Oh I doubt anyone would implement that as a system, but it is interesting to speculate what it might change. Imagine all the downvote curmudgeons having to regularly post pictures of kittens to /c/aww in order to recharge their karma.

I rarely downvoted on Reddit because I’m pretty sure everyone (no matter how blasé they appear to be) gets more upset by a comment ending up at -1 than they would get pleased by it ending at +5. When I found that some instances here don’t even have the downvote button, I decided that I wasn’t going to use it here at all. If someone says something damaging to the conversation I’ll report it to the mods, if they say something factually incorrect I might correct them, but otherwise I will just move on.