Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

Sure, karma is ACTUALLY not a big deal, and people shouldn't mind too much if they notice a huge neg bombing, because when they speak out against it, that's what the trolls want

but karma definitely a great way to support the helpful/good posts
and to point out which ones are bad

to reduce misuse of karma, I suggest: (and this is assuming the mods can see who is doing the voting and can see their history of it)
- temporarily removing the abuser's ability to vote
- reverting the voting they have done

who should this apply to?
everyone hates someone else on the internet, some of them go as far as to following every comment/post someone else makes just to neg each and every single one of those things, they'll go on that person's wall, neg all the positive/neutral comments on that page, and upvote all the negative comments towards that person

However this means more work for mods that they REALLY don't have to do, combing out all the votes and then deciding if the user is abusing the voting system, so if that's the case, I suggest giving us user the ability to see who voted, as well as time and date, and if we find someone doing some trollful negging, we can report them

what yall think?

*finding out who negged you is the difference between
"oh….looks like I actually made a terrible post/comment that I shouldn't have"
and
"oh….it's someone that REALLY doesn't like me……….pfft"

It's a nice idea but it has one fatal flaw.

Mod's can't see who gives and neg's karma.

At all.

I wish we could but we can't. It'd be nice if that feature could be added though.

Problem with this is that it can create tension. People might be too afraid to hand out negs to posts that they think deserve it for a legit reason, afraid that the person will go after them. Which is also actually a risk itself. People can go after the people that neg them. We can't turn negvotes into a witchhunt.

So if this gets created, it has to be limited to mods. I know this is also what you're saying, but various users have suggested to make it a general feature in the past. So I'm pointing it out just in case.

Karma doesn't matter.
It would be a waste of mod time to check for repeated karma abuse. With proxies and alt accounts, users could spam negative karma to a person regardless. If they find a persons posts in an old thread ( < 30 days old, or a featured thread) they could do it there and probably never have it noticed.
It's a shame that users are going to be that immature, but there's no point in combating something we can't stop.

I think one simple algorithm can be implemented, similar to having a 30 second miminum time between posting/commenting

a minute or two between voting

a person does NOT need to vote frequently unless he's intentionally spamming votes, if a person feels the need to truly up/downvote they can wait, no problem

if they're just insistent on trolling and don't mind waiting the few minutes, just to bypass that rule (if implemented), then at least I myself am happy to say that…man, these people need lives

MFW I feel the negs hit:

Nah, but seriously, this is a great way to get the system taken away completely…

I know that complaining about anything karma related doesn't go anywhere and if enough of the userbase get's upset about it, actions must be done.

I learned to shrug it off. But if a new user comes in and is randomly negged for no reason and decides not to use the site because if it, it would be a major problem because who knows what good help or material that user could have brought.

i'm done… i'll finish my pie now

Oh, but it does, it does.

We've had other karma threads in the past (one that Twins, others, and I participated in), and I think it gives some decent logic as to why it does matter.

In actual and repeated anecdotal evidence, people get their jimmies rustled when they make a neutral post and it ends up with anything less than -3 karma. Heck, I believe mods make posts (or edit posts) after they get bombed asking why. And the fact that we have a karma system and leave it in place despite the complaints about it shows that it does matter.
 
However, like I've said elsewhere, it would require a lot of discussion and a lot of coding (or removal of the system altogether) to address the problems in any meaningful way, and even though I'm not a fan of the current system and the way it is implemented and enforced/not enforced, I'm not sure if it merits that kind of discussion or effort.

Anyway, I think they problem lies within those users who are intent on abusing the system. If you have multiple accounts, then no small time limit would help matters. By the time you get done downvoting on your other 3-5 accounts, your time would be up for the other accounts or close to it. If you had a larger limit, then it would become more frustrating for users who wish to use it in less trollish ways.

