From what I understand of the system's purpose, karma was brought to the Interguild as a way to praise constructive posts and rebuke nonsensical, off topic spam. The karma system should never be used for that, and come to think of it, the karma system should never be used period. The dealing of karma eventually turns into (and already has here, one could argue) promotion of the funnier, incongruous posts and ignorance of the rest. If anything, the karma system will eventually cause pointless posts, and I've already seen that here, with posts like "that is karma worthy" or just "+karma."

The karma system is also abusive and can depend on mood and blunt opinion rather than genuine rewarding. If someone doesn't like a member for whatever reason, what's stopping them from subtracting karma from every post of theirs they come across? The way the system is set up here, we have no idea who deals karma, and so problems like that just have to be sucked up (I'm not saying you guys are like that--it's just what this system can bring). The way people deal with this is by adding karma to the post that didn't deserve the subtraction, neutralizing the effect. But then other people might feel sorry for whoever got the subtraction, so they'll give them additional karma that they don't necessarily deserve.

The problem with the karma system is that it is vulnerable to the opinion of every single member, and not everyone is exactly fair in their ratings. There is a system that I've seen from another community--one so much better than the flawed karma nonsense--that I'd love to introduce to the Interguild. It revolves around the staff rewarding and punishing posts. The way it works is a post can earn a maximum of five positives or five negatives. Negatives would be given out to posts that flat out break the rules (which could include spamming, as it's an official rule of the Interguild to not spam). Posts that are neither breaking the rules nor exceptional in away way simply aren't touched.

Now, these points would eventually effect your ranking as a member. For instance, most forums base member rankings on how many posts have been made. Have you ever seen those titles under usernames that say "Newbie" or "Master" or something along those sorts? This is the same deal, just more accurate. We could do a ranking system using titles based around Interguild history or whatever it ends up being. To make it all the more rewarding, the higher rankings could have some sort of benefits and certain privileges (of which, I should say, I have no suggestions for, but something could surely be thought of). Even if benefits are never implemented, the amount of points a person has earned will be displayed, so that in itself is satisfactory (much moreover knowing you have 100 karma because people think you're funny).

As for levels, videos, blogs, articles, and other things of the like, get rid of the karma system for these even if it's not removed indefinitely from the site! All of those things have some amount of effort put into them, and so they should never receive negative karma. Give those things a "like it" system, where people either press "like," or they don't press anything at all. But if the system I've been promoting ends up being used, then, hell, it would work just as fine for those things, too. Going more into detail, I'll give an example of what and how that specific website utilized this system:



This is a Dragon Point (they're a Mortal Kombat fan site). After earning a respectable amount, one would advance to the next rank, and then earn another set, advance again, and then so on and so forth. These were manually added in to the bottom of posts by staff members, but they were coded in, not edited. For instance, a member could not edit their post and paste that image in and dilly dally away. It was in the system, under the post, in its own bar. If a member earned two Dragon Points, it would look like this:

Dragon Points:

They called their deduction points Skulls, and they were dealt in the same way. Skulls took away from whatever Dragon Points one had, and if a user ever reached -5 points, they were suspended. Consistency in earning Skulls would act as a signifier to the staff that a banning would be needed soon. The terms "Dragon Points" and "Skulls," of course, don't exactly apply here, so perhaps we could call them something like "Treasures" and, hell, "Skulls" from Hannah and the Pirate Caves. Thinking in broader terms (generally applying to the Interguild), we could hand out "Interbots" and "Negabots." Member rankings could consist of something like this:

Newbie - 0 Interbots
Platformer - 20 Interbots
Puzzler - 40 Interbots
Designer - 60 Interbots
...and so on...

Also, as a way to promote site submissions and entries, videos and levels should earn at least 1 point, and if a staff member thinks they deserve more, or none at all, then they can alter that as they see fit. This system could also promote other areas of the site, such as awarding contest winners beyond the basic trophies. What are your thoughts, Interguild?

This would not really promote submission of good levels, but rather spamming half finished levels that are not as good. More levels does not necessarily make a better site and having more stuff to sift through before finding a level worth playing makes a worse site.

"with posts like "that is karma worthy" or just "+karma.""
These types of posts should get -karma. If they don't, they should. If you see one, -karma it.

