Discussion on making Karma matter

So, the last week, the most discussed topic is probably Karmagedon. This thread is not about that. If you want to share your thoughts on the measures taken by Ched, and the positions of the Committee members in this vote, please head to the appropriate forum thread ((being this one).

This thread is about ways of making Karma meaningful. While meaning may have different meanings to people itself, I consider it to be meaningful when a high karma score is the result of insightful posts, well thought out argumentation, or actual quality entertainment. In order for karma to be meaningful, it must be un-farmable.

Some things I've seen work elsewhere:

1) When you up/downvote, the effect on the recipients Karmascore is dependant on the score of the giver, meaning those with high karma have a higher karma vote
2) There is a limit to the amount of votes you can give to any individual in a row, making it impossible to upvote 10 posts from a friend in a row. This will limit the infamous circle-karmas
3) Karma needs to have some relevance. I've seen a forum where Karma can be exchanged for badges or icons (much like honor bars) which reflect certain achievements. Basically, a way to show off your achievements in the forum and not just in your profile.

What do you think, would these measures be sufficient to kill off "Karma farming", give karma a true meaning again, and perhaps even make it relevant? Or will this too be subject to manipulation? How would you go about giving Karma meaning (on the premise that it actually SHOULD have some meaning?

1. Punish those who use the system to tank others scores out of spite. Once X amount of negative votes from the same person. Ban them from the forums just like any other rule. Reset karma on all violators.
2.Delete all Karma from VIP, Donators, Fun and Games.
3.Staff ban all abusers that are farming "buddies vote ups" Reset karma on all violators. If you doubt what I say look at all the up votes in the original thread, when they were flaming, trolling and harassing players. That should never be tolerated.
4. If a player is forum/player banned for over 6 months+ all karma should be reset. This will make the abusers think twice about using the system as it was not intended. Seriously people who really have deserved such bans should start from 0.

When this first came out, I posted that the system was flawed from the start, I personally showed admins how it was flawed, but what they did was to protect the abusers and not protect the people who were actually trying to make it right. 4 times tanking my score was enough, I did the same thing to them, guess what? Admins changed the rules real quick after I showed what they were doing to their "buddies". They protected the good old boys but screwed the majority of the players who actually posted legit posts.



That is how karma is going to mean anything.


My comment about deleting all Karma from the above threads would not be fair as it was for the flower runners. Make it from date announced not past posts.

How would you "prove" that one is farming, and this in such a way that any controversy actions may spark are easily dealt with? In other words, how to not only make it fair, but also make it CLEARLY fair?

I go around and stalk all your postings and up/down vote it. "They" have been doing it to tanks scores the same way. Not to hard to prove just look at all karma given. When you get a negative vote on a "Congrats for the achievement" in the Achievement forum you can count on being a negative nasty down vote by a hateful person. Yes I do get those, just had one yesterday by one of the famous haters.


Then you have the cowards who make multis to tank your score or up vote their buddies accounts, they change the name of the multi does the dirty deed and then quick change them back so you can not tag them. I had 3 separate multi accounts in my suggestion thread about making inactive attackable, caught 2 of the 3 and were placed in Fed. I know who is behind that one, but they could never link his main account. He will get caught eventually, cheaters always do.

What they need to do is link them to the ID and not the name. That would eliminate that BS.

I'm in a hurry but this made my stomach turn, so I have to just post this quickly before this escalates...

Elitism is the worst thing that can happen in a forum. Period.

It will never matter.

/end of

Punish those who use the system to tank others scores out of spite

As far as I know, karma abuse is investigated/punished when reported to staff, and the karma is reset. I could be wrong, though.

Delete all Karma from VIP, Donators, Fun and Games

Agree wholeheartedly

Staff ban all abusers that are farming "buddies vote ups". Reset karma on all violators

I believe this does happen, when the abuse is brought to the attention of staff. Or, at least, when it's pervasive enough to merit investigation/action

- - - - -

People keep going back to the "staff favoritism" argument, but I like to think the community has progressed from that.

I care zip about this karma score.

Why? In summary: My aim of posts is/are

1) To be informative
2) To be humorous
3) To point out the stupidity/contradiction in someone else's post

I don't ask nor require a 'up', but if I get one, it's a nice acknowledgement of the post I made.

The question about farming. Pretty sad really. Farming for what exactly? An arbitrary number? Because there's no other reason.

As for those bemoaning the loss of their arbitrary accumulation... Well... Let's say I think you need to sit down and evaluate the time you're wasting on this.

Seriously, a 'buddy club' conspiracy? Rearrange these words... 'a life get'

Elitism is the most pathetic thing that can happen in a forum. Period.

Fixed it for you [:tongue:]

Oh lookie, another Karma rating thread.......

It will never matter.

/end of

Thanks for watching over us all! We feel protected now.... somewhat reminds me of Miguel de Cervantes' hero [:wink:]

[image: www.drjeffcornwall.com]

The issue is this

If karma has a "reward" people will abuse it, if it doesn't then people wont. I like my high karma and don't care for rewards because with rewards then suddenly we have factions boosting their own karma and so on.

You literally cannot reward karma unless you want to reward everyone for abusing karma.

"What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?"

Says it all really...

Here's a thought:

If you need to make complex rules and regulate the use/misuse of karma, perhaps it would be better to just remove it completely? I've done that in several forums as admin and it has never been an issue. Post count and buddy score counts are two things that tend to bring out the worst in forum users.

If you want to benefit the truly good posts, those that actually deserves "votes", you could add a symbolic donation fee button. Like a few dollars or whatever. The amount should be small enough so that it can not be abused.

