Context:
online communities/portals
News website populated with stories submitted by wide ranging news scavengers - the slashdot readers themselves.
Commentaries on stories are collected from users. There're so many contributions a rating system is in use, based on points scored for good posts, as rated by slashdot moderators, who are given moderation points to award based on their slashdot karma.
However, there is a community of users that operate to increase eachothers' karma, though it is not a strictly conscious effort. Grabbing attention to your posts to score karma is done via the slashdot karma collection formula, employed by karma whores.
The self-promoting factionalizing community is similar to those occuring on the old BBS software Pyroto Mountain.