I think if moderators could see who dealt out karma, then I think that would help, but that's more coding. I'm pretty sure if the word "coding" comes up in any discussion here, then it's not considered worth the trouble.

suggestion: (and don't show this to users, just let them find out themselves)

if a person makes 3 consecutive downvotes on the SAME user's different posts, (which obviously means negbombing)

1 week of voting privileges revoked, and votes reverted

you don't even have to warn them about it in the rules and regulations if you decide to implement this, what are they gonna do, cry about getting caught?

Ahhh.. I remember when you could +1 yourself. Such an embarrassing day it was when it was taken away.

>Troll makes dumb thread / Troll spams posts.
>Each post deserves the downvotes it'll get.
>Everyone's getting their voting priveleges taken away.

Yeah, that's not gonna work out. More likely even the opposite effect, as it could be the troll's intention to take away everyone's voting priveleges. Plus what timelimit are you gonna add to this before you can neg that person again?

Well, for one, I think that's more coding than it's worth, personally. There may also be a user who truly is trying to start an Internet fight or is off-topic in a thread. I think the karma system is a way to police by committee and that takes a bit of power away from the users.

As for not telling them about the rule and the penalties, I certainly think that's unfair to the users. If moderators and administrators pull that (even though the penalty isn't a ban,) then what other unspoken rules might we have? Or rules that we come up with without presenting them to the community. I mean, sure, we could. But as a user, I would prefer to at least see the rules, if not the punishment and the rules.
 
Not to discourage discussion or your suggestions. I love the process. I think one day, we'll figure out a better system, even if it doesn't get implemented.

I know that feel.

Anyway, I think Verbose summed it up. Unless there are no proxies, and unless we want to wreck the system, there's no way to stop a dedicated karma troll.
EDIT: Also, do we really want to bug the coders about this?

A few months ago some asshole was fucking up my karma with 5 accounts. That hasn't been investigated or fixed.

The coder. We have one coder, James, who needs to prioritize this with the bajillion other things that can be improved on the site. Many of which will improve the KYM experience for everybody, not just the % of users who use the fora. :|

Well, we can already fix half of what we ask for.

alright my idea is shot, but to improvise to the points RandomMan pointed out

- does not apply to the trollposts… if it has recived a certain amount of negs, the neg you put in towards that will not count towards your downvote count

- no idea for time limit, if it was up to me, an hour or something

-k, hiding it from people until they stumble upon this implemented idea would cause some disdain, but it's just a week's worth of not voting, lower it to 3 days maybe?

Hmmmm… I know a record of all the posts you have negged or upvoted is kept on the website. (Right Click, View Page Source and scroll down) so in theory couldn't somebody track who upvoted and downvoted who and how many times? Even though it would be difficult…

I did not know that. I think Olivia said why that's not going to happen though. Flawed or not, the system is probably going to stay in place until other issues and improvements are in place. And by the time those are in place, other problems and improvements that would take precedence over karma would have to be addressed. There are a lot more casual users and users who don't frequent the forums than us, and what we're discussing here isn't crucial to the site as a whole. It makes practical sense.

Howeva! I think it's good to discuss it regardless. It's what the Site-Related board is for. And I don't want to call this just a forum goer thing. Karma exists throughout the site, and it can turn newer users away (from commenting or posting in the forum) if they get negakarma for no good reason (coughMLPcommentsahem).

It is a good idea to discuss it. However, I believe it will remain unfeasible because;
1. There is no automatic way to determine whether or not a person is warranted in downvoting. For example, a troll thread may trigger a loss of voting privileges. If we want to avoid this, the mods have to check every instance. As I suspect several dozen users commit this per day, it's just a minor expenditure of time, but that's only counting the forums and downvoting a single user repeatedly.
2. If we try to regulate karma rape, in forums only, we have the same deal. Dozens of users do this every day. Downvoting a post then becomes impossible, because if too many people jump on the bandwagon everyone loses privileges. If we have the mods check to see if it's "justified" we again have another minor expenditure of time. This could however cause conflicts with the mods, as users or other mods may disagree with their judgment.
3. If we count the comments, then multiply what the above two points state by around 3 in terms of mod time expenditure. The commenting section is worse then the forums in no small way when it comes to distributing karma, which is why they have thumbs (which don't show up on the profile) instead.
4. We'd have to program in an automated system which alerts mods whenever posts or comments receive a certain amount of downvotes.

