remember that karma is anonymous. you don't know who rated or who can rate.

But karma can still be abused in many ways. I could -karma everyone just because I don't like their ideas (and get karma banned afterwards) or I could also + rate everybody but Livio and down rate all his posts just because he has an 'io' in his name. We could start a karma war and bring Quirvy's karma down to 50 (impossible?). We could downrate a member just because they don't want dando as the moderator. We could plus create new accounts just to bump neezles' karma up (impossible).

As you said, you could, but then you would get karma banned, and your rates deleted.

You could also do this, but you would likely be karma banned, and then Livio would karma-nuke all of your karma rates(and hopefully make a backup prior to trying it... )

You might be able to, but there are doubts about that, since KarmaBot hasn't been seen around for a while. But if you were, you could probably easily get me down to 0. You guys managed to bump Livio down to -120. But, it would probably end up like the previous karma wars against Livio, where a ton of karma rates get deleted.

You could, as long as their post related to not wanting to have dando as a moderator. But if you just started spam-rating them out of hatred, you would get karma-banned, if it was a group attack, we might karma-lock them for their own protection. But that's pure fantasy, no one thinks Dando shouldn't be part of that staff

That actually is impossible, because all of neezles' current posts have passed the 10 day limit, and cannot be rated. Because she is banned, she cannot make new posts, and therefor, if you tried such a thing, you would literally get nowhere.


We already know that it has the potential to be abused. But so does the video rating system. People could just hand out 0/5 stars to videos, because they don't like the personality of the creator, yet there is no movement to redefine the video rating system.

I'm not sure I like Dando's negative karma token idea. There are lots of users who don't get karma votes at all, so to them the system would just be a like-button system. And then suddenly one day they find that they can rate down, so they do and then they see that they can't anymore. Wait a minute, I'm making a the-user-will-be-too-confused argument... But yeah, making it more complicated kinda makes the system less elegant.

I don't like how fear of negative karma stops people from posting certain things or from voicing their opinions. I like the idea of just having a single "like" button, and it's like that on several other sites too so it'll be self-explanatory to most people.

I'm not sure how big of an impact it's made on the way people post, but I find that most people who get negative karma don't care. And then when we down-karma people who do care, they feel as though the community is turning on them for what they said, especially if they weren't joking.

While negative karma is a good (and sometimes fun) way to punish people for spamming or being hateful, I feel like we should try coming up with a better way to punish people. How about a flag system? where people can flag a post for being spam or hateful or offensive. The flags can accumulate on a post, like negative karma except that they are independent of karma. If the post is bad enough, the staff will delete it, but if it isn't, it'll just stay there and people can see how many flags it's gotten. And the staff should also be able to remove all flags from unworthy posts.

To tell you the truth, the word 'karma' is a bit misleading. Maybe we could call it the 'Hug n' punch' system?  

If plus karma was renamed to Hugs and negative karma was renamed to punches, I think I would give out less of each.

Do you know what this conversation reminds me of?


Maybe interbot will turn out to be right all along!

oh yeah, I thought "hugs" rang a bell. lol

Or how bout 'Hugs n' Slugs'? Hug the person whose posts you like and slug the person whose posts you detest! Now available at your nearest grocery store!

EDIT: It looks like they were in stock for 1 nanosecond before they discontinued it.

Wow. For once Livio actually makes a post that sounds awesome... or is it the second time this has happened?

Hugs and Punches/Slugs sounds really, really weird. And I hate slugs. They are disgusting, even more than SNAILS.

But then again, Shellos is a slug Pokemon... [/offtopic]

Yes, making it more complicated does make the system less elegant, but no, we shouldn't completely strip it down to positive-votes only (except for videos and levels).

Ideally, we should just let the current karma system be as it is. I'll explain why.  


And I do like how fear of negative karma stops people form posting certain things. That's sort of the point of negative karma. For example:  "I was going to tell Jane that the opening trap in this cave is completely stupid and worthless, but I was afraid of getting negative karma, so instead I had to carefully go over my post and make it more polite and helpful. Damn the karma system! Get rid of negative rates!" Maybe I'm missing something, but if the threat of negative karma keeps you from posting something, maybe it's something you ought not to be posting.

