Some form of meta moderation would be a good fix for that, modding down when you disagree with someone is simply cheap. If you disagree then say so (and why!), don't mod down.

You can have your name in pink, purple or green for all I care it will not matter one little bit, the only thing that matters is what you have to say.

You know, I think the opposite: who cares about the score on one comment? But the orange name thing follows you around.

But there is way too much drama about this stuff now, so the thing to do is probably to let it go and see how it plays out over a few months.

I agree with the second statement. As a community we should wait a bit to see how it settles. If we don't like it in a week/month/quarter/trimester/whatever, it's just a revert back to the original state, right?

Karma might not be the objective, but since it determines the ordering of comments, it has a big effect on how the comments of a particular article come off. Even if nobody initially posts with an eye towards gaining karma, the most visible posts will be those with the highest karma, and they will shape the discussion.

That said, karma alone cannot preserve whatever culture and social norms exist here. I like the orange names because they highlight (for better or for worse) the people that shape the discussions the most. Since it seems to be generally agreed upon that the current discussions are good, it makes sense to point out those people that have the most influence. As a way to shape social norms, it seems pretty effective.

If a recent problem was, as I recall, downgrading of civil standards and generally, of intelligent discourse, I cannot see how downward karma capping can help. It will only encourage trolls and flamers.

I don't think trolls and flamers care about karma. As long as their individual posts get low enough to be out of sight, whether they're at -8 or -50 doesn't matter. Presumably users will still get banned for the same extent of trolling and flaming.

He's trying to avoid a redditer/digger reincarnation.

a status symbol now makes "good karma" more shiny. people will try to attain it. this makes sense, otherwise why would pg add this feature, if not to promote good commenting. the poster's point is that people are trying to attain shiny; will the culture actually become nicer and more thoughtful?