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Details about karma systemFollow

#27 May 01 2011 at 10:28 PM Rating: Good
I'm going with the suggestion to simply reply to topics for a while rather than creating them.
#28 May 02 2011 at 9:52 AM Rating: Good
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If you're sub-default by now and plan on getting back to Scholar, my suggestion would be to not bother with it. And that's based on personal experience.

It took me 5k posts to get from sub-default to Scholar. And once you have 5k posts and reach Scholar, it'll take 20k+ additional posts before your score moves from Decent to Good. I probably won't change color for another 5k posts or more.

Really, the easiest solution would be to create a new account, let an admin know you did so (so they don't nuke you for sockpuppetry) and do as Cat and others say. Reply to threads rather than making them yourself. When a new poster starts churning out threads like crazy, regular posters get antsy and might just rate you down for the hell of it.

Good luck.

And yes, the karma system is broken and has been for ages. There's another thread on that subject, though.
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#29 May 03 2011 at 7:51 AM Rating: Good
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Mazra wrote:
If you're sub-default by now and plan on getting back to Scholar, my suggestion would be to not bother with it. And that's based on personal experience.

It took me 5k posts to get from sub-default to Scholar. And once you have 5k posts and reach Scholar, it'll take 20k+ additional posts before your score moves from Decent to Good. I probably won't change color for another 5k posts or more.

Really, the easiest solution would be to create a new account, let an admin know you did so (so they don't nuke you for sockpuppetry) and do as Cat and others say. Reply to threads rather than making them yourself. When a new poster starts churning out threads like crazy, regular posters get antsy and might just rate you down for the hell of it.

Good luck.

And yes, the karma system is broken and has been for ages. There's another thread on that subject, though.

I thought they froze karma ratings when you hit 10k.
Link=http://wow.allakhazam.com/wiki/There_Is_No_Fifth_Star
This is a wiki article, so I guess a good chance that it isn't true.
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#30 May 03 2011 at 7:54 AM Rating: Good
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Ailitardif wrote:
I thought they froze karma ratings when you hit 10k.
I got scholar at just under 4k and sage at about 12k posts. Its not so much frozen as the sheer weight of that many posts makes it difficult for the rating system to budge your "rank" in one direction or the other.
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#31 May 03 2011 at 10:24 AM Rating: Excellent
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Karma is never frozen. Just by 10k posts you have a theoretical minimum of 20k rates. It would take something like 2000 rates to even move the rating a fraction of a point.
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#32 May 03 2011 at 10:39 AM Rating: Excellent
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Ailitardif wrote:
Mazra wrote:
If you're sub-default by now and plan on getting back to Scholar, my suggestion would be to not bother with it. And that's based on personal experience.

It took me 5k posts to get from sub-default to Scholar. And once you have 5k posts and reach Scholar, it'll take 20k+ additional posts before your score moves from Decent to Good. I probably won't change color for another 5k posts or more.

Really, the easiest solution would be to create a new account, let an admin know you did so (so they don't nuke you for sockpuppetry) and do as Cat and others say. Reply to threads rather than making them yourself. When a new poster starts churning out threads like crazy, regular posters get antsy and might just rate you down for the hell of it.

Good luck.

And yes, the karma system is broken and has been for ages. There's another thread on that subject, though.

I thought they froze karma ratings when you hit 10k.
Link=http://wow.allakhazam.com/wiki/There_Is_No_Fifth_Star
This is a wiki article, so I guess a good chance that it isn't true.


That was an "achievement" that we worked on WAY back when and never got the go ahead to use them.
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#33 May 03 2011 at 4:38 PM Rating: Good
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Something I noticed in this thread that may be somewhat on topic:

If I recall correctly, rate ups/downs are disabled in the feedback forum, No?

I seem to be able to rate Final's posts that are showing as sub-default. Is this on purpose or some sort of glitch from the hide posts under sub-default function?
#34 May 03 2011 at 8:32 PM Rating: Excellent
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Its a bug. We'll get it fixed.
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#35 May 03 2011 at 11:31 PM Rating: Good
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Is this what it feels like to be Rog?

BRB, going to go spam Kirby's journal, **** off =10, then watch 15 hours of anime.
#36 May 04 2011 at 2:43 PM Rating: Good
Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
Its a bug. We'll get it fixed.
Smiley: cake should be of a higher priority.

Bardalicious wrote:
Is this what it feels like to be Rog?

BRB, going to go spam Kirby's journal, **** off =10, then watch 15 hours of anime.
Well, you have already done two out of three, so let me know if you want any anime suggestions.
#37 May 04 2011 at 4:01 PM Rating: Good
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Only thing I dislike about the Karma system is that non Scholar+ people are unable to rate posts. I think its silly that a new poster with 17 posts that got rated to good a couple times can stop contributing to the community and rate his way around. While a poster like myself who admittedly has the ability to rub people the wrong way, and does not really share the mainstream thoughts of the =10 community has over 3K posts and can not.

Not that I overly care, I get tired of saying things like invisible rate up for you. Or I wish I had a red arrow for that trash.

But I do enjoy the +1's to express my feelings regarding certain posts I guess.
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#38 May 04 2011 at 6:35 PM Rating: Good
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Everyone should be able to rate, just for the hell of it.

Or at least those who've reached a high post count, considering how difficult it is to move anywhere at those levels. Why should someone who got rated down early and rated up later be at a disadvantage to one who got rated up early and rated down later? One is "locked" at sub-Scholar, the other at Guru.
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#39 May 04 2011 at 9:47 PM Rating: Decent
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Mazra wrote:
Everyone should be able to rate, just for the hell of it.

Or at least those who've reached a high post count, considering how difficult it is to move anywhere at those levels. Why should someone who got rated down early and rated up later be at a disadvantage to one who got rated up early and rated down later? One is "locked" at sub-Scholar, the other at Guru.


Thats pretty much how i look at it, I mean I am not going to lose sleep because I can't play with arrows on the internet, but it always struck me as odd that I can be rated for anything I post, positive or negative, good or bad, constructive or deconstructive, yet can not rate anyone.
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#40 May 05 2011 at 12:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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The main issue remaining with the karma system is that it doesn't protect brand new, idiot posters who don't know the ropes well enough. They get hammered early on, then by the time we know they are sticking around, it's hard to undo without admin intervention, which we try to minimize. To counter that, we do have the instant reset postser karma to default 3.00 button now, but that still leaves the dangerous time between post 1 and 100 or so where peoples ratings either end up artifically high or low. We've kicked a few ideas around to try and manage that range a bit better, but so far we haven't had free dev time to try any of them out. There is also the spammer issue. half the reason for the karma system is to allow users to help police the forums, esepcially when there are no moderators around to respond to the report post button. If we make newbies immune to that, spammers could get quite a foothold in a forum before they would start hitting the filter.

I think if I were going to implement a change today, I'd probably do the following:
1. Add a 100-200 post 3.00 buffer post count to all new accounts that are not registered from common spamming geographic locations or known problem e-mail addresses. That would miss some spammers, and put some non spammer legitimate accounts at a disadvantage, but it would be better than nothing
2. Adjust the down rate system so that instead of 1.00, 1.00, -2.00 rates, the system would instead go 4 1.00 rates in a row, but would then start hitting for -5 to -10 for each additional downrate. posts with just a few downrates mixed with uprates wouldn't fall as fast, posts with large numbers of consecutive downrates would dissappear quicker.
3. Add a postcount clause to rating. 3.01 karma OR 1k+ posts. Maybe less. I dunno.

That would mitigate the root issue of newbie accounts. Everything else really does tend to