Technology

To be clear, since I don't think my meaning was clearly explained, I meant the the bar for entry on smaller forums outside of reddit. Reddit has generally had problems with high karma accounts bullying new accounts by taking advantage of the fact that new accounts are viewed (and have always been viewed) as less credible. But on private forums I was a part of in the early oughts and even the late 90's, there were problems with treating newcomers of any stripe with distrust. Every time I joined a new tech forum back then that was the case. It was used as an anti spam, anti-troll checks and balances sort of system. To build karma was to be allowed the benefit of interaction outside the use of upvotes or downvotes. While it might have been effective (in the same way the invite tokens or similar measures are) it was also very exclusive and sort of made me feel unwelcome in the space. Part of the reason reddit grew in popularity was because it doesn't have that unwelcoming feeling to the same extent because a lot of those measures just aren't in place.