Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

Is it just me, or does this seem really, really easy to exploit? You get unlimited amounts of them a day, and you can do whatever you want with them as you please. Don't like someone? Simply go to their wall, check their activity, and go ahead and down vote every single thing they do. Want to get tons of karma for yourself? Just make a bunch of fake emails, sign up for a bunch of accounts here, and up vote every thing you post. Seriously, it's that easy. No need for a buffer period after signing up- you get pretty much full rights to everything- you can comment, post images, start threads, and yes, have unlimited karma points.

I'm sure you mods have some riveting tales of people who tried to exploit it and got caught, and I'd love to hear 'em. Gather around the campfire kids. We're in for a wild adventure.

While briefly checking to see if this has been addressed in a open thread, I came across this:

Old threads normally auto-close after 2592000 days of inactivity.
Why don't you start a new thread instead?

It is easy to exploit. People have suggested things of varying sorts to remedy the problem, but I can say a couple of good things about the current set-up:

• Users have an initiative to keep a "clean" record on their profile. It adds a bit of accountability for being needlessly antagonistic, off-topic, or otherwise facepalm-inducing.
• It allows for generally poor posts to be hidden.
• It encourages people to make good posts by reinforcing a well-done post.
  • By the same token, it discourages poor posts.

Problem(s) is(are):

• People don't give out karma for great reasons.
  • Sometimes, it's simply a popularity contest. I get karma for reasons I don't know even know.
  • And other users lose it due to a previous reputation or just plain being disliked.
  • Also, it can be used to encourage a culture of karma whoring.
    • Jolly Jew's JFF thread for example. It wasn't as bad of a thread as anyone else makes on the Just for Fun board, but as soon as one user pointed out something about his tendencies, the karma whoring started up. You get karma, you want more karma, you repeat what others do to get said karma, you get a derailed thread.
• It can be exploited (by getting a couple of friends on KYM or elsewhere to make an account, lurk, and give someone a bad day.)
• After you have a poor karma record, it's really hard to get it back to a decent standing. At that point, you no longer care about your record. It's not going to get better due to your reputation and you being in a hole.
  • One might argue that they put themselves into that hole, but some people (including myself) have this as their first posting experience. Or worse, they come from other forums with different posting standards. And you can read the forum rules all you want and the stickied threads: you aren't going to know the understood rules or who to not get on the bad side of or other political stuff like that.
  • Also, some people are very young or just learn a lot about themselves by hanging out. They can mature overtime, but there's no way to restart without losing that highly sought after Archivist or Conversationalist title.
• And once a post gets 3 or -3 karma or so, it becomes more likely to get more of that karma.
  • So once someone gets 10, it's easy for them to get to 15
  • Unfortunately, once someone gets to -4 on the forum or -9 in the comments, then people feel a sense of power to bury that post with the next vote. People don't even read many posts after they see people praise it or berate it. They just bury it further or raise it higher. I've seen that happen on legit posts, especially ones that are buried. It doesn't make newer users feel welcome if they first aren't great at posting.

So yeah. It crossed my mind to make karma an expendable resource. That's what I thought it was when I just lurked for the past two years before July-ish.

• You can give out so much karma per day or week. You get more from other users, but you also lose your own. It would keep people from giving out so much karma (i.e., Pony thread, and I'm guilty of giving out a ton myself) and hopefully would make people consider how they respond to posts in that sense.
• You could make it so that your record resets after a while. That's been proposed before.
• You could leave no record on your profile, and only use it as a burying mechanism.
• I've seen a request to flag posts, but that requires a mod to get to it. And we'd get a lot of requests for flagged posts. Of course, that could be tweaked.

But:

1. That requires coding. And even though I don't like the karma system much, it does serve some purposes, and I don't think it does so poorly at them that it requires the time and effort to change it.
2. It's virtually meaningless. Or it has as much meaning as you assign to it.
   • then again, not everyone can shake off a bright red -300 every time they go to their profile. I know I get a sense of pride by having a +90% given by my name, so I know people feel bad when they see -56% by theirs.

Dunno. I don't like saying that if there is no easy answer to simply leave things the way it is, but given that it's mostly irrelevant objectively, I don't see the point.
 
And I could give out stories, but since this is in the Site-Related board, I figured it would be best to air out grievances.
 
 
#puppies

Karma is just saying if you like a post or not. Like Verbose said, people will feel compelled to downvote/upvote posts that are popular/unpopular.

