good points.

karma points: they would be given to the questions itself. let's say... "I have to blink 4 leds in alternate pattern, please gimme code until friday morning..."

you can give -1 karma to that question, I could give -1 to that question, so that in a few times that question would be taken off sight...

karma is earned (through good questions and answers), so if the infamous Unregistered User that sometimes drops a question and wait for code and don't like of a RTFM answer he couldn't give a bad karma to the person that enlighted his ways as he don't have karma

Another example: you give to some question an hipothetical answer... like "read the bible" :-) and the poster may have karma AND a different religion than you and give you a -1, but I'm agnostic and know that you were refering to the 8051 bible in the links section and I also have karma, so I give you +1, evening the score.

checking karma: using slashdot example, instead of relying only in the moderators to check if the karma given was fair, some users (with good karma) from time to time gain a meta-moderator status and the can judge karma that was given to some answers (fair, unfair) so there is a second layer to prevent injustices. If some user without common sense starts giving -1 to any questions/answers that he dislikes all his moderations will be given unfair, that will prevent that person of moderating again.

about the common look and feel and obscenities, if someone is such a jerk that post obscenities whatever the rules are, the problem is with the person, not with the forum format.

orlando