Karma System

This is similar to vBulletin's rep system but cannot be abused as easily.

You can only get Karma if the following happens:

- You are somehow promoted to moderator or administrator. (+2 Karma)
- You get a thread with at least three 5 star votes that is not in the Satellite Lounge. The average rating for that thread must be exactly 5.0. (+1 Karma for each thread)
- You get negative karma whenever you get an infraction. (-1 Karma)
- If you are banned in any way, whether temporarily or permanently, your Karma is set to 0.

Nobody may have more than 5 points of Karma, and nobody may have less than 0 points of Karma.
When an account uploads an avatar or profile picture for the first time, the Karma is set to 2. So everybody who has a relatively new account should have 2 Karma.
For brand new accounts, Karma is NaN: not a number.

And that's it. Trustworthy people will have 4 or 5 Karma, and unsavory types who tend to accumulate infractions or bans will have 0 Karma.

Because the range for Karma is so small: [0, 5]
that means you cannot abuse it like the rep system where one person can have 2580 rep and another person has like -1451 rep.

This probably won't be implemented on the CSTSF but it is something to think about, especially if you possess your own forum that isn't a spawn of the Miraigamer Forums.

Notice that it is not possible to get positive Karma in a normal way without having at least 3 unique people (three 5 star votes) agree that you have created or written something useful that contributes to the forum. Single people cannot upvote or downvote your Karma, unless they have full control of the forum (administrators).

 

sounds like a pretty good idea. and dang it i just got rick'roll'd by jellyfish juice

 

It's been said before but if you need an incentive program to make quality posts then you might as well just go pleasure yourself to the hits counter on your geocities homepage.
If you can't tell who's a butt and who's done good stuff then you need to lurk more
furthermore it just encourages needless discrimination and elitism which we already have enough of that from postcounts

 

And postcounts don't even MEAN anything

 

shut up dunc, you haven't even hit 1k posts yet.

 

Noxid pretty much said everything I wanted to say. More often than not, rep and karma systems turn into more of a popularity contest

Also I THINK you can rate your own threads 5 stars

 

Postcounts really do not mean anything.

You can be a chill guy like Xaser with less than 400 posts, or a big meanie like CptFab and have over 2000 posts.
Doesn't mean that CptFab is cooler than Xaser or holds more power than him.

 

I completely agree, post counts REALLY don't say anything about the members other then, well, that they have a lot of posts...

 

I don't think the forum is big enough to need this system. If suddenly a shit ton of people join the forums and it becomes unmanagable then I might see the need, but not today.

 

I'd enjoy it, if just for the novelty of having it.

 

I don't think the forum is big enough to need this system.

I don't think any forum is big enough to warrant this system; ideally, you'd be judging each post based on how well thought out, funny, and/ or interesting they are. Having karma and other shit like that not only clutters up threads, it also means that, even subconsciously, you're passing judgment on that person. Plus, it encourages groupthink ("man, that person has quite a bit of karma, everyone agrees with them, so I should, too!") which is never a good thing imo.

So yeah, judge people based off of their character, not their postcount or shiny golden stars or whatever-the-fuck. if you don't know who they are and for some reason you need some kind of gauge of how nice of a person they are to reply to them than you are probably a shitty person.

 

This system could also create a massive incline in alternate accounts. Voting up the thread and getting +karma is an easy way to deceive people

 

Unfortunately it is not easy to spoof MAC addresses. That's the hardware equivalent of an IP.

Plus alts are banned pretty quickly unless you're using an anonymity network.

 

I don't think any forum is big enough to warrant this system ...

Zelda Fan Game Central (ZFGC) is, and it has a karma system (implemented a few months ago), and it works well. If people use it properly, it can be a means to encourage the people that contribute, because the people who change the karma of others can leave a message as to why they are doing so. I think the moderators actually use it now to keep some people in line, since they can give negative karma and say why. It seems to be really effective for some of the guys who would usually screw around; they really don't like negative karma.

That said, this forum seems to have very little activity compared to ZFGC, so I do agree that it does seem kinda pointless here.

 

Even if there are forums big enough, we're not. Even if we were big enough, I still don't think it'd be useful. Also, gasp, there's a negative number in my useless stats box, obviously I need to drastically change my internet persona.

Knocking people back in line is what moderators/admins have PMs, warnings, and tempbans for. In fact, the very fact that the moderators could use karma removal as a moderating tool implies there is plenty of judging based on just the Karma number, which is retarded.

 

The last thing we need is this site turning into Reddit.
I mean, I love Reddit, but leave that where it belongs.

 

It is interesting. But it still does not beat our system, and as stated before the karma system could be abused with the use of multiple accounts.

 

I've been here long enough to understand that this is a bad idea, we don't want our forums to become reddit.