So, to sum this up, while I concur with the sentiment, I don't feel that it would be a good use of resources and moderator time to moderate karma.
I'd also like to add that the userbase is what creates karma rape and downvote trolling. I've seen it reverse it too, however. Every user can contribute to lessening this, simply by upvoting a person unjustly downvoted and voicing support of them. It works incredibly well. If we're upset enough to request a change to the site, we should be motivated enough to take the most basic action ourselves.

Srsly. It's not like Karma is going to affect your experience in the KYM forums. If people think you're a bad guy because they see your low karma, then just tell them what happened! Unless you actually plan to get loads of karma, that is. But what is the point, really? Why argue over such a useless thing?

It's not that simple though. You can't tell everyone what happened.

• A lot of times, the user can't describe what just hit them. They don't know they made a bad post, if it's because they're new (while an older user could have made the same and has made similar remarks and got karma for it, which happens a lot), or if they've been hit by trolls.
• If you start thread about it, then it's getting locked, and your karma will drop even more (not to mention getting an even worse reputation.
• Being honest, some users don't have the greatest command of the English language. Explaining their situation might only make things worse.

And people do take karma seriously. It's hard to tell a person to not care about some things. You'd have to successfully place your values about karma to them, and some people really like that kind of quantifiable approval.

It's part of the reason we have karma, I think. To reinforce quality posts.

Problem is that people don't reward quality. They reward what they think is funny, they reward derails, they punish unpopular opinions, they punish some new users for doing things older users do…

It matters. That's why we have the system in the first place. It's just being misused by a lot of users.

My opinion is that displaying the negative and positive karma in a user's profile is counterproductive if it's a means to improving posts for a number of reasons.

1. Trolls take pride in their downvotes. They will post worse and worse content just to see those little red numbers rise.

2. Trolls tend to use downvotes to frustrate the average user. No one cared about random downvotes until after they began to matter. Now even mods will get pissed and end up accidently derailing an entire thread by acknowledging the downvotes. Quite a few good threads have been lost due to a single user -1ing every post.

3. Being in the negatives or having a lot of downvotes can make a user feel like the community despises them. This can make the user complain about it on the forums which inevitably leads to more downvotes and the community actually disliking or downvoting that user's every post to oblivion. Unfortunately there are many examples of users affected by this at the moment.

Honestly I think it would be best to no longer show the ratio and to just show the net positive with the lowest possible display value being 0.

Since this was how the site used to be it would be easy to set it like this, especially if James still has that original bit of code backed up somewhere.

I think it is best as it is.

Remember when the new karma system was put in effect? It seemed like it was effortlessly put together. James was like "BOW" check out this karma system. *implemented

Then I think Chris Menning suggested the pie charts and then boom.. there they came.

This really isn't that big of a deal.
But yeah… karma makes some people feel good… but as far as coding goes, if everything was easy, I think that showing ones karma should be a "User Defined" choice. Let the user decide what they want to be shown on their profile or not.
Shit, im not a huge fan of the pie chart (considering mine looks like a cheese wheel xD) but no use complaining.

I hope the people upset about this read this thread. And I don't think there are enough trolls here in the forums (if any) to even make that much of a difference otherwise.

solution: Everyone change their name to RandomMan and let the karma flow. ;)

Okay.

This.

(Too late to avoid double post)

Unlike Sui's idea, I think Negative Karma should still be included in the final count, but nothing below zero should be visible.

^ That was what I intended when I said the net total instead of just the gross positive.

I must also say that displaying the amount of downvotes a person has given out seems odd as well. I simply don't see much point to it, but that is just my opinion.

Going back to only showing a user's positive karma total on their userpage is an interesting idea.

I think it's funny that Suiseiseki's posting in this thread when he's been using a bunch of alts to fuck with the karma.

Hey, could someone from the staff remove all the karma up and down that his accounts have done?