"If someone doesn't like a member for whatever reason, what's stopping them from subtracting karma from every post of theirs they come across?"
1. Mods. We have a page where we can delete karma ratings, if we feel that people are abusing the system, and if they continue to do so, we have the ability to prevent them from rating posts altogether. We don't use it, though, to delete the occasional rating that we don't agree with, just if we notice a pattern of questionable ratings.
2. No posts older than 10 days can be rated, to prevent us having to delete massive amounts of posts if somebody were to go around and -karma everything Livio's ever said, or something.

"The way the system is set up here, we have no idea who deals karma"
There is a mod page for this. I had originally wanted it to be known, so that people would have to had help accountable for their ratings, but others seemed to think that, if you gave -karma to somebody and they found out, then they'd retaliate by giving you -karma, which makes some sense. A page to see -which- posts have earned/lost karma is something that I don't think anybody objects to, so the only reason this hasn't been implemented is because Livio hasn't bothered to do it yet. For now, if you want to know where you karma's coming from, a mod can look it up for you.

"As for levels, videos, blogs, articles, and other things of the like, get rid of the karma system even if it's not removed indefinitely from the site!"
This was a huge point of discussion a while back. It was eventually decided to allow karma for levels and videos on the basis of the fact that they have post-like descriptions contained within, that might be worthy of the +/-. I don't think that that ever really happens, though, and usually, high-quality levels and videos get karma, while wastes of space lose some. I definitely agree about the guides, but now that they're "blogs" instead, it sort-of makes sense for them to be subjected to karma (assuming we have karma), since now they're not much different from topic headers.

"Also, as a way to promote site submissions and entries, videos and levels should earn at least 1 point"
I was going to post about this, but Harumbai beat me to it. I agree with him on this point.

So that was just to explain a few things from what I was hearing in your post. I haven't really gotten around to reading what your new system would be, and honestly, I don't think we're really in the mood to completely revamp the karma of system, when, IMO, there are a lot of things all over the site in a much more desperate need of a revamp. Perhaps, slight modifications to how and where you can get karma (like removing it from levels, videos, and blogs, if that's what people want) could be implemented, but overall, I think we're just going to leave the system alone for now. I mean, I hope it gets left alone, because I'm mentally exhausted from all the tinkering we've done to the points systems over the years. At least now, you can't use your points to buy fuchsia backgrounds...

No. That gives the staff overwhelming power over everyone.

I actually agree with you there, but point farming is easily avoidable. If it's blatantly clear that a level or video was half-assed, or if it was a serious attempt but still doesn't quite shine bright enough, then a moderator could easily remove that single point. Hell, that idea doesn't even have to be an automatic implementation for new levels--staff could just assign fair points as they come across submissions. If you do it that way, then that would only promote effort in levels and videos further.

Note that the system I'm suggesting is basically your average point system but controlled and improved.



Moderators shouldn't even have to look for "questionable ratings--" why strain the staff with more work? Occasionally rewarding members as you come by their good works is much less a hassle than having to keep an eye out for negative patterns. And perhaps there is no pattern, just an undeserved subtraction placed here and there. Problems with this system always exist.



This is also an unnecessary implementation that is instantly fixed with my system.



All submission entries should be enabled to some rewarding system, but not a system where they can be punished. If a submission is against the rules, it will simply be deleted. But a submission should never earn negative points simply because a member has frustrations or such with it. Like I said: videos, levels, blogs, etc. should have a "like or leave alone" system, while still being able to be assigned points by staff for good efforts or response.



This could just be another thing added to Livio's to-do list. It's nothing big or exceptionally exhausting. It'd just take some looking into and tweaking as you progress with it.



You realize that staff has the power to ban us permanently at any given moment (or, at least, the administrators do)? If you don't already consider that "overwhelming power," then you've got the wrong idea of what position you're in. The system I'm suggesting cannot give staff more control over us than what they already have, and besides, staff members are chosen for whatever good qualities they have; I'm sure none of them would act unfairly against members.

Yes, but I go on this site rather than say, Facepunch or Nifflas Forums because the mederators speak in normal threads as well as their own special moderator topics. I mean I've actually had two of my ideas implemented. When a mod speaks on my topic I don't want to be thinking 'Oh god are they gonna down karma me?' Yes, of course they can ban us at any time, but the site would be ridiculous without that power. The thing is, the site does not have enough active members for there to be a seperation between them and us.    

"or, at least, the administrators do"
We all do. There used to be more than one rank of staff, but there was basically nobody we didn't trust enough to have the full rank. If we were to bring somebody new on, we'd probably bring back the old rank for them.
But I think I agree with guyguy to an extent. It sounds to me like the staff would supposedly control who should be liked and who shouldn't, which isn't something I want to have control over. The community should decide this type of thing, not us.

