The Karma System - trial phase

I say the karma system is good (it's been discussed above).

If people don't like it, just IGNORE it. That's it

Hi

I believe the karma system is a good idea, however, I feel -

The calculations for karma should be reconsidered. ie Karma altering numbers should not be fully based on the user's current karma. If a user with very high karma (100+) decides to rate a post to a new member, the new member would (correct me if I am wrong) end up getting alot of karma wouldn't he? That wouldn't be fair, and this only provides disincentive to give karma.

A probable way to correct this would be to allow for user choice in the amount of karma to give, and add a cost to his own karma for each karma point beyond say, 10? This would lower the variance for karma-point-total alterations.

The last thing I can think of: IMO, I find this system to be similar to a financial market. Efficient markets (efficient in adjustment of prices of an asset, in this case karma ratings of a user) depend on the input of all individuals within the market.

Thus, I feel we should give all users the minimum ability to give +/- 1 karma point per day/week (this works a little like income) In such a way, this power would not be retained in the hands of a select few, but more balanced throughout the entire populace. This would prove to be a more democratic and meritocratic system. On top of that, we can add differentiating levels for the cap on amount of karma points each user can give per day. This could be dependant on a combination of factors, like the length of time the user has been registered in techspot, the number of posts that he/she has made and the amount of karma he/she has.

If we did that, then no one would give karma .

Perhaps I was misunderstood. I meant that we should be allowed to choose how much to give up to our level cap, but for every karma point beyond an abritrarily set number, for eg, 10, karma point costs start to kick in.

The whole point of this would be to lower the variance, like I mentioned earlier, of shifts in the karma point totals of individual users.

(edit)
I just realised that some aspects of my suggestions may not be fully feasible (income karma)
This would be bring about inflation, and since such a rate of inflation would be too tedious to capture, this makes the valuation of karma ratings for users difficult, which defeats the point of karma ratings.
Perhaps something else could be done to achieve the same objective.

God I need my sleep. -.-

Great fix! Thanks Julio.

thats a good idea. I don't have a particular icon to suggest, but I still have a suggestion.

The icon should be something a completely new member would be able to recognize, and say that this persons' posts could be trusted or not. Given that there are already so many icons around (including the thumbs icon) in threads, next to threads, and so on, we'd have to find something that is unique, and immediately screams "You can trust what I write!!".

At the same time, the negative karma holders shouldn't have something that screams "IGNORE ME!!", but instead say something in the lines of "I might have something to say, but not everything I've said before has been good".

Icon choosing just got that much harder

Hm.. I have a question.

What does a gray block under karma recieved mean?

It means the person who gave you karma, doesn`t have any karma altering power. This could be because they have a negative karma points total or because their a new member. I have edited the less than useful comments the ***** has given you. The member concerned won`t be giving anyone else any comments as I`ve just banned him.

Regards Howard

hmm... he tried to give me bad karma as well, and I was just about to ask the same question about the gray block....

I like the karma system the way it is now, or whatever Julio is suggesting sounds fine as well, except I'm still trying to figure out why somebody (obviously with little altering power) gave me bad karma here.

Good job Howard! I am sure others will agree that it was past time to get rid of him.

So, I have 3 entries under my 'Karma' heading, 1 grey, 1 green, 1 red.

My Karma is -12, apparently from a post where the person admits I helped steer them to a possible fix and only one other poster was involved.

Now, the person I helped is new so can't post positive, the person who obviously dunned me is a high-poster who disliked my post without recourse to discussion.

Since your 'rules' offer no way to contest the receipt of a minus-Karma, I have opted to follow someone's earlier advice and ignore it all together.

Thus, my Signature.

Exactly the same happened to me HERE....

Anyway, who cares

It only subtracted two points for me, so big deal

I still think, however, that people should have to say why they disapprove of the post.

Maybe somebody did find something genuinely wrong with my post, but it would have been nice to have known what was wrong with it.

I agree with that.

A check for justification of bad karma would lower instances for random pranks. May I add that perhaps moderators be given the power to undo such instances of pranks?


Regards,
Your friendly Momok =)

It's a good idea, but would it really help if you got bad karma with a comment that says "Your post sucks!" or "asdf".

Lol Nodsu :unch: ! I think that in the comments, if the member wrote something not right or of bad quality, one should write a suggestion like, "Don't be so angry" or "Research more".

Off Topic:
What exactly does your signature say ?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2134856&dopt=Abstract

Whatever that page is trying to say

Ow....I had to think !