KARMA SYSTEM 101!

The Karma System!

It’s become obvious that many of you have questions about the new Karma system. So here’s where we answer some of them.

Why the switch?

Well, as you’ve all probably noticed, we had a big problem with post whoring on the forums. A lot of the decline in the level of discourse on here has come from the (really stupid) idea that someone with more posts is more worth listening to. So people will post anything, no matter how worthless and inane, to move their post count up a notch. Look at skiierman (who’s now banned). A lot of us feel that beyond the annoying practice of calling people noobs for having post counts under 500, this actually damages the way people talk about things on the site by cluttering everything up. Also, no one cares what they post because it’s the internet and there are no consequences, and even posting hateful BS will bump your post count. So here we have a system where the members at large can adjust peoples’ karma by peer-rating them, and the results will be displayed for all to see. Hopefully this will affect the way people behave: if you hate, if you act like a complete moron, people will rate you 15 or 20, whereas if you offer useful advice and help people out people will rate you 85 or 90. That’s how the good members emerge. Back in 04-05, I guarantee if we had this, people like D-loc would’ve had ratings in the 10-20 range whereas Rebel or Trevorwoulddoit would have been up in the 80s or higher. So I can see this working, provided people peer rate, and don’t try to abuse the system. Trying to abuse the system results in us manually setting your karma to something pathetically low when we find out by running ip traces... we’ve also tried to make it as difficult as possible to do. So hopefully, where post count is easy to abuse (like, say, spamming the luxembourg forum, for which we’ve had to ban people in the past), this one will be very hard to abuse because you don’t know what goes into it and it’s easy to punish abusers. At the same time, social pressure will, we hope, make for a better forum experience.

Where will we see Karma ratings?

Right now karma is displayed in your profile. That’s the only way to see it and the only way to affect it. But that’s only the beginning, because obviously the system hasn’t reached fruition and a LOT of members’ karma ratings will be going up or down over the course of the next few months. Once we decide if the system is a success or not, we’re talking about potentially doing away with post count display and simply displaying karma rating instead, or relegating post count to a line in the member profile. Whether we do that, time will tell.

How is Karma Affected?

One of the main security ideas that was introduced into this new system to prevent abuse is that we don’t tell anyone what the metrics are that affect karma, and you never know when something you’ve done has affected your karma. That way it’s harder for people to spam doing whatever will boost karma, and thereby give themselves a 100 rating. It’s also important to know that while peer ratings will cause your karma to shift, it’s only one of many, many factors. People will say, “well then how do we know what you want us to do? We can’t obey a code of conduct without knowing what it is”. Well, use your common sense. Contributing to the site and being a generally rad individual will probably boost your karma. Do you submit a lot of reviews? Contribute to the snazzy new “cult news” page? Make good threads that generate a lot of discussion? Chances are your karma rating will benefit. It’s not as simple as doing those things, because as I say there are literally HUNDREDS of factors affecting your karma that come down to little numbers in the site code, so it’d be hard to explain even if we wanted to publicize it. Most people know what a good member is, though, so just use your instincts as a guide, and if you notice everyone calling you a douchebag, well, your instincts probably suck.

“I have a rating of 52! What did I do wrong? Why do I suck so much at NS?”

You don’t! Don’t worry. 50 is the NEUTRAL RATING. This isn’t like high school where you get a C minus for a 50%, a 50% is basically like a 73% on your report card: it’s the average mark. We have over 100,000 members here, 50 is an average rating, so that means you’re as good as 50,000 people! Okay, it doesn’t quite work like that, but that’s a good way to think about it. Right now it seems like everyone and their mom is over 50 karma, but I assure you it won’t stay that way. By peer rating and by tweaking the system, you will start to see some of the people in the 80s come down into the 60s, some of the people in the 60s move up into the 80s, and some people move down into the 30s. Over time, the system is designed to adjust to accurately reflect who a member is. So if you have a 50 rating, fret not, it may go up, or it may not, and if it doesn’t, that’s not a bad thing, it’s just not a “great” thing.                   

“How does rating members work?”

Go into a member’s profile and give them a mark out of 100. If you think they’re just ok, give them 50. If you think they suck, give them 30. If you think they’re good at life, give them 65, or 75-80 if they kick ass. If they’re the antichrist, give them 15 or less, and if they’re NoPoles, give them 85-100. It’s pretty easy to figure out, and you do NOT have to wait for the page to reload every time you boost someone a karma point, just keep clicking fast and it’ll keep going up or down.

“Is this the final product?”

No! The whole thing could change substantially in look, function, substance, or any other way you might think of in the coming weeks, depending on what works and what doesn’t. Just be patient and, most importantly, MAKE USE OF THE SYSTEM, so we can judge if it’s working or not!

Any other questions?