There's been many modifications throughout the time on how this karma function should work. Things like the name itself, being able to both bite and nuzzle, the period between nuzzles given and posts required before nuzzles can be done.
The most effective as mentioned above is that you need to make a few posts and become a Jr.Member before you can use this function, this.. To learn a bit more first and get used to the forum and just not nuzzle for the sake of nuzzling, but as always stated before, not everyone will grasp why the nuzzles are there and just see it as any other treat, and people do like their treats.
Yes, it's still possible for a user to just go and nuzzle themselves by making an account and post some on the forum, but another thing is also that if you have a close friend that do not care too much one way or another how it's used, they could very well nuzzle up another user just as well as they could themselves. But as we've mentioned before in the past, the nuzzle is really there for you yourself, as much as a higher nuzzle count can affect others seeing your posts on the board and cause them to look a second time, there's not really an actual forum benefits you gain from having a higher, or lower floof count. Yet to this day I still believe that someone who's gotten lots of nuzzles from people all over the forum, will be more proud over that particular floof number, rather than someone that so considered "Cheated" their count up, if they feel accomplished then all we can do is let them because this kind of usage is not why it's here.
But this issue, of possibly users providing themselves nuzzles in one way or another, is a very mild thing considering the setup of the old karma function, and improvements done from now on I doubt if they will be that much more of improvements. One thing that could be done is to make the post count level higher before you get access to the function yet again, since it's still very, very, easy to get access to it, but it wouldn't really stop users from still doing what this thread was about as I'm sure you understand.