"why strain the staff with more work?"
Your system sounds a bit like more work as well. It's honestly not so bad when it comes to looking for questionable ratings. You can see as you browse the site, when some posts seem to be getting ratings that they don't deserve, and you can see pretty quickly on the panel who's doing what. You can even filter the rates by voter!

"This is also an unnecessary implementation that is instantly fixed with my system."
I wasn't saying it was good, I was just letting you know what was currently in place.

"It's nothing big or exceptionally exhausting."
Lol. You don't know how long it took to get him to implement the karma system. We used to get "points" which were basically based on the character count of your posts, which was super-lame.

Then we also had 'Foundations', which just totally screwed up the system.

You're still new and, from what I can see, it looks like you've just gotten a bad first impression of the karma system. In fact, from what I've seen, you seem to have based almost that entire post off of getting your level rated down by Krotomo.

Firstly, Krotomo wasn't actually acting maturely by Interguild standards. The whole "you just wasted 53 minutes of my life with that level", followed by a negative karma rating, followed by him being elusive about explaining what was wrong with it is actually quite discouraged behaviour, and I've never seen him act like that before (I rated down his post in your topic, in fact, and you are well within your rights to do the same). Don't assume that having levels negatively rated is a regular thing, because I actually can't remember the last time anybody down-rated a level before. If I had my way, levels wouldn't be rateable at all, but I was in the minority in the debate over whether or not to implement that.

I'm tempted to say that you're blowing it way out of proportion, but Kro was acting especially (and uncharacteristically) trollish, so I can understand why you'd be so quick to lash out at the karma system and get the wrong idea. For the record, members actually tend to be much fairer with karma; negative ratings, even for posts, aren't that common.

To be frank, I don't think you're familiar enough with the site or karma system to assert why and where it fails. Don't get me wrong; it's far from perfect, and I have many problems with it myself, but many of your claims seem quite unfounded; you've seen a very small and one-sided representation of what the system is like, and you've based your opinion and argument around it.


This, for example, gives me the impression that your experience with the system is very biased. Most members here are well aware that those posts are spam. In fact, the worst-rated post on the Interguild (-9 karma I believe) is held by a user whose post consisted of, "I just gave so-and-so more karma." You're encouraged to rate these posts negatively, because they're spam and most people know it. For the record, Livio said, "that is worthy of karma," as a way to commend a user for showing interest in Knytt Stories, a game that he's been trying for a while to get more people playing; it was not him just pointlessly commenting on karma. The "+Karma" post was by Krotomo, if I recall correctly. Surely you can see how basing so much of your opinion on Karma on the actions of one user can give you an inaccurate impression of it.

I have no idea what makes you think the karma system causes people to be ignorant of unfunny or non-incongruous posts. This thread itself discounts that notion. As for your suggested replacement system, I'd dispute it for similar reasons to those stated in the posts preceding mine.

I'll tell you what is wrong with the karma system, though:  I  think we have too small a community for it. In other, larger sites, your karma (or whatever variation of the word they have) is influenced by many more users; more people vote on your score positively and negatively, so it's senseless to get upset about losing on or two points. In a way, they have a purer system, because in order for their karma to rise or fall in a significant, noticeable way, they would've had to post something clearly worthy of all the positive or negative votes they receive from the several different users.

Here, with only a handful of active members, things are much more personal and karma is much less erratic, and it makes people take their rating too personally or seriously. That's our karma system's greatest flaw, I believe; it inspires people to take it too seriously. Not only members such as yourself, but some staff as well have taken that little number a little too close to heart. It's not a definitive indicator of your quality as a poster; it's just a simplified way of expressing your appreciation or distaste of something, and something to inspire you to make insightful and witty posts. It's not perfect, but it's nothing to get too worked up over, so try not to let it get to you. I'll think you'll find, as you spend some more time here, that it's not nearly as bad as you think.

About the -karma and that i said the level wasted 53 minutes of my life. I died 97 times in that level, alot, so i was pretty annoyed while playing it. Anyway out of anger, without thinking, I -karma rated the level because, well, it really annoyed me
and said very bad things about it. I removed the karma vote just now, and not before because it was like 10:30 at night and i had to get off the computer. You cant edit Chatbox posts so what i said about it wasting 53 minutes of my life was there to stay. Sure, I haven't changed the difficulty rating, but right now im writing this so I'm gonna wait until i finish. Anyway, I take back those mean things I said.

