Community moderation

Discussion of general topics related to the new version and its place in the world. Don't discuss new features, report bugs, ask for support, et cetera. Don't use this to spam for other boards or attack those boards!
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Discussion of general topics related to the new release and its place in the world. Don't discuss new features, report bugs, ask for support, et cetera. Don't use this to spam for other boards or attack those boards!
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ElbertF
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Re: Community moderation

Post by ElbertF »

Well in the literal sense of karma, good things should happen to good people and bad things should happen to bad people. :) I'm all for a reward/punishment system if it would work (posting without approval or flood limit, more PM's in inbox etc.). This would actually motivate people to make better posts. But "never trust user input" also applies here, there are always ways of abusing the system.

Quantity shouldn't count. It's not about who has the most friends, who registered first or spends the most time online. Quality should; good behavior, meaningful replies etc.. I think staff members would make the best judges, as well as members with a high karma level (given by staff members).

Ciacomix
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Re: Community moderation

Post by Ciacomix »

Yes perhaps a 'karma' system based on the true definition of the word is not relaly possible. Perhaps another name would be more true to the system.

I am thinking now it should ONLY be a reward system. The report feature and mods can handle punishment with the report/warning systems. Digg.com works because digging stories is one directional. Their comment system however is a mess because only the popular opinion gets shown even if the posts are relevant.

Highway of Life you make good sense with not having negative karma, but I also DO NOT like the idea of seniority or post count coming into play with karma either. I believe everyone is on equal ground even long time posters vs. newbies to a board. Just because someone is new doesn't mean what they have to say has to automatically be any less correct/impactful/relevant, so I don't see a need to artificially inflate long time posters' egos. People should rate each other's karma and only in a positive fashion. Things like post count and membership time could go to a board monetary system that rewards those people.

There should be a distinction between quality and quantity of members/posts and these systems should be mutually exclusive in my mind. Someone can post little and have great karma, and someone can post a lot and have crappy karma.
Last edited by Ciacomix on Sun Jul 16, 2006 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

d4rkst4r123
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Re: Community moderation

Post by d4rkst4r123 »

Well thats the problem, I wish my system woudl work, but I do have an example. Every forum that uses a karma system is an example of this. Why? Because there will *always* be a user who over uses his ability to affect another user's karma status. You will always find a member who has -300 karma. Because say a member make 1 bad post, the whole community comes down upon that user and everyone from the community give him a -karma effect. It evertually adds up. Once that happens, the user would then probably delete his account and make a new one sicne his old account has been outcasted by the community. Karma singles out too many people.

Ciacomix
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Re: Community moderation

Post by Ciacomix »

d4rkst4r123 wrote: Well thats the problem, I wish my system woudl work, but I do have an example. Every forum that uses a karma system is an example of this. Why? Because there will *always* be a user who over uses his ability to affect another user's karma status. You will always find a member who has -300 karma. Because say a member make 1 bad post, the whole community comes down upon that user and everyone from the community give him a -karma effect. It evertually adds up. Once that happens, the user would then probably delete his account and make a new one sicne his old account has been outcasted by the community. Karma singles out too many people.


Exactly, the problem is when the community sees a 'bad post' as an unnaccptable opinion and not a violation of board policy like posting porn or what have you. Being a majority doesn't make their view correct, and there is no way to convince people not to vote against a person just because they don't like them.

d4rkst4r123
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Re: Community moderation

Post by d4rkst4r123 »

Yea, when making a karma system, the developers have to make a very strong line between a user breaking the rules and a user just making a bad post that doesnt inflict the forums rules.

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Highway of Life
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Re: Community moderation

Post by Highway of Life »

Right, which is why I don't believe in Negitive Karma.

But also, my thinking for post count is that, the person with a huge number of posts has spent a lot of time dedicated to that forum, and (IMO) there should be some kind of reward for him/her.

Also, the person with many posts, or, a high-karma level, would be able to reward other users easier.
Say, as in my example...
Highway of Life wrote:
  • for instance, say a user has:
  • 122 karma
  • 566 posts
  • been registered for less than one year.

    The karma give would be:
  • 12 points for total karma
  • 5 more points for posts.
  • 0 more points for being registered less than one year.

So this person, whenever he clicks on [+] for another user, would increase THAT users Karma by 17 points.
Even a noobie.
So even though a newbie comes in and does not have the Karma power to increase other users Karma, it would not take him long if he made some good posts because users would reward him.

