going to intentionally and actively contribute to it this time (
) -- but if it starts up again my vote's to dump it. Or otherwise de-fang it like we did on the old board (positive-only, removal of per-day limitations, etc.).
But until then, yeah, go nuts.