I believe that anyone replying "write your own code", "try Google", "check the datsheet" would immediately be given a ton of negative points by the requestor, so such a reply would be impossible for anyone caring about the karmapoints.

First, I think replies such as "write your own code" or "try Google" shouldn't exist. If the person asking the question hasn't done their homework, ignore them. The lack of response will drive them to other means as quickly as telling them to use other means.

Second, messages would not be "scored" only by the originator of the thread--they'd be scored by every registered user.

Since this forum is much smaller than Slashdot I probably wouldn't implement the scoring system but not the "meta-moderation" which is where you score the fairness of the score of a post (kind of confusing). It makes sense for Slashdot and big forums with hundreds of thousands of users, but seems like overkill here.

My thought is that I'd probably let everyone score messages all the time, but if I saw a tendency of someone to abuse the scoring system (i.e. always score someone negatively because they have a problem with that person personally) then I'd simply remove their right to participate in the scoring of messages. And perhaps new users wouldn't have the right to score messages until they've posted at least, say, 25 messages or something like that.

Would anyone not familiar with the forum the pay any attention to the replies from mr -1.000.000 karmapoints however relevant and valuable the reply might be.

As is the case with Slashdot, karma would have a floor and a ceiling. So, perhaps, someone couldn't go below -5 so that if he turns around and starts posting valuable messags that he can dig himself out of the hole. Likewise, karma would top out at some point so that a person who has made a lot of valuable contributions can't just sit around and flame people for months since he has karma to burn, so to speak.

Regards,
Craig Steiner