I know that people are wary of the idea of karma counting because they don't want it to become a performative karma farming dance like you often got on reddit.

For the first few months, I don't see how bad it could be. But rather than implement it and have to remove it later, maybe just set up a competition of number of communities started, and/or posts/comments made.

I know it's not ideal but you could probably make a shortlist of super active users and then manually comb their posts as a quick quality check. It wouldn't be fully objective, but my point is you can pretty much do what you're suggesting without counting karma.

And I do love that it's impossible for people to show off their point/karma total on this platform. The reward should come from the enjoyment of contributing and helping others, not from a trophy sitting on your mantelpiece.

But that being said you make a good point. I'm also worried about losing momentum here when the honeymoon period dies down. Just mentioning some counterpoints you might not have considered.