I know that the karma system is used so if you like a post then you can give it karma and if you think it is a bad post then you take it away, but I have a question regarding a few situations.

Say a post that you don't think is really interesting in any way gets karma, should you/are you allowed to take away karma so that the value of karma gained for that post is less because you don't think it deserves that much or is it up to the people who have given the karma to have liked the post and none of your business.

Equally if a post that you have no karma opinion on gets karma taken away then should you add karma so that your view is represented?

This also occurs in extreme cases particularly in the negative... If a new user gets a lot of negative karma I occasionally give some karma because I think it is unfair to someone to have such a high negative amount so quickly especially when maybe they didn't know what they were doing wrong. In a way I can see the karma system leading to new younger members not caring about what they post because they have so little karma.

Also if someone makes a bad post then they can get around -6 karma or more depending on how many members look at said post, but while it was a bad post it may not have been that serious and the large number came from many members all taking away one karma without thinking about the number already.

Also negative rating of levels shouldn't be allowed, because iI don't think we should be suggesting that they shoudn't ake levels.


Sorry about the new topic as there is almost definately a karma topic somewhere, but this is probably more important than just one post in that anyway...

I kinda agree with this. I think the 10-day-and-above-topics/posts-cannot-be-rated thingy should be removed...

I can't blame that kind of behavior and I know (as a staff member) that you're not the only one who does that from time to time. It's not a behavior we officially recommend, but unofficially, I'd say keep on doing that.

The 10 days then no ratings-system was actually introduced to make it harder to spamrate someone with either negative or positive rates. So far, this has happened twice, only once did the person stop because of the 10 day system. But do argue why it should be removed.

"It's not a behavior we officially recommend, but unofficially, I'd say keep on doing that." Who's we? I officially recommend it. I do it too, occasionally.

Anyway, the karma system isn't as serious business as some people make it out to be. Feel free to vote however you like, Harumbai; unless you spam rate someone, everything will be okay.

And I agree about the level karma. In fact, me and some other staff members didn't want levels to be in the karma system at all, since it's supposed to be representative more around post quality and helpfulness more than anything else (video walkthroughs and video guides fall into the latter category). I forget which staff actually wanted level karma, actually, but apparently it was the majority (or Livio).

We as in the official stance of the staff members as a whole. As far as I know, we don't really have an official stance. Individual staff members such as you and I may recommend it but that doesn't make it sanctioned from the staff as a whole (though I find it most unlikely that any staff member would do anything to remove those rates).

I remember a time when we were adding karma to a bunch of stuff like levels, videos, guides. The only thing stopping us from adding them for news posts was the fear of giving the staff an unfair advantage, and they didn't get added to the chatbox because it would make it more cluttered. Although, today I think it might be a good idea to get rid of level, vid, and guide karma and leave it strictly for posts.

I think karma has so far been acting like a post-rating system and as a popularity ranking. The popularity thing is probably what led many of us to want to karma rate levels and vids. Many people wanted to plus-rate those who made improvements with their caves, especially if they were known for making lots of bad posts. And there are even times when people would rate a post not because the post itself was significant, but because they just wanted to give that person karma (for example: for a good level, before levels were ratable).

But I kinda like how people have been handing out more rates. It's always funny to see a post get a ridiculous high or low rating, even if I don't agree with it. I think it's better this way, though, because this would help people learn to not take the system so seriously.

Do note though that since you broke the Karma system for a few days, the number of rates has decreased dramatically.