Okay, that said, I do understand the other half of this argument, which is the fear that you could put out a polite, well-worded argument and be down-rated simply because someone disagrees with you. I find it a bit obnoxious when people do that as well, and I personally only negatively rate people who are being uncouth or unfair, but to be honest, this really doesn't seem to happen that often. What I see most often is that people receive positive ratings for taking the time to voice their opinion, even if it isn't completely agreeable. This thread and its opening post is a good example of that.


Actually, I'd say that most people do care to an extent, but they respond maturely and don't throw a temper tantrum about it. On the other hand, some people care too much and get angry and/or start complaining.

It's an issue of having a quiet majority and vocal minority; when the karma system is flowing along as it should, nobody really says anything about it, but when somebody who takes the system too seriously gets upset about it, that's the only time you hear any feedback. Because of this, the only feedback you're likely to hear about the karma system is negative feedback. It's very likely that this has been giving some people the wrong impression.


That's either a very silly idea, or a very poorly articulated one. So a post just accumulates flags, and people get to look at how many it gets... and that's a "better way" of punishing people? That's the same as negative karma, with the only difference being that negative karma actually has a consequence.

The karma system does its job. It may have a few bumps, but it has fewer bumps than any alternatives serving the same purpose would. We could try to balance it out with modifications, but I really think it's fine the way it is. There are going to be a few unfair rates here and there, but the system really just shouldn't be taken so seriously. If you see a rate you think is unfair, just neutralize it with a positive one; we don't need to modify the system to be more balanced when we can do it just fine on our own.

Contrary to what some may think, your karma rating doesn't define you as a member; your posts do. If you truly post well, your karma will reflect that. The "questionable" or "unfair" rates only go so far, after all: I think some people say the karma system is the problem because they don't want to admit that their posts are.


That's a mighty fine idea, Quirvo; the Interguild could use a good posting guide for reference. Explain what can make a post bad and, of course, what makes a post good. That could be of great service to some of our members.

Anyway, closing comments:  There exists no system that will please everybody, and the current karma system is, for all intents and purposes, just fine. Relax, don't take it so seriously, negative rates aren't the end of the world, etc.

Whew. Bed time for Dando.

hmm, now that you put it like that, that really does seem like a dumb idea.

But here's another idea: rename "karma" to "post rating" or something like that. So that whenever someone has a negative total post rating, they will be more inclined to think of it as the community not liking their post, rather than the community not liking them as a person.

??

Another case solved by Private Grammar.

I would still like to see implemented though (now I remember it), an anonymous message from the first minus rate on a post to be sent to the user receiving the minus vote. This would both explain what was objectionable in the post and would stop reckless minus rating.

that's like the reputation system in certain forums. that is favorable in my opinion.

I did suggest to Livio that you can karma rates through PM's or something, so that you can send someone a message and a karma rate along with it, for things that you can't rate, like a really funny chatbox post, a really good old level or blog that you just now got around to playing, but can't award karma to because of the 10 day limit, or you could give out negative karma to Livio for not judging competitions on time.

It would also probably have to be managed by staff members, to prevent members from abusing the system to bump someones karma way up or down. And it would have to be done in a way so that a staff member could not approve his own karma PM, and could not accept or deny karma PM's to himself.

This of course has not happened, and I will be extremely surprised if Livio ever starts working on it...

Well everyone karma spammed me. It's not fair.

It is probably not fair because the users who -karma you are usually rating your posts down for the heck of it, or it could be the way your post is written.

But you're Thomas! Haily's secret agent! The junior fault of everything bad!

Yeah, it probably is a bit unfair.

If you want, we can karma lock you since the constant -1ing of your posts aren't entirely your fault, even though it kind of is, because of this post combined with stealing D52's avatar.

hmm, probably a good idea. It would certainly top people from minus-karma-ing something if they don't have a good explanation or if they're too lazy. This also seems like it could fit in with Quirvy's karma-PM idea. The problem is that we'd be inspecting karma rates a lot, so we'd have to figure out what is an acceptable reason to give out karma? What if someone's post was rated too high, so they minus-rated it; is that a valid reason?

but in pms, will you keep your anonymousity?

maybe not to mods, but to everyone else, assuming you're post style isn't obvious.

No Quirvy it's not my fault I don't have any karma . It's YOUR fault.

what do you mean? that's a lot of karma!

but in all seriousness, everyone needs to stop taking karma so seriously.

it's negative livio