seeing someone’s karma count seems to sway people’s opinions before even reading what that person says

Wait, people actually look that up on individual profiles? I only check that when someone has an extremely shit troll-level comment or is ‘karma whoring’ particularly egregiously.

feel like the lack of karma adds in to the civility,

I largely agree, but my stance is that it removes the point of ‘karma whoring’, since that really only exists on Reddit to later sell the account or inflate someone’s ego