Yes.  One can be a nice person and one site and gett lots of points and be a jerk on another and have none.

I wont say that it was the BEST business decision Brad ever made to hire Zoomba, but it is up there!

This is a terrible idea. The forums are already a mess of people who are afraid to see or hear truth. Encouraging their browbeating of anyone with a differing opinion only reduces the amount of real content and replaces it with more "no child left behind" garbage.

kwyjibo I didn't get that when I read the Karma description above in the post. What did I miss or not understand?  

How does this occur with the new features?

I think you missed part of my description of the Karma System.

There's no rating people down.  There is no way to be negative with the system, or to use it to punish anyone.  It is purely, 100% a positive thing.  If you never receive Karma, it's not because you're being singled out or attacked, since anyone can give you karma for any reason, and no one can take it away.

Or are you talking about reporting?  It's used to report TOS violations, spammers, trolls etc.  Reporting a post doesn't automatically kill it.  A mod/admin still has to look at it and make a decision.  All it does is draw our attention to problems we'd likely find anyway on a regular patrol of the forums.  It's just more effecient.

There's nothing in the update which discourages discussion or participation.  If anything, they encourage more and better participation since quality posts will get Karma points, and violation posts will be cleared off in a more effecient manner.

I don't know what Stardock did but I can go to SDC forums without my cpu topping out at 100%.The problem I had with avg is gone. Give the whole team karma points, good towards a 2 week vacation in Maui.  (Would you believe a free MC Theme?)  

Hey, I resemble that remark!  

Oh and for people concerned over abuse of the system... Since Karma points do not provide any real advantage aside from maybe bragging rights, who cares if someone rates a friend up every 10min for days on end?

At a maximum, this means someone could get 720 points in a 24hr period.  That would assume a master-level user sat down and every 10 minutes gave the maximum +5 rating they could give (I can give a +9 for example as a top-level admin)

But chances are, people who would abuse the system like that would be citizens, so you're looking at a maximum of 144 points in a day from one user with no life.

Or more accurately, someone may do this every few days for like 30 minutes.  Unless someone was truely dedicated to boosting the numbers, and had a relatively high access level, you're talking maybe a dozen or so "artificial" points before folks get bored and move on.

 

You say I didn't read the article, but I said nothing about negative ratings, because I did read the article. But you apparently missed this gem: "The points themselves don't DO anything yet, but there are ideas being kicked around on what we can do with these points." I am referring to the potential for a clique to form when inevitable rewards are given for high karma ratings such that only the same people have access to the rewards and access to giving others the rewards. Anyone with a differing opinion will be shut out.

In a forum dedicated to artistic expression, to breaking the mould, a Karma system is counter-productive because it enforces conformity only. Conform and you are rewarded by the popular ones. Break that mould and you are shunned. I fail to see how Art and conformity can coexist.

kwyjibo yes it is true that there is a potential for a clique to form over the Karma points.

You could also say that about the ratings system in the gallery library on skins, and downloads on skins. There are probably other ways that cliques can form here, I just can't think of any right now.

The key I think is that there is enough integrity here amongst the members, WC and Stardock staff for that not to happen.

Now folks will always feel that because something didn't go their way or they don't appear on some list that a cligue has kept them out.

My personal opinion is that it is perception versus reality. I could be totally wrong and people are just laughing at this reply right now, but I don't think so.  

My suggestion is to offer all high karma rewards for purchase with real money, then. Surely showering Stardock with money is good karma.

"Citizens can give +1, Apprentices +2 etc."

Where does that mention popularity? Anyone can vote.Maybe being helpful to others isn't your thing, but why hold it against those who are? Give the system a try at least.If it goes haywire, it can be fixed or forgotten.

I conform for no one I choose not to.'Nuff said

Yep, I'm sure that Stardock would see increased revenue as Good Karma.  

While there are ideas floating around, there are no details on them yet.  If we do take the karma points and do something with them, you can bet there will be controls put in place.  Think of this as Phase 1.

Phase 2 could have a way of averaging out points to prevent abuses.

Example that was kicked around in a discussion in the office the other day :

Points awarded over the last 30 days divided by some number based on number of posts made. 

This means you have to be a recent poster to keep your score.  If you leave the site for more than a month, your score basically could be reset.  This rewards ongoing participation.

Then there's the division by some number derived from the number of posts you made in the 30 day period.  This, to some extent, would encourage people to focus more on meaningful posts beyond "me too!" all over the place.   It wouldn't be a division purely by number of posts as that would actually discourage participation as it decreased the score, but it would be some small value that would try and balance out people who would just try to spam the forums for points from friends.

This is of course a massive over-simplification of the idea, but it serves as an example of the sort of things that can be done to counteract any attempts at spamming points.

And of course we could limit you to rating the same person up no more than once per day.  We could also slowly devalue the karma points awarded based on how often you rate that person up versus other people.  Like if you only rate 3 people all the time, eventually the points you give them become virtually worthless.

I personally see the future of the Karma Points system as a way to identify exceptionally helpful, friendly or interesting people in the forums, and somehow highlight them to the rest of the community.  Would a good score give people special forum powers or privledges?  No.  We will always tightly control who can do any administrative action.  Would it maybe give them a pretty "Community Helper" badge under their name?  Maybe.  Would it give them software for free, t-shirts, or anything of monetary value?  Almost definitely not.

The act of recognizing an individual for making a positive contribution does not necessarily encourage conformity.  Its not like having 1000 karma points will ever give you something super-special that the guy with 10 karma points doen't get.  It's not like withholding a point can be used to punish someone.  My saying "I like X" does not in any way devalue "Y"  It doesn't punish "Y" for being different from "X"