I'm posting all this on experience, the system really does work.
But I was not thinking along the lines of spambot in that a user's privilages would increase or decrease based on the Karma count for that user.
I suppose you could create a Karma for that, but the system I'm proposing you might not want to do that.

If you really want to know what the system point count is based off of, here it is...
Whenever someone gives a rating, they go through a series of checks to determine "Karma altering power". The total of these checks is how much Karma is altered or added.
  • Default Karma for new members is 10.
  • For every 365 number of days, users gain 1 point of Karma-altering power.
  • For every 1000 number of posts, users gain 1 point of Karma-altering power.
  • For every 1000 points of Karma, users gain 1 point of Karma-altering power.
Here would be an example: Lets say you have 3000 posts, have been registered for just over a year and have a Karma point count of 1000.

3000 Posts: 3 Karma Points
365+ Days: 1 Karma Point
Karma of 1000: 1 Karma Point

In this example, when you click the [+] icon in someone's post, you can increase that person's Karma by 5 points. You may only do this 10 times per 24-hour period and have to hit 20 users before you can hit the first person again.

A user must have 100 posts before his Karma hits count on others.
A user must have 1000 Karma points before his Karma hits count on others.

Each time you Karma hit someone, you have the option to leave a short message. A member will know that you have added Karma to him or her.

In your User CP - you can see "Latest Karma Points Received".
It will display the list with four columns:
On the very left you can see in which thread you got Karma points. Click on the name and it will show for which post you received the Karma for.
Next is Date on which you received Karma. The third column (posted by) tells you the name of the user who Karma hit you.
And on the very right you can see the comment the user sent you. If you don't see a comment than the user did not send any comments along with the Karma increase.

If a user does not want to receive Karma points from other members, they have the option to turn this feature off.
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ElbertF
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Re: Community moderation

Post by ElbertF »

I had a karma system on an old board, which was very popular in the beginning. But after some time me and my users got bored I guess and we weren't really using it anymore. Users need to be motivated to even rate a post or users.

And again, if you where my friend at a certain board (STG? :P), I'd give you + karma every day. Not because you're posts are excellent, but because I like you.

Ciacomix
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Re: Community moderation

Post by Ciacomix »

Highway of Life, you said you speak from experience that your method works, do you use this on your boards or visit a board that does? It sounds interesting. My only concern would be once karma levels reach a certain level, would they will grow too fast and basically have an inflation problem? What do you think about daily reducing karma levels for everyone by a certain value or percentage so posters can not jsut hold on to their karma indefinately but have to proactively maintain it?

Spambot, in HOL's inplementation you can't vote for the same person until after at least 20 votes to other people also.

soundboy
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Re: Community moderation

Post by soundboy »

dhn wrote: Do you have an example a community where this system is working?

As I mentioned before, http://www.slashdot.org" target="_blank is one of the biggest and oldest computer science communities and it works on such a system.

Now, you're all talking about "karma" and the problems it might bring. The thing is, that's not what I was talking about at all. I'm talking about rating and giving points to posts, not the users directly. Negative or positive points can't be are awarded to a user directly, but points awarded to their posts are reflected onto the user.

You talk about reporting bad posts... well that wouldn't exist either, because negative votes would be the way of reporting a bad post. The line between a bad post and a post that breaks the rules? Doesn't matter really... both are undesirable to a message board anyway and both would get marked for deletion if they get enough bad votes. So that makes warnings and reports unnecessary.

On slashdot, threads are often huge, with hundreds or thousands of posts each. People vote positively or negatively on each post, and with enough votes, each post is assigned a value, from -5 to +5 (or something similar, I don't recall). When browsing a thread, you can set a threshold, so for example, you can choose to read only messages with a +3 or higher. That way you don't waste your time reading through 100 trash posts only to get to the 6 or 7 good ones. Plus, all the good and bad votes end up reflecting on the user.

Again, I think seniority or number of posts is completely the wrong way to go. Highway of Life, I still don't see your point. Having posted 100 messages has absolutely no merit at all in itself, unless they're great posts. And seniority? There are people in my board who have driven me out of my mind by posting nothing but rubbish for over 2 years... why should that be rewarded?

I still haven't read a good reason why such a system wouldn't work.

APTX
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Re: Community moderation

Post by APTX »

Ultimately, when you see a user has karma with the value of x... what would you want that value to stand for? What information would it carry?
Don't give me my freedom out of pity!

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