I think the stupidest use of the system is the posts on peoples walls. (Even though the system used for people's walls isn't necessarily karma) Recently I had all posts on my wall downvoted, and I can't get them off. Which to me pisses me off. (This also includes the posts I made in my own wall) But I digress.

Karma is meaningless, but there are karma whores who want all karma.

I think keep the karma system, but get rid of downvoting/upvoting on people's walls.

That feel when people will never stop complaining about karma.

Choose…

Karma is meaningless. So you get -2348842739 Karma or +21398749217349 Karma

doesn't really matter. When a forum post gets -5 its buried so that you don't have to look at it. Curiosity will make you look at it anyway so burying is almost pointless.

Its just a bunch of numbers on a single website. Don't worry and/or obsess over them.

-"Your post in the JFF thread received -8 karma, we're not quite sure you are Harvard material"

-"What separates you from the other candidates for this job?"
-"I got +12 Karma on one post in the General Thread"
-"You're hired!!"

I never really got the point of a karma system, but I don't really see the point in wasting all that time to up-vote everything. Seems pretty petty (yay for alliteration).

Actually, I love the karma system. It really makes you think about what you post. And again, Verbose has summed up my entire complaints and celebrations of it in a masterfully written TL;DR. We salute you.

The major problem I find with it is yes, posts with +50 get upvoted even more, while posts with -20 get buried away. No one reads the actual content, they just follow everyone else.

Especially worse is when something is at +/-1. That first point either way makes all the difference. People are hazardous to go against the first few votes, and it is very, very unlikely that something that is +/- by only a few points will swing the opposite way. That's why I often upvote posts that are at -1 or -2, to give them at least a chance.

Exhibit A

You would expect everything to be downvoted to hell, but no, after a person (GASP A MOD!) started the racist pics, it kept on going, and everyone got + a bunch. If only the first guy did a -1 on that mod who shall not be named's post, none of the rest would have happened. But since he got +15 for it, other people figured, why not, and so that very day Verbose got very offended and crawled in a corner to hang his little head. Karma whoring at its best.

It was pretty funny, I'll admit, but if 1 person got offended and downvoted, I'm sure everything else no one else would continue in fear of being buried.

EDIT: LOLOL This was the thread Verbose referenced.

But still, this is the best system I've found on a forum. All I'm calling for is a bit of reform.

The Nine.Five Theses on the Improvement of the Efficacy of Karma
1. Make karma an expendable resource. No more infinite a day. You have to pick wisely who you're going to use it on.
2. Limit the amount of times you can give someone karma a day
3. Limit the amount of karma new members can get out a day.
4. Have some sort of system where you can level up or something and hence, get more karma
5. Make it so accounts with the same IP cannot give karma to the same posts
6. Make the +/- buttons less prominent. Having them dark red against a white background screams "click on one of us!"
8. Make the entire system less prominent. Right now, it's pretty much the first thing you see when you go to someone's page. It's pretty much a competition of who can get the most karma.
7. Once something becomes too negative, close it to karma. -50 is enough, anything else past a certain point is meaningless.
9. Limit the application of karma. Not everything has to be subject to it. No more karma on wall posts (because those are supposed to be personal, not a huge popularity forum).
9.5: Make it 2 clicks to +1 or -1 something. That extra second makes a huge difference.

And so I nail my complaints on the metaphorical church door of KYM.

Karma is stupid.

/\ Agreed.
It doesn't matter really. It used to be an achievement to get 200 karma. Now, a user has 8000 karma and we've nicknamed the entire system after their misspelling of the word.
Really, the system's as good as we can reasonably expect it to be. If you need karma to tell how good your post is, the odds are you didn't make a very good post.

1. That would make the entire system undesirable, as a limit would eventually kill off the system entirely.
2. Isn't this the same as #1 but reworded? But no, seriously, people would get so fed up with "Oh god who am I going to give this Karma too!?!" that no Karma would be given. Ever.
3. Why? New members should have equal rights when it comes to the acquirement of +'s or -'s. Besides, it would make new users feel alienated.
4. Again, this would alienate new users to some degree. Even though a limit would benefit the website when it comes to submission of Meme Entries, other website functions should be fully available to everyone.
5. This I agree with, but there is something called "A Proxy", so it would make all the efforts useless.
6. Though it may scream that, it's an interface design choice that helps people locate the button! If you notice, all the "Upload" and "Create New" buttons are the same color. It's not like we feel we must click those either.
7. Sorry, but you have no idea what it takes to get -50 Karma. In fact, I think this was only achieved by one very very racist Asian-phobe.
8. But isn't a little bit if friendly competition healthy? If people didn't strive to do better than what they do everything would turn to shit.
9. … It Only Applies to the Forums, Dork! Anything else doesn't provide you with Karma.
9.5: Along with destroying everything you where trying to achieve, a double Karma give would unbalance the system too greatly. That would be a problem.

