Karma

[thatnewguy]

So, I recently saw a thread that honestly disappointed me (I won't say what it was) and was ever more disappointed at the fact that the poster of this thread got a mass amount of karma for such a dimwitted reason. I got to thinking, as karma relates to the good "feedback" or good "deeds" done from one person and receiving an equal (same goes for bad).

We, here at the community, have an outrageous amount of great people with great ideas and are a great help, yet they have a bare minimum of karma. Now it's simple as "Yo, dude, go post something funny and i'll give you karma." This should NOT be rewarded.

However, yes, you -can- look at how much Karma he already has and avoid giving more. It skews the value to heck when people get this much for a silly thing and people who genuinely help the community get zilch.

This is a great example of what I'm talking about. This member has pointed out that silly posts/threads can get a huge amount of karma, while generally hard working and dedicated members get nothing for anything they do.

So, we have our "karma" integrated system here in the forums as opposed to real life karma where one deed will get reward/despair for each act completed. Should we resort back to bringing negative karma button back? Or should we leave it with positive to where people can do no wrong and only get frowned upon if not bad enough to get watches/muted by a global mod? I personally believe that we need both, a  negative and a positive button for all people, so we can see who does good and who does wrong. I still know there will be a problem with absurd posts/memes that get a piece/fountain of karma, but perhaps we can change that as well.

Which would you want and what is your opinion on our "karma" system for people now? Is it good? Does it need to be reworked? Should [-] be reintroduced? Can people only get karma if a reason if viable enough to be considered "good" and "helpful"? What is your opinion?

[TheIdioticIdiot]

"So, I recently saw a thread that honestly disappointed me (I won't saw what it was) and was ever more disappointed at the fact that the poster of this thread got a mass amount of karma for such a dimwitted reason. I got to thinking, as karma relates to the good "feedback" or good "deeds" done from one person and receiving an equal (same goes for bad). "

I have a feeling I know which thread this is about...
I agree too, karma should be awarded more carefully
I myself have only given 4 karma, for helping me with T50 farm mostly
and my 12 karma came from:
1 for being chinese
4~5 for helping newbies
2~3 for unknown reasons..
the rest are from my once-glorious Evil Twin, 100% unupped FG deck...

only a couple of these are for being funny...
funny is a great thing, giving people laughs is how comedians pay for their everyday needs, but when the thread is more spam than just wanting to give everyone a laugh, it's a problem...
The first time of the incident was fun
second time was meh
third time... I swear... if you were in the chat at the fourth time, you know how much I fumed...

[KingOfArmagio]

I know what thread you are talking about. And yes, it is disgraceful how much Karma he got from two completely wasted posts of his. Am I allowed to say the topic in a spoiler?

[Legit]

Blame the community, not the system.

[thatnewguy]

Please keep the thread I am referring to secret, even if you know. This is about karma in general, not about the thread. That was just an example.

[RootRanger]

I agree about how karma is handed out improperly. I know exacty what you are talking about (I once got karma for a three-sentence post about shorts). I have also seen others receive karma for terrible decks that aren't even very fun.

A negative karma wouldn't help as people would negative karma those who beat them in tourneys and war.
I wouldn't mind removing karma completely, but that would disaappoint people with a lot of karma.
Resetting karma and narrowing the ability to give karma to fewer users could work.

[Sir Valimont]

The "solution" is not negative karma. The solution is not to care about it. Unfortunately karma either has to be a democratically available bonus -- meaning a sober, mature community member's karma point is worth the same as a childish and capricious member's karma point -- or it has to be distributable only by senior members. The last thing this community needs is more titles or reasons for people to feel self-congratulatory and snooty about their titles ... which is exactly what would happen with limited karma-givers.

Presumably there is some way to screen when karma is given and who is giving it out, with what frequency.

Potentially a solution is that every player could give out one karma point per hundred posts to the site.

Either way the probability is that it's going to continue to be a poor measuring stick of community participation.

For my part, I have given only a total of 3 karma points out despite having been here more than a year and being a rather active member.

[willng3]

I agree with a considerable amount of this, however to keep them this from a bashing contest against a certain member, I'll try to stick to the universal theme of karma within the forums instead of referring back to the obvious thread I have already seen brought up by various people.

EDIT:  Heh, ninja'd.

It saddens me when people put their heart and soul into a project which does nothing but benefit the community and yet that person does not receive the proper thanks they deserve.  This doesn't even necessarily mean giving the user karma, but just giving them positive feedback is more than enough to get the ball rolling.  I personally try to refrain from giving karma unless a user has really done something which has blown my mind and has gone out of their way and sacrificed hours of their time to offer some kind of assistance to the rest of us.  For people that do not receive the proper recognition they deserve I find myself more inclined to give them karma for less meaningful posts/topics if only to give the appearance that they are a helpful person, which is what should appear.

About the system of karma itself...the system should exist, but I would not regress to the state of both positive and negative karma as seen in the past.  The reason this system needs to remain in tact is because it gives newer members a good idea of who is the most helpful in the community and also gives them a good idea of who they should look up to when making posts/topics, helping other community members, reacting to posts/topics, etc.  Adding the negative karma feature will certainly be abused by trolls and will be misused worse than the positive feature is today.  It's also demoralizing and does not give off a good vibe from the community itself.  However, the main problem is not the karma system itself, but the lack of common sense and good judgement displayed by many when participating on the forums itself.

Overall, do things for the benefit of the community and not yourself.  Karma is a nice way of showing appreciation but should not be what we aspire to gain from participating in a particular project.

[TheIdioticIdiot]

Universally, the karma distribution of the community is still pretty wrong imo...
too bad I can't order the members list based on karma...
I have seen a lot of great decks, and the creator of the decks didn't get much quanta (epic typo) karma
and I have also seen a relatively fail-ish decks claiming to be all awesome receiving karma..

[Demagog]

Negative karma was removed because newer members were afraid to speak up for fear of going into the negatives. Some people actually were into the negatives. One such person, who is no longer with us, was in the extreme.

The karma system is meaningless. Just ignore it. I think we could have a much better system via up/down voting for individual posts. For instance, everyone that likes/agrees with this post could upvote it. Those that feel otherwise could downvote, and those that don't care simply wouldn't vote. This would allow others to see what the rest of the community thinks of the post. You could also make it so a person's average post rating is shown in their profile if you wanted, although that would be difficult to do since you'd have to exclude posts from before the system was put into place.

[poisonking]

Im sorry i put the Karma system out of order with my ridiculous Posts. I can promise you guys that i would never post meaningless stuff like that again, because i stopped doing my bets.

[thatnewguy]

Again, it's not your fault. As legit pointed out, blame the community. I didn't blame you, nor should anyone else, you were merly the most recent example.