And I do think we could have karma for levels, except it would be on the effort put into it. If a level gets a -Karma it should be because the person didn't really try hard to make it it good.

Yes you can, click on the date next to it.

Anyway, your proposed system is based on the staff deciding what's good and not, and I am not in favor of that. I believe that the community grows if you as a member can influence the persons around you, and Karma rates are one way to achieve that. Giving the staff the power to decide what's good and who's a good poster isn't the right way to go in my opinion.

Every system like this has flaws, but I find the ones that come with the Karma system to be quite minor. Just don't become too attached to your own Karma (easy for me to say, but it's true) and you'll do just fine.

As Dando said, the main problem with the current system is the small amount of members we have on this site. Every single karma will have a large impact on the total karma of a member.
Karma isn't all that important anyway. After a while once you get to know most members on this site, you will form your own opinions on them regardless of their karma. Although in some cases the karma of a member does show their reputation on the site, this isn't nearly always the case. This is why I've asked Livio to lower my karma to the minimum amount possible. I don't care about my karma rating, and I like to show everybody I don't.

Now that this topic is here, I think it is a good time to show my own complaints about the system. I agree that levels, videos, guides and such shouldn't be able to be karma rated. A post should get karma if it was helpful or added to the quality of the topic and/or site in any other way. A guide or newspost should be helpful by definition. It is pointless to karma rate those. Especially when you consider it is perhaps the only part of the site where a user could submit something, that is actually heavily organized by the staff. Videos and levels can already be rated. If one is terrible, you give it a bad rating. If it is great, you give it a good rating. Again, it is pointless to be able to karma rate these.
And another personal annoyance is how easily people +karma a post that already has positive karma. I have noticed that if a post already has a positive or negative karma, people are far more likely to jump on the bandwagon and rate that post themselves. As if their rate is less influential that way as that post already was positive or negative rated, or as if their opinion fits in with the rest of the crowd, making them cooler. My suggestion would be to hide the karma of a post for anyone, except the poster himself and the staff.

No. I like the karma system because as soon as I went into negative karma I felt an urge to make better posts. This should happen to all users when the same happens to them. Unless you are catta/silver.

I think kro's minus-rate was taken too seriously. I've been trying to encourage people to take the negative rate more lightly and maybe hand it out more often, in order to get people used to minus rates. But of course, I guess when you minus-rate a level or anything else that you put serious effort to, you could get pretty insulted. And there's probably the whole psychological complexities of seeing a red minus rating at the top right of your own post and thinking that the community doesn't like you. I'm starting to think that giving out more minus ratings won't fix the stigma it has, especially when it comes to new members...

So far it doesn't seem like many people like your idea, imtimi, mainly because they prefer ratings given by the community, rather than the staff. We don't seem to have such a negative view of the community. But I have noticed that people who gain a lot of karma are those who make lots of funny posts. I think the movement to karma rate levels and videos and stuff was trying to help people gain more karma based on merit, rather than humor.

But there is one cool thing I liked about your idea, and that was the concept of member rankings. I remember on the old forums, we had named rankings that were acquired by your post count. Maybe we could do that again? I don't know if it would work very well, or what we'd base it off of (posts? karma? levels? a mix of everything?), but it's an interesting idea to think about...

This also reminds me that I still have to redo our Member Rankings page.

Oh by the way, it would be awkward to use Interbot as points since we sometimes refer to him as a person, but I know it was just a random suggestion for example purposes.

yeah I noticed that too, and now it's gotten to the point that if I think a post deserves karma but it already has some, then I probably won't rate it in fear that everyone else will. I don't like the idea of not displaying the karma of posts, even though that might fix the problem. Perhaps we could just rely on people to give negative ratings to bring down inflated rates?

There are two ends of the scale:

Facepunch's karma type system does not work because anyone can just click the button for 'dumb'. The other end is imtimi's idea. We need a balance. And I agree, krotomo's -karma rate was taken WAY too seriously.