I downvoted you not because I disagree but because it's posts like this that don't add to conversations that should be dissuaded from being posted.

As far as the system itself goes, I don't think it is hurtful to posts or to users and it has the effect of making users think at least once before making their posts.

The positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion.

I use Karma as a way to gauge the general population's response to my posts. Whether they think my joke is good, or if I raise a good point, I just like knowing where I am in people's opinions. I don't really concern myself with getting a lot of it, but more along the lines of getting feedback on a post.

I guess it has to do with the fact that since people don't normally reply "LOL" for one small post, Karma is the easier alternative that people can use to get positive (Or…err… negative) feedback.

1. By limit, I mean a sensible amount. Perhaps you could start out with 20 a day, and for each rank you move up, you get 10 more or something. Seriously, who gives out that much karma a day? The only purpose infinite karma serves is to exploit. I doubt a person who takes time to read posts and think about them would give out more than 20 or so, even right now.
2. No, I mean to the exact same person. That way you could limit people downvoting every bloody thing some other guy posts out of sheer spite.
3. Nah, I don't think new members need to give out karma like candy during Halloween. Most of them aren't even aware that they can give out as much as they want, nor would they want to. I mean a limit which wouldn't affect the posters, yet prevent exploitation.
4. That's how it works on the internet. KYM is probably one of the only places where new members have full rights right away. Although I could be exaggerating. I seriously doubt a new member would quit the site because they don't get insta-access to everything. KYM is the only site of its kind (as far as I'm concerned), and they would have to live with it. And I'm not saying draconian restrictions, just enough to prevent exploitation (what is it, 5th time?).
5. Proxies add in about 5 minutes of work. Not much of a hindrance, but you know how lazy people are on the Internet. "HURRDURR I'M ASKING A QUESTION INSTEAD OF LOOKING IT UP ON GOOGLE"
6. It helps people locate the button, yes. A lot more than necessary. Often, the first thing I look for in a post is the buttons, and then the number next to it. This gives you an inaccurate first impression of the contents of the post.
7. Obviously I threw out a random number. It's called exaggeration. By -50, I mean something that's beyond the point of being buried, like -10 or something.
8. >implying the forums would implode if karma wasn't the first thing everyone looked at
9. Oh really? Must have gotten mixed up with the thumbs up/down thing then.
9.5: No, you misunderstand. I mean, you click once to get the thing to show up. Again to get do +1. I'm not saying you can change your vote or give another.

I suppose my theses were a bit vague. I'll have to rewrite it something, and blargh you can't edit posts or delete them after 30 minutes. Never mind then.

And these are all suggestions, I don't think me or anyone else can change anything about the system. It's fine as it is, and although those changes would make it better in my opinion, they would be rather hard to incorporate, and not everyone would like it.

And from a moderate stance, I suppose we could replace the massive prominent +/- buttons with the thumbs up/thumbs down ones, which requires you to hover over the comment to be able to vote. Easier to code, and yes, that >1 second of hovering over makes it that much less noticeable.

How the human mind works.

Something amazing happened in this thread.
Natsuru Springfield wrote "would" and "should" without an "e".

Karma is the foundation of humanity.

You shouled have seen that coming anyways.

I am disappoint @ everyone in this thread. Not a single one of you spelled krama wright.

Please stay on topic in the Site Related section of the forum.

I honestly think that it's fine the way it is.
Karma doesn't matter.
The end.

It is very easy to get around the IP thing.

Proxy servers are for people who think they hide when using a proxy server. Proxies are very easily detected.

there are better methods:

VPNs, Remote access, Mobile networks (3G, 4G, Edge, etc)

Remote access being the most secure and bulletproof one. Using your internet u connect to a PC in the middle of nowhere, obviously it is connected to an entirely different network, it will never be detected as proxy. And it cant be traced back to the person whos accessing it. Unless you know someone in the FBI to check this kind of stuff.

I got several connections:
dsl.bell.ca 74.198.xx.×1x
dialup.bell.ca 64.228.xx.xx
Rogers 3G 184.145.xx.xx
MTS (Mobile Tele-systems [RUS]) 34.28.×1×.xx

This account is dsl.bell.ca and it was registered using this. An admin can check this info, i think. as for the rest of IPs they are different enough for me to register 3 new accounts with fake names and emails and upvote myself. I don't have any account besides this one, but I could easily do that.

