Switch Karma to Threads rather than People?

[Steve]

I was going to start a voting thread asking how many members would be receptive to this idea, but I then realized it might be impossible or a shitload of work for whoever would have to program it so I guess it would be more prudent to first ask if this is even a feasible request.

So hey everyone/mods/admins, I was thinking that the karma/opinion-based system might be better put onto threads rather than people. The rationale is that the forum is supposed to be centered around the content rather than the people, and even good people can make bad posts and even bad people can make good posts, so why put the pressure of the opinions onto the people? I was thinking that it might best be served on a "per post" basis, but that would create hassles in that people would be voting constantly on post after post after post, so then I thought well why not put it on a thread basis?

If we allow people to vote + or - to a thread, then newcomers can quickly see which threads that the overall memberbase thinks are worthwhile, which threads are relatively neutral, and which ones that the overall memberbase thinks are worthless to read. This would prevent people from karma cheating, ie going back day after day to smite or applaud people they hate or like rather than voting based on content of posts, as each member could only be allowed one opinion-vote per thread (with the ability to go back and change their vote if they change their mind). And if this pans out, then maybe some time in the future include a function to sort threads by opinion-vote if that's possible.

~Steve

[Akenu]

People don't usually smash the button everytime they see applaud/smite, the same would be even for posts. Also during the thread development there are more people posting and everyone with their nice applaud/smite links.

For me, the purpose of the karma would be to split good posts from bad posts in every thread.

[Violet]

Like this SMF modification?

[Faijer]

Martial Arts Planet gives you the capability to 'Thank' a particular post. It's a system that works quite well because it then displays a figure in your information such as "Thanked 181 Times in 130 Posts", giving you a ratio of posts to thanks which tells you roughly how good their thanked posts tend to be.

[Rawiri]

The original idea was actually to be a karmic system on a post by post basis, so people could see what posts were rated best in a particular thread etc. But we weren't sure how easily that would have been done with the current software - the current karmic system was put in place as a way of "testing out" the idea on some level. We could end up changing it to a by post basis (and are in favour of this) but, as far as I know, no one has gotten around to looking into it more yet.

[Steve]

My idea was to take it away from the posts, as those can be hard to find good posts within long threads of bad posts if it came to that, and away from the people, as that has been causing a lot of emotional stress for some members. I've seen a few different boards do opinion-based voting on people or posts and I don't feel that either way works really well.

Plus, there's always going to be mixes of good posts and bad posts in most threads, so rather than making people scroll through each thread looking for the green numbers before they read anything, let them see which threads are applauded highly and then they can read through each post for themselves to see what everything thinks about the topic at hand.

However, this topic is just asking whether it's even possible or feasible to do, for whichever person would have to do it, so that a poll about it can be started and we can accumulate opinions there So if noone's started looking into it more yet, we can postpone the poll until we do know (since it's pretty pointless to have a vote to do something that won't/can't get done XD)

~Steve

[Faijer]

let them see which threads are applauded highly

Ah, the slippery slope of mass appeal. You could easily end up with two problematic situations:

1) A quarter of all threads are rated highly and the others tend to get overlooked despite having some interesting content.
2) Almost every thread has a couple of votes making the system irrelevant.

The major advantage however is that it removes ownership of the kudos. I'm still in favour of the post-by-post system, because it encourages individuals to contribute strong posts. If it could be blended with a thread-by-thread system, which would hopefully encourage collaboration, that would be ideal. Although, I doubt that it's possible.

[Violet]

The original idea was actually to be a karmic system on a post by post basis, so people could see what posts were rated best in a particular thread etc. But we weren't sure how easily that would have been done with the current software - the current karmic system was put in place as a way of "testing out" the idea on some level. We could end up changing it to a by post basis (and are in favour of this) but, as far as I know, no one has gotten around to looking into it more yet.

Rawiri, we're using SMF here, right? Would this be a good way of implementing such a thing?

[Psionics]

The applaud/smite buttons don't exist for me...

A new member restriction?

[Akenu]

The applaud/smite buttons doesn't exist for me...

A new member restriction?

I guess so, else every member could make another 50 accounts and make their karma speed up

[kobok]

The applaud/smite buttons doesn't exist for me...

A new member restriction?

I guess so, else every member could make another 50 accounts and make their karma speed up

Precisely.  It kicks in only after a post-count of 10.  (And just to be clear, anyone found registering and using multiple accounts to gain extra karma manipulation is likely to receive a ban for this, so do not attempt it.)

[Akenu]

What about someone having multiple personalities and he want to register all of them on Veritas?

[Faijer]

What about someone having multiple personalities and he want to register all of them on Veritas?

Pics or it didn't happen.

[Akenu]

[`Nazukarr]

The original idea was actually to be a karmic system on a post by post basis, so people could see what posts were rated best in a particular thread

That is what I thought we were going to have as well, but this system has its strengths. I mostly like what Steven proposed, but there are  many examples on this forum of threads that were really helpful once upon a time but have since denigrated into monotonous, silly, or irrelevant discussions. That is something that has to be considered. In any case, I'd like to eventually see the original idea put in place and maybe an ability to search/filter the posts that members thought were most helpful.