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[on:]

What is the Karma thing I see under my username?

[Reply #1 on:]

seems if people love you they click karma+ and your count goes up (eg you gave some good advice)

if they despise you they click karma- and it goes down (eg your advice fried their last chip)

just have to work out what it all means now!

[Reply #2 on:]

I think the theory goes something like this...

A newbie comes to the forum.  She asks a question.  17 users reply.  All with more than 1000 posts each.  The advice is contradictory.  Who should she believe?

If fellow users really give "good karma" in response to "good advice" then the users with the highest karma are more likely to have given good advice so she should follow their advice first.

[Reply #3 on:]

Sorry, but I just can't agree with the above.


(There are no girls on the internets.)

[Reply #4 on:]

Can I see who voted me up or down?

[Reply #5 on:]

biocow:

you answer about women and the internet should give you a bunch of negative Karma, however since it is your first infraction, I will slide over the fact it was unpolite.

baum:

the whole point of karma in forums has been explained. You can increase you membership level by posting a lot, but that doesn't make your contribution meaningful. The others' opinion on your comments is what makes you a more valuable user to the community. We have implemented the karma feature to let the forum become more self moderated. Imagine e.g. that we appoint a moderator to help people out with the forum and that such person gets a lot of negative karma, that is an indicator people aren't happy about his/her role. This is probably one of the few ways we can monitor this without having to read every single post.

Also it is technically possible to see who voted for you, but we are not going to show it for the time being.

[Reply #6 on:]

Infraction!?!?!?!?!? It was just a joke! As in if you meet a woman on line there is a good chance it's actually an ugly fat guy living in his mom's basement.

I guess the humor didn't translate. I apologize and move on.

[Reply #7 on:]

biocow:

I read it as a joke, but some other people might not ... it is our goal to be inclusive, but still respect people's different sense of humor (how the hell can you say that in English!?!?!)

So I made a joke to your joke, I hope you understood me ... I am from Spain and sometimes a little dry 

[Reply #8 on:]

Thanks David. Sorry for the overreaction. Just the word "infraction" coming from an admin caught me off guard.

I understand. I'm a moderator on a large board and we try to do the same.

By the way. We had karma where you could see who voted you up or down. What a mess that was. I would not recommend it.

[Reply #9 on:]

By the way. We had karma where you could see who voted you up or down. What a mess that was. I would not recommend it.

Also it is technically possible to see who voted for you, but we are not going to show it for the time being.

That sounds like a good decision.

[Reply #10 on:]

should give you a bunch of negative Karma [because] it was unpolite.

It will be interesting to see this plays out WRT "politeness" vs "technical helpfulness and usefulness."
I can see a lot of people getting bad karma from newbies because of lectures on the uselessness of questions like "it doesn't work.  Can anyone help?", while the people with hard questions are less inclined to grant good karma.  Ah well, that's why these reputation-based schemes are still "researchy."  Is there more info on exactly how this implementation works?  (for example, does the karma of the karma granter/denier have an effect on the results?"

[Reply #11 on:]

I'll be interested to see who gets the first bad karma and why.

[Reply #12 on:]

I am going to kill whoever did that. 

Mowcius is not happy

Mowcius has an idea who it was (who was online here then...) - now whether to be mean or not

[Reply #13 on:]

It will be interesting to see this plays out WRT "politeness" vs "technical helpfulness and usefulness."

I've thought that. I've been here a while but when it comes to it I'm actually quite rubbish with an arduino (my house currently smells of fried circuitry  ), yet have picked up a bit of karma probably because I'm better at messageboards than I am at electronics.  That said I wouldn't offer bad advice to anyone.

[Reply #14 on:]

I wouldn't offer bad advice to anyone.

Not intentionally.   But I've seen people offer advice that was just WRONG in their enthusiastic attempts to be helpful, and I'm not sure what should happen to them, karma-wise.  (http://xkcd.com/386/ )  And then there are things that even experts just disagree about.  Sometime with much vigor.  ("westfw said something nice about assembly language.  What a dinosaur!  karma--!")