Life is too short to worry about votes and karma. If it really matters to you, just timing posting the right stories will net you hundreds or thousands of karma at a time. Then you can burn a couple karma expressing what you wanted to say even if it's unpopular.
But I don't understand the need for identifying who is a veteran or not. People who use the site will know who is a veteran and who isn't. In addition, someone without much of any karma will be treated probably poorer than many other users, or their ideas dismissed. Just because someone is new to the community doesn't make their comment less valuable.
The site will take care of the sorting/displaying of comments. There's no need for me to see the numbers that make the site run. It just ends up giving some people a false sense of importance. Keep the karma, but hide it, and maybe people will stop changing what they say just because of who they're talking to.
But I don't understand the need for identifying who is a veteran or not. People who use the site will know who is a veteran and who isn't. In addition, someone without much of any karma will be treated probably poorer than many other users, or their ideas dismissed. Just because someone is new to the community doesn't make their comment less valuable.
The site will take care of the sorting/displaying of comments. There's no need for me to see the numbers that make the site run. It just ends up giving some people a false sense of importance. Keep the karma, but hide it, and maybe people will stop changing what they say just because of who they're talking to.