Getting around any limitations of the Karma system if they are going to be imposed.

But I don't care about Karma, not going to bother registering more accounts.

The authority on this topic would say that we're on topic still.

Look, it's about whether you like something or not. The idea that karma makes you better than anyone else is for a human being to decide.

Karma mainly helps people be good users of the forums by giving the users a burden of a kind of reputation system.

If it bothers you at the slightest that you could get a negative karma difference and look terrible, then it shows that Karma is probably working….too well….for you.

I don't mind about my karma, I just enjoy having positive figures show up on my profile to give an impression that the quality of my forum attitude/posts are good.

But wait, one more thing: I've never understood the attitudes of the forum users, I could get a -1 karma on my post when all it was was just a small remark that shouldn't offend anybody if they had the slightest amount of sensitivity. Seriously guys, when I'm on topic and expressing my opinions, I don't expect a pointless neg-storm. Unless of course, I was being an idiot, but is that possible?

I honestly think that it’s fine the way it is.
Karma doesn’t matter.
The end.

That feel when people will never stop complaining about karma.

A discussion doesn't end because someone comes and says that it should. If we did, then we'd see this same thread come up again and again in the future. We need to come to some conclusive understandings, even if we don't make changes.

Also, karma does matter…otherwise, we'd have a useless system.
 
I could also say that Random's post is exactly a part of what's being discussed:

• Discussion on karma.
• A user has nothing to contribute
• Well-placed comment that doesn't contribute
• Users encourage it with karma
• Behavior encouraged
• Happens again
• Culture of karma whoring

So I guess it was an argument against the current system as is.

This is getting a little unorganized. I don't think anyone is suggesting throwing out the system, so it's a matter of changing it or keeping it the same. What I have in mind would take a long time (like, 40 or 50 pages or more,) but I think it would be best to actually help people understand why things are the way they are/why things should be different:

• Discuss one point at a time.
  Another problem is that it requires people to concede defeat in a debate. Most people posting here are reasonable, so hopefully that wouldn't be a problem. Also, one fix can effect another's legitimacy, but we'll see how that works out if you want to go there with me. If any real progress is made, then we'll at least understand all of the pros and cons of a proposed system and the current one.

I'll just start with Twins' post, because she actually proposed stuff.

Make karma an expendable resource. No more infinite a day. You have to pick wisely who you’re going to use it on.

"That would make the entire system undesirable, as a limit would eventually kill off the system entirely."

You didn't say why. I don't think making it a limited resource would kill off the system at all. Money is limited in every culture. People still use it.

The only purpose infinite karma serves is to exploit. I doubt a person who takes time to read posts and think about them would give out more than 20 or so, even right now.

I agree to this. And despite what Ivan says, most users don't make 5 or 6 accounts. So even though it's possible to get around it, it's not likely to occur.
 
The problem with that users aren't encouraging quality posts.

Random's post and his karma is an example. Same with Tomberry's and Nic. Freaking mods, no less. If those posts are encouraged, then I don't think making people prioritize their karma will matter. Users aren't always looking to encourage quality posts. Most probably just want to laugh at someone undermining someone else's thread.

That's happened to Jolly Jew a few times, even when he had a decent topic (albeit poorly executed and worded often times.) Karma in the double digits encourages that.
 
 
Anyway, I think that limiting karma won't fix it all, because I don't think quality will take precedence over quality posts in our users. But I do think it will keep me (because I've been guilty of it too) and other users from coming in and making a well-placed but otherwise unnecessary post (which is technically against the forum rules.)

It is easy, but a bit (not really, but still) over the head of the average internet user. Also, most people would consider those few ~10-30 minutes of work to not be worth the effort if an IP block was instated.

The issue is, has anyone ever tried to exploit the system and got caught? Then a large portion of my thoughts and this thread would be moot.

@verbose.
Nice work ya done there. I like how your posts are, despite long, very easy to read, properly formatted, and best of all, not walls of text like mine usually are. I was going to say more, but you pretty much hit everything.

And no offense, but RandomMan isn't exactly the best role model. He's a pretty cool and chill mod, but I'm sorry to say, most of his posts are a bit, erm, lacking in the contribution department, and aren't true French haute couture. But, you know…whatever he wants to do is fine.

