Season 2011 - Site suggestions

[rocketman1555]

how about a karma system where only the mods vote

Doesn't that defeat the point of having karma?

[Dark Sabre]

Not a season changeover thing, but should we change the number of rows of new images on the gallery homepage?

[robotman]

yea a second row would look nice

[RandomPerson]

I don't think a karma system would be a good idea at all.
The idea is good, to reward posters who post the most interesting/funny/useful stuff, and to give a general indication of who is helpful rather than post count (which is part of why spam occurs). In practice what I've seen is the majority of people ignoring it. Those who did use it usually used it to down vote those who were arguing against them, or held contrary views. Those who used it the least were those who up voted those who had good and informative posts. What resulted was a bunch of good users getting unfortunate low karma ratings for contradicting popular arguments.

To be fair, that was on a forum more dedicated to debating, and in comparison this forum is much more laid back (which is why I like it very much), so it could play out much different here. But if anything it would feel like such a nuisance, to constantly have to think about up voting those who have helped you. Besides we already know those who contribute to the forums due to this being a more tight-knight forum than most (and vice versa), so I don't think it would really add anything other than something else to brag about.

Edit: didn't see this

I've talked about karma before, but I think adding karma would make it a bit more like something like facebook (with "liking" things, not social networking) than a discussion, in a way. I'd rather keep the climate a discussion.

It would not be displayed on the post at all, you would just have list in your control panel of all the times you've gotten Karma and the reason. You would still have to post in the thread for anyone to know you supported the idea.

That would defeat the point of karma in the first place for those who are for it, as nobody would ever see it. Having each Karma point getting a reason for the point would make the problem I talked about above worse. People would only get negative points because of the effort involved in it. To make karma even a little effective, you'd have to go all the way and display it on every post.

The main point of the karma system would be to reward those who contribute useful information, such as those who answer questions or people like fleet who put a lot of effort into their posts. A lot of the alumni who are very knowledgeable have low post counts, so a karma system would help show that despite the low post count they are still well respected members of scioly. IT WOULD NOT BE USED to punish spammers as DS has said he would disable negative karma. It's is like a doggy biscuit, not a shock collar

Having no negative karma is better but I don't think It would fix the problem.

[starpug]

What I meant by not displayed on posts I meant only the number would be displayed on posts, who has karma'd who for that specific post would not.

Think of it this way Random, who are the people on this site that have the most informative posts? fleet? Fester? Neither have too many posts, but the things they post are more helpful then all of the things I post combined and have been around a lot longer. Do they not deserve the same if not more as I do from having over 600 posts (Which is not much as posts don't really mean a whole lot besides that you have been active for a while)?

[brobo]

Then why don't we move away from Karma, and more towards a "usefulness" rating type thing? There could be a little bar underneath each post, and you rate the usefulness of that post on a scale from 0%-100%. Then underneath the post count thing would be a "User Usefulness" where it shows the averaged usefulness.
To fix the problem of contradicting ideas, you could have the mods/admins the only ones that could vote, or they could create a new category of users (like WikiMods and GalleryMods) that would be the ones that would vote- people that you could trust to always vote on usefulness fairly and without prejudice or because you don't like their idea.
Then you can tell people like fleet and Fester are more useful then other people, even though they have a lower post count. Those that have high post counts but post non-useful things would reflect it on through their usefulness rating.
If we take that a step farther, you could also decided how many stars a user has based on their rating, rather than raw post count.

Just an idea.

[blue cobra]

The system being suggested now, as clarified by starpug, would be better than I was originally thinking, and it doesn't seem so bad, but I still think it could take away from the laid-back mood of this site.

[zyzzyva980]

I think this form of the system is better. I don't think regular users should be allowed to rate, just mods/admins.

[starpug]

I think this form of the system is better. I don't think regular users should be allowed to rate, just mods/admins.

Because you can't trust them? All they can do is help you as negative karma is disabled

[zyzzyva980]

Good spam, while being better than bad spam, is still spam.