New Karma System (Theory)

[Uchiha Nick]

there is some sense in it, but still I don't see it working. I just can't lol, I've read other Karma discussions on this board with ( IMO better ways ) which where still smited.

[yexusbeliever]

Alright, I'll do two versions then, because the first one won't be that extensive, then when I get enough time to expand the features, I'll release the second version which will have those +/- options with control from the ACP.

Just do yours first like you said. I am not looking forward to adding a karma system though I know others will want the negative version too. Why? I do not want to add too many mods to a board to keep it easy for updates.

[Highway of Life]

MKruer, although you have VERY valid points...
The Karma system I have in mind is not based on posts being good, bad or neutral, instead, it's based on user helpfulness...
so there is no reason for a negative field.
In my mind, you could go with three distinctly different Karma systems that serve three different purposes.
The problem is everyone believes they should be one system... but they can't, as you can tell from the disagreements about how it's supposed to work.
But once you understand that the functionality is different, then it just depends on the type of community it is.
Mine will work best in a support community, since that's what STG is, that's what I will use... I'll still develop the other features, but they will come later.

yexus, no worries... it's not stalling me any, I just need to find the time (and motivation) to do it.
I've been splitting time between my work, Mod developing, support, and working on naderman's olympuswiki.

[MKruer]

@Highway of Life
I would think of a better term for your system, because by definition it has nothing to do with Karma. It would be more like a site wide Digg (See http://digg.com/) I think that it is important to separate the two ideas fundamentally in as to avoid confusion and/or flame waring.

[Eelke]

Hmmm.. Wasn't the term karma devised to be as implementation-neutral as possible, just to say that there is some kind of figure associated with a person that says how they are appreciated by the rest of the community? If we were talking about helpfulness of posts, I'd tend to agree, although obviously there are big areas of overlap. But I think Highway is talking of helpfulness of a user, and that sounds a lot like one possible meaning of "karma" to me.

Actually, I think the notion of having multiple "counters", as Highway is suggesting, might actually be a really good idea. I personally like the idea of a single figure that shows how "good" a person is, but there's no reason to not calculate that from several different counters using some kind of formula (that you could tweak down the road because you feel the "rudeness" counter needs to weigh a little lighter that the "helpfulness" counter, for example), or, if you for your site like that better, to just present the individual counts to your users. On my site, I have had to make the difficult choice of having to ban otherwise quite helpful/knowledgeable members, because on the other side they were just completely disregarding the rules and/or being rude to others. So, that shows there are multiple factors to consider, and consolidating those factors into a single figure isn't trivial (which I think is the entire reason for this thread to exist in the first place).

[Handyman]

IMO I think you should make a Karma system that gives the board admin the ability to choose if he wants Negative, Neutral and/or Positive... you could even add an option in there to rate it 1-5... and possibly an option to give positive based on the givers number of posts and current rating (such is the VB system) or based on the posters number of posts... all admin selectable.

If you get the basic system done with options, it would be easier than everybody making their own... why keep re-inventing the karma system???

[MKruer]

I guess the major difference would be with highways version its on a post by post basis, but the other way, it would be used on a global basis. So yeah they could be the same, but if anything at best his version would be a sub set of the larger karma system. The only reason at this juncture that I think that there should be a verbiage distinction is because, if you read sence the begin, they are aiming at two different areas.

Still perhaps we can come to some sort of generalized premise. I will have to read from the beginning and recollect all the ideas and list them on one page.

[Highway of Life]

Exactly!!

That was what I was trying to get across... then I realized that because of the distinctions, I need to say hey... there are a couple different ways to do it here.
I suppose the first version of what I'm doing, you would call a "user reputation"
and not "karma".

However, understand too... that there are not just two ways to this system, but actually, three...

• User Reputation
• User Karma
• Calculated Reputation

User Reputation, which is based on "user helpfulness" and only a positive ranking can be given.
You could also do this so that negative rep can be given if someone was especially rude.
Karma, which is based on quality of posts, and both negative or positive ranking can be given on a post-by-post basis, and overall karma is based on a calculation of good posts versus bad posts.
And the other system is calculated reputation... it's a much more advanced version of the user reputation by calculating the reputation of the person giving the reputation, and applying that to the receiving user... there are many other possible calculations that can be done here, but it's a much more complex system anyways.
There is also post rating, but this isn't exactly related to karma, but more like DIGG, where it's individual document rating.

Edit: Wow that's odd...
I used:

Code: Select all

[list]
[*] User Reputation
[*] User Karma
[*] Calculated Reputation
[/list]

And see above how it came out...

[Martindale]

I wonder if it would be possible (or feasible, rather) to write the system in such a fashion that would allow admins to use some sort of "formula mockup" to specify whatever process is used to rate posts, authors, and topics?

This would make it certain that there is only 1 major mod used, but would open the door for all sorts of algorithms and processes by which boards could establish a social rating system.

[clummy]

Karma systems tend to get complex, having to deal with potential spammers and trolls.

Therefore I propose something I call 'Thank-You-System' - while it still can stand as a Karma-System.

Every user but mods and admins can click on a button next to a post. Doing so they say tahnk you to the author of this post. They can do so only once for an author per topic. Users can build a reputation based on the number of 'thank yous' they received, expressed in the number of 'thank yous' or compared to the total number of 'thank yous'. Statistics could be created on a monthly or weekly basis as well as giving an 'over-all-time-stat'.

The idea is to let users say thank you to each other, with is a postive thing. Without a way to say something opposite, the total topic of how to handle spammers and trolls fades out. Of course they could still vote themselves high using multiple accounts. This could be prevented by allowing only the author of the first topic to say thank you to an author of one of the follow-ups.

All in all, this came to my mind because I don't like the idea of negative karma, let alone the complexity and number-crunching used by these systems. The idea described above is quite straighforward and easy to understand for both users and admins, no strings or voodoo attached.

"Thank-You-System" was exactly what I was about to open a new feauture-request thread.
These "Thank you"-Buttons aka "Dankomat" are a great thing because there is nothing more annoying than to click through several sites full of "TXH", "You are da man!", "Peace you! Great post" and so on.
There already some tweaks available for this: Thanks MOD 1.50.0 or Thank Post MOD 0.4.0 but it would be cool if you could implement this feature in the next versions.
Thank you