Karma - Yay or Ney?

[Hawkins]

Its just another aspect of the forums. Kinda like a challenge. Can you say something witty enough to gather some up without being a suck-up?

That's why I like it. Maybe make it so that it can be ignored in the user preference??

It also makes it difficult to state your case in an argument when you have -eleventy-billion negative karma, and I like that too. LOL.

[waterboy]

I have no problem with it. Interesting that Guido has so much negative, but that obviously has nothing to do with the quality of his posts, but rather to the incendiary nature of them and some rivalry stuff. Plainly, his viewpoints are not mainstream forum but neither are mine. There are some pretty lame posters (as far as quality of thought and expression) that have high karma rankings and some insightful, honest posters who never seem to get much karma. Mine has rested at 29 no matter what I say or who I agree/disagree with so I can't see any logic behind them. Kind of a student council popularity ranking.

They're harmless fun. We need more harmless fun. Keep 'em.

[Breadburner]

If your willing to use the feature you should be able to know who gave it to you.....Is the way it should work.....

[Cats Cats Cats]

Maybe an individual post + and - and you can see the Karma on their profile page only.  The Karma allows people that are new to figure out who is kind of full of it.

[jiminy]

  I like the idea of karma, but it could use some modifications to discourage abuse.  One, any given user should be able to turn it off for themselves (but keep the score they had if they turn it on again).  Two, we should see who gave us karma in our user profile.  This could incite karma wars, but hey that could be kind of fun.  Which leads to three, limits on karma: you cannot karm a person twice in a row without karming say 10 other users in between, or maybe you can't karm a user more than once a day.  Make em work for it if they're going to play that game.  Another possibility is that your effect on someone's karma is proportional to your own karma.  Users with negative karma would have little or no effect on others.

I think if we can't make the first two happen, then it should go away.  The others are just things I have seen work well on other boards.

[MichaelBates]

Facebook gives you the ability to "like" a comment or wall post, but there's not a corresponding "dislike" button. That kind of function -- connected to the individual post rather than the person -- would be more useful than karma for helping forum users find informative and helpful content.

[Chicken Little]

I say keep it; it probably helps more than hurts. 

• It's a feedback loop that people don't mind using
• It doesn't deter every troll, but it's easier to spot someone with "issues".
• I'd also argue that it cuts down on some of the ugly.  Occam's razor...why write something nasty when it's much easier to just click a button?   I am certain that at least a couple of people have toned it down a bit.  How many threads have been shut down lately?

Bate's suggestion is a good one, if that's possible, but I'd say add the "like" feature to individual posts as an enhancement, not necessarily a replacement.  There's no magic bullet, but this karma thing is not terrible.  Terrible is people crapping up good threads with petty bickering.  I think there's less of that these days.  JMO

[sauerkraut]

I don't care one way or the utter. I'm always in the neg range anyhoo. Ask me if I care. Anyhoo, Since it's a extra feature we might as well keep it, some posters like that sort of stuff, or we can have a "opt in" or "opt out" feature on the profile page, so, for those who like it they can "opt in"  and those who don't can "opt out" that way everyone should be happy. A win-win! 

[godboko71]

Facebook gives you the ability to "like" a comment or wall post, but there's not a corresponding "dislike" button. That kind of function -- connected to the individual post rather than the person -- would be more useful than karma for helping forum users find informative and helpful content.

I agree that this would be a useful feature.

That said I also like karma but it doesn't matter either way to me TBH.

[sauerkraut]

Facebook gives you the ability to "like" a comment or wall post, but there's not a corresponding "dislike" button. That kind of function -- connected to the individual post rather than the person -- would be more useful than karma for helping forum users find informative and helpful content.

No hurt feelings Karma. I'd rather it go both ways. if you can add karma you should be allowed to subtract Karma. Or so it seems to me.

[Chicken Little]

A flippin' tie?  Seriously?  I've been watching this poll.  Keep the karma.  And throw some this di-rection while your'e here.

[Hoss]

A flippin' tie?  Seriously?  I've been watching this poll.  Keep the karma.  And throw some this di-rection while your'e here.

Done.  wow, I just noticed I'm down to 2 from 46 last week.  Someone really doesn't like me very much.

[cannon_fodder]

lol, I've shed 50 some.  RM's shed like 80.  Guido is almost -300.  Someone enjoys clicking "disapprove" way too much.

Makes me chuckle.

[swake]

lol, I've shed 50 some.  RM's shed like 80.  Guido is almost -300.  Someone enjoys clicking "disapprove" way too much.

Makes me chuckle.

I've dropped 50 some since I argued with the Troofers.

It's a conspiracy!

[custosnox]

+1 for everyone just for being involved in this thread