Please, don't get me wrong. I was extremely bothered by krotomo's rating--I won't deny that--but don't think that my entire protest against the karma system revolves around that one occurrence. I know that I'm a new member here, Dando, but that doesn't mean that I haven't had my experience with karma systems in the past. Perhaps I can establish some ethos in saying that I've been a part of many communities that embraced the karma system, then soon ditched it (All is Brawl.com, Mortal Kombat Online.com, Lucas Forums.com, Planet Renders.com, and the list goes on). Everywhere the karma system has been used, matters of ranking and respect were only complicated. krotomo's rating definitely did spark this thread but, certainly, not this idea.

krotomo, I should also mention that I have no ill feelings toward you personally--just against the system.



Firstly, if you're ever thinking that you're going to get deducted points (if my system applied, that is), then, apparently, you did something against the rules that merited the punishment. Staff members aren't bullies, and if there are any staff members who abuse the system, report the problem to the administrators, and they'll fix everything up.



This system wouldn't stop staff members from reaping the benefits: It's a simple matter of staff members rewarding other staff members. Of course, there could be some sort of implementation where it can be seen who dealt or subtracted points to make sure that staff members aren't abusing their powers. The matter of fact is that all staff members already have the option to abuse their powers, but it's because of their integrity that they were likely chosen to be a part of staff in the first place.



Basing rankings on posts only encourages more spam. Basing is on karma only encourages unjust ratings. If you're interested in the rankings idea, I'm telling you that the absolute best way for it to work is with the system I'm suggesting. It's definitely the most accurate when it comes to that. And, Livio, even if you don't embrace this system, remove karma from videos and levels anyway. Today I just tried to add karma to Jazz's In the Sky level, but I could not, because that entry was older than ten days. The "like it or leave it alone" system that I've suggested for submissions is highly encouraged.

And by the way, canadianstickdeath, thanks for helping me get to know how things run around here. It's been helpful.

I don't really care about Karma anyway: what I say is what I say, I say what I want, and I don't care how it affects me. All it is, is that I have my say, and that's it.

Although I really do encourage the system change: Karma is actually a religious thing, say, bad karma gets you reincarnated as a cockroach. So if you get a lot of bad karma and it really affects you, basically you stay away from the site.

And I did like the rankings: why remove them? Instead of having them by posts, why not by levels, maybe? Although, "n00b"? Shwhat? Some people actually take that as an offence; as in "you're stupid" or "you're dumb". If we do have rankings, I say, no "n00b" ranking. Besides, the way you spelt that word really BUGS me. I am absolutely BUGGED at bad spelling.

I think the problem is that you think we hold karma in greater regard than we actually do (or, alternatively, that you hold karma in greater regard than we do).

To be honest, citing experience with similar systems in different forums doesn't carry all too much clout given that each forum has a culture of its own; a different view and treatment of the whole "karma" concept. As I said before, it's a simple way of expressing your approval or dislike of someone's post, and nothing more. The amount of karma you have doesn't determine your quality as a poster (oftentimes, higher karma is just because you post more than others) and I don't think anybody would suggest it does. Nobody treats it as the ultimate goal for posting. It's just something to inspire more thoughtful posts, and to dissuade people from spamming. Letting it rest in the hands of the community may create a few instances of inaccuracy, sure, but these are few and far between, and people are more keen on rewarding users for good posts than punishing them for bad posts.

I agree completely that karma should be removed from levels. Nobody usually rates levels at all (positive or negative) and I can't even remember the last time someone karma-rated a level before Krotomo, so that's why nobody really cares about it. Videos make a bit more sense, since videos have the potential to contribute to the community (making a walkthrough for someone else's cave, for example). I agree also with the "like it or leave it alone" idea for videos, and in fact that's what I suggested when the karma system was first being introduced to non-posts, but again I guess I was in the minority.

Anyway, I'm going to be honest: your system doesn't really sound appealing or suitable to the Interguild at all. I can see where you're coming from, and I can understand why you'd think your system would work better, but it just doesn't fit with the "culture" of this forum. Again, I'd encourage you to hang around for a while longer and get a better feel of the Interguild before you form strong opinions on it and its features. We've been around for quite a while (I've known some of the members here for six years now) so we're probably quite a bit different than we'd appear at first glance. Having such a close-knit community is part of what would inspire people to take the karma system too seriously, yes, but it's also for the most part what keeps people from acting immaturely or hurtfully about it.

Yes, but like that, it'll be the staff members that control our reputation. I don't like that. This is a forum, everyone is free to post what they like (provided they abide by the rules), and in my opinion, we have a right to have our opinion on what we think about others. That is what the karma system is for, right? If, your system is implemented, staff members will be the only people that control our reputation. Like I said, this is a forum, all of us participate.