Or just go with vanilla. Whoever contributes with good posts will likely keep doing it, regardless of karma.

I honestly don't see anyway to stop karma farming,people are going to want to help friends and they will most likely down vote enemies doesn't matter content of posts
Having rewards will only make people want karma more and that will make things worse
Limiting how many votes people have isn't a real answer either it just limits how much they can farm in a set time frame
The idea that having karma should give you more votes leads to the privileged having something over others and being able to hold others back or help them

IMO the best answer is doing away with it,its a very poor idea and is just a popularity contest

I assume you are Styx? (I can't be bothered to keep up with name changes anymore but given the topic and your opinion it is a fair assumption), lets talk about when it first came out. First of all the person that tanked your score was you, it wasn't anyone else's fault. Granted they rated you down but they were only the perpetrators whereas you were the instigator, you are the one who started the chain of events that started it all off so stop blaming other people and accept some personal responsibility for once because the victim complex is getting old now.

Secondly you were one of the reason the 5 neg rate limit was put in place because (although you claim innocence) you were going around and slaughtering everyone's karma that disagreed with you and then claiming it was tit for tat and even paid for other people to do it for you too so before you call others cheaters what's that saying? "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"

Thirdly I don't give a toss about Karma but deleting all Karma from the VIP wouldn't be fair, I'm sure you would love the slate wiped clean but see Bogie and Beerstein have earned most of their karma from answering questions and helping people, I earned mine from my various funny posts (that usually get me banned) and the hard work I put into my werewolf games. We were the first 3 in VIP and none of us ever bought Karma, none of us ever posted on the flower thread or the donator forum, none of us ever posted just for the sake of posting. When we post we add content, people may or may not agree with what we post at times but it adds content and is mostly "legit" so taking away our karma just to suit you or anyone else who thinks it is unfair we have it would be ridiculous.


Fourthly even if the slate was wiped clean you would still complain, your karma still wouldn't go up because of you and when everyone else's is going up you would find some other imagined "flaw" in the system because you are so damn self centered you believe that the only person that adds real content to these forums is you so in your head "it stands to reason" that your karma should be the highest <--- that's actually the crux of your issues with Karma, that you're not on top where you are convinced you should be.

As for the whole Karma issue it is useless, it makes no difference to any ones game play and is really just another product of societies need for constant validation. The best solution is to remove the whole system, it has no purpose (as we have established) so it's only real function is to create a divide between those who have it and those who don't and instead of encouraging people to post valid ("legit") content to gain it from what I see it mostly causes people to get so frustrated that they go on rampages on the forums so instead of improving the forums it has just made them worse. I mean honestly since it was implemented tell me one good thing that has come from Karma? Whereas I bet you can all list about 20 bad things. It was a bad idea at the start and it is a bad idea now.


TL;DR - Styx has a chip on her shoulder that will take a kango hammer to remove and Karma is a hindrance

Are we really discussing how to make a popularity contest, pissing contest, or beauty contest relevant? Everyone one of those contests ever run are simply a matter of opinion and so is Karma. Please lets not even attempt to make it relevant in fact lets get rid of it completely. We already have the farce that is MR. Ms. Torn lets not make another thing like that. This is crime game for goodness sake not a class election or Ms Universe. Please stop trying to make it relevant!!

The whole Idea that staff or any type of player committee can make Karma matter or a valued aspect to the game is just plain stupid. The whole Idea of Karma is suppose to be based on what the PLAYERS think is a good post not what the committee ched or staff think is a good post.

Simply by trying to govern it ched, staff, and the Committee have made it less valuable to players. There is no way to make it count more and by rewarding people for it creates what some concider Elite forum posters. People that think they are better because they have more Karma from what they perceive makes them better then other people.

A prime example of this is the references made in the VIP forum Were certain VIP members refer to flower runners or people that dissagree with them as "SnowFlakes" as some sort of insult.

There simply is no way of making Karma count as it is meaningless and should be removed from the game all together.

BullShit in full force in this statment
Thirdly I don't give a toss about Karma but deleting all Karma from the VIP wouldn't be fair, I'm sure you would love the slate wiped clean but see Bogie and Beerstein have earned most of their karma from answering questions and helping people, I earned mine from my various funny posts (that usually get me banned) and the hard work I put into my werewolf games. We were the first 3 in VIP and none of us ever bought Karma, none of us ever posted on the flower thread or the donator forum, none of us ever posted just for the sake of posting. When we post we add content, people may or may not agree with what we post at times but it adds content and is mostly "legit" so taking away our karma just to suit you or anyone else who thinks it is unfair we have it would be ridiculous.

Sorry MB But im going to have to call Bullshit here. Having seen alot of Bogie's posts I know for a fact that he gets Karma for bullshit posts in the VIP section along with other sections in the forum's. Just go look at the thread about trying to fool people into thinking theres a VIP honor bar for a example. Karma in alot of instances has become a populatrity reward and as such is just plain shit. The VIP forums is nothing but a circle jerk of Karma farming and if you make so many informative posts that deserve so much Karma then it shouldn't bother you to have it removed from the reward for making so many good posts.

I don't understand karma in torn, it seems like it's not supposed to matter, but from Karmagedon I guess people take it serious. Maybe it's like collecting jackets or other things in torn that have no real purpose other than having a lot of something. So trying to make it more relevant might not be the way to go. Maybe just leave it alone, and people can keep collecting it.

I've decided to start just giving people more karma, weather they deserve it or not. Just in case they are trying to collect it. Maybe it will keep people posting new content to these forums.