I made this thread because I thought a mod would have some sort of riveting tale, maybe reminscent of Daring Do, about some brave soul who challenged the karma system, pumping up his own karma like BP pumped oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

But I suppose a discussion on the merits of the karma system works.

I remember a karmaless KYM… no forum mods…just users and the few admins…
when karma started i noticed my karma to go way down. and down.
anyway after cllimbing out of that negative karma hole. i just feel like a better member of KYM.
Is it possible to trade in my karma or something for a custom title or something?

I might be able to throw in tales about karma meanwhile, Twins.
 
From personal experience, I don't think my style of posting has changed much. I still approach it like a short essay on whatever topic I'm going on about (unless I choose to adhere to standards of concision and brevity to make a point otherwise.)

But I didn't start to get karma until after I had been known for a while. And now I get karma, again, for reasons I don't know. I think mods with any power have a bit of a responsibility to set the tone.

Sure, most of them get to be moderators, because they have interesting things to contribute and they're helpful. So they kinda set the standard.
 
But yeah. Stop giving me kramas it makes me feel awkward and self-conscious and things.

I think ANN made a good point about karma. It helped ANN become better at posting regardless of why the karma was given. I think other mechanisms can do that, but karma is more democratic and a bit more immediate in terms of feedback.

I'd still suggest a change to the system though. Among others.

Okay, so from what I understand, the primary problem with the system is that you are able to give or take Karma to god knows how old posts on still unlocked threads.

Okay, OP has given us a long complicated plan on how to stop this shenanigans, however I think I know a better solution:

Along with threads being locked after 30 days, Posts do too. After a Post is locked, you are unable to vote on it, even if the thread is still unlocked. This would stop nearly all of the unnecessary Karma whoring/rapeing you see going on in the background all the time.

Again, it's not perfect, but considering we only have one coder it would be easier to pull off than changing the entire format of the website and adding a bazillion limiters.

Anyone who uses alts to give themselves karma has serious mental issues or doesn't care about the system at all, so it doesn't really matter.

I don't think posts should be locked. Since karma is effectively used to show appreciation of a post instead of reinforcing staying on topic, there is no reason not to continue to allow karma on older posts, as newer users might not have discovered them. Case in point, The Ultimate KYM Family Photo thread.

Either we should have no karma, which I don't think is a good idea, or we should keep the same system going.

Also, James, if you're reading this, give yourself a massive pat on the back.

MDFification wrote:

Since karma is effectively used to show appreciation of a post instead of reinforcing staying on topic…

That's a problem though. Users don't reinforce quality posts on the whole. In general, they are just lulzy ones, ones they personally agree with regardless of argument, and they are more likely to give karma to posts that have reached a certain threshold.

Basically, users are given a lot of power to reinforce posts (thereby creating a culture of posting) in having a karma system of any sort. But by making it infinite, that power grows even further. Since users have a lot of power in creating the forum culture and they reinforce lulzy posts and derails, then you end up with a culture of lulzy posts and derails.

We have a forum culture of lulzy posts and derails in part due to the power of the users. I agree that karma shouldn't go altogether, but it could stand to be limited. Please argue this point.
 
 
And like I said, even if it's not practical to make changes because it's a lot of effort (or because theory may not translate into practice,) the discussion and conclusions will hopefully help people understand the current one. From there, we can direct new users to this thread. As opposed to having this thread again and again.

To sum up everything and prove a point about giving karma.
"Karma's a BITCH"

Long complicated things is what I do best. I know that it would be a bitch to code all those things in, and it really wouldn't be worth the effort. I was just suggesting some ideas we could use, if we could, for a utopian forum society.

Locking threads and posts is a pretty simple yet decent idea. Along with that, a simple IP ban (which can be easily circumvented, but at least stops a few people from trying) would be step in the right direction.

totally didn't read most posts here.

easiest thing to do: record who gave Karma, negative or positive.

Simply show who gave or took karma. when its no longer anonymous, people will be more reluctant to give positive/negative karma.

Like this:

Man, even I don't care about karma this much.

THIS

The problem is that KYM doesn't use the BBcode system. The pages you see like those are forum hosting sites, which means that they all use a same code. KYM's code is unique, which means any change will mean more codes in the system, which James has to write.

I have no idea what you people are talking about.

Raw Krama is used to fuel my life support. It is ALL that matters.

Actually, I think it's fine the way it is. I just like having something to discuss.

@ivan: did you photoshop that? Because it looks pretty nice. And I think that making karma invisible, along with no anonymity would defeat the purpose of the system.

I was looking for a way to close up exploits, but I guess that's really a non-issue.