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[Havohej]

Prolly, Lou. Good work. I'll data-mine it some later.

I need to get these people to freaking tack on a karma system.

There was actually a bit of discussion about this, though it happened in the ingame channel and didn't make it to smoke-filled-room:

[ 2010.04.02 02:26:30 ] Havohej > here's one.. "Karma"-type things... good or bad?
[ 2010.04.02 02:26:46 ] Mizhara Del'thul > Bad. Very very bad.
[ 2010.04.02 02:26:57 ] Mizhara Del'thul > Community popularity contests have no purpose.
[ 2010.04.02 02:27:00 ] Ciarente > /emote shrugs > No opinion
[ 2010.04.02 02:27:34 ] Mizhara Del'thul > In huge communities with specific types of banter and such, karma modules can be excellent.
[ 2010.04.02 02:27:48 ] Mizhara Del'thul > With a community like ours, we can't really afford a tool that can actually spread more malcontent.
[ 2010.04.02 02:28:36 ] Silver Night > Maybe something for 'thank yous'
[ 2010.04.02 02:28:43 ] Silver Night > Incentivizes being helpful
[ 2010.04.02 02:29:04 ] Silver Night > If such a module exists.
[ 2010.04.02 02:29:59 ] Havohej > That's sort of what I was thinking of with the karma feature.. like, "Guy posts some new PF or something, folks find it interesting, they click positive"  vs  "Guy is kind of a dick, folks click negative"... peoples' overall contribution eventually
[ 2010.04.02 02:30:03 ] Havohej > starts to kinda exhibit itself.
[ 2010.04.02 02:30:25 ] Havohej > Could be divisive like Miz says too, though, if abused
[ 2010.04.02 02:31:00 ] Silver Night > Yeah
[ 2010.04.02 02:31:12 ] Morwen Lagann > I've seen them abused on forums I've been a moderator on
[ 2010.04.02 02:31:13 ] Silver Night > That's why I figure a positive only thing might not be bad
[ 2010.04.02 02:31:17 ] Morwen Lagann > more often than not
[ 2010.04.02 02:31:39 ] Silver Night > On the other hand, if the feeling is the risk of abuse is too high, might not be needed
[ 2010.04.02 02:31:58 ] Silver Night > And with the relatively small size of the community, people can probably also form their own impressions fairly quickly.
[ 2010.04.02 02:32:19 ] Havohej > True that.
[ 2010.04.02 02:32:23 ] Havohej > /emote leaves feature disabled
[ 2010.04.02 02:33:08 ] Havohej > By default smf includes the karma system, can be modded to say different stuff like star fraction's board (for conversation's sake in response to the question of if a module existed for it)
[ 2010.04.02 02:38:56 ] Mizhara Del'thul > Yeah, those modules are flexible indeed. But whether it's purely negative or positive, or both... Well, I've yet to see a forum with that implemented that doesn't have abuse problems because of it.
[ 2010.04.02 02:39:23 ] Mizhara Del'thul > Two or three people disliking one guy can with very little effort drive one person's Karma straight down the tubes.
[ 2010.04.02 02:40:01 ] Mizhara Del'thul > And the other way around, two/three people playing 'popularity contest' can also quickly drive eachother straight up without much effort.
[ 2010.04.02 02:40:33 ] Silver Night > And again, with the size of the community, not enough people to dilute that kind of thing.
[ 2010.04.02 02:40:45 ] Havohej > Yeah
[ 2010.04.02 02:42:40 ] Mizhara Del'thul > Indeed. That's the kind of thing that's very common with such karma systems. Especially in an 'open' community like this, instead of a closed corp/guild community.
[ 2010.04.02 02:42:52 ] Mizhara Del'thul > So my vote is, leave it out.

So, I don't think the 'last word' has been spoken, but there's the logic behind the feature being disabled currently.  Input/opinions/make your case everybody!

[Sofia Roseburn]

Leave the karma system out. It's prone to abuse, and isn't as good a measure of e-peen as postcount.

[Silver Night]

Given the small size of the community, I don't feel that the benefits outweigh the risks of abuse and the potential to introduce a competitive atmosphere. I'm willing to be convinced, though, certainly.

[Misan]

I've seen it work well on corp/alliance boards, but I'm not so sure it transfers over as well to more public forums. Interestingly enough another SMF board I frequent used to have it implemented, I just went to check and they have since disabled it.

I suspect it ended up being more divisive than constructive in the end there. Could it be different on Backstage? Sure, but I don't think the benefits necessarily outweigh the potential drawbacks.

[Havohej]

Leave the karma system out. It's prone to abuse, and isn't as good a measure of e-peen as postcount.

You need to work on yours imo :p

[Havohej]

Have edited the OP - for some reason most of the chat snippet was being left out.  Context of the dialogue should be more clear now.

[Casiella]

Leave it out. It ends up being "+1 because we're buds and I think you're cool" versus "+1, I don't really know who you are but that particular post was smashing".

Sites like these tend to encourage enough circle jerking as-is, I don't think the staff here wish to encourage more.

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

Hav, the first rule of good karma systems is, they're never referred to as karma systems.

The second rule is, they function only on a scale of positive integers starting at zero. There cannot be bad karma.

The third rule is, the number attached to the karma system is not directly visible; you click a thank you/good poast button, and a hidden counter goes up until a useful contributor gets a shiny title like 'guru' or 'veritable toolbox' or some shit like that. This is something sometimes only mods are allowed to do, or whatnot, but basically its function is to help identify posters as useful to a community.

If (you as a mod thinks) a poster gains karma because of popularity, take their karma and give them a tallying marker for suspected popularity that is positive. IE, Ciarente gets a thousand karma points a week, and racks up four tallies of the 'heartbreaker' marker, as we can clearly attribute such things to popularity whoring, but does not get a 'fuck yeah, your posts are so awesome' title.

As such, this would be a system for stratifying contributors by behavior and reputation rather than by how many motherfuckers click a +1 button.

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

Oh. And leave it out until we get a hundred users, then try it for a month and let the results speak for themselves.

[Misan]

Different things we were talking about then. The default system in place for SMF is the +0/-0 system with custom settings for what you call the buttons (Epic/Fail on the Rote Kapelle boards as an example). If there is system either built in or added via plugins similar to what Ashar describes, I could go for that. Entirely different when it's a) hidden and b) only used to reward, not punish certain types of posting/contributions.

[Havohej]

I also like the functionality Ashar described..  I'll look around tonight and depending on how the discussion goes I'll see if I can find something along those lines.  I think that could be useful as it carries the "indication of community appreciation" without as much capacity for anti-fanclub abuse.

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

Well, I mean.

The cost of having a shitty out of box karma system go wrong is that negative karma numbers baloon and people get butthurt because someone's down on them.

The cost of having the sort of karma system that just has positive standings open for abuse is that some silly people whine about it, but in the end you just have a broken karma system which you can easily take down.

...Maybe a monthly karma reset tho, or some shit.

[Vincent Pryce]

Leave it out, imho, mainly for the reasons already posted here by Casi and Sofia.

[Sofia Roseburn]

Leave the karma system out. It's prone to abuse, and isn't as good a measure of e-peen as postcount.

You need to work on yours imo :p

*shrugs*

Not really any interesting threads for me to post in .

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

And what is it you crave, Sophie?

We bend over backwards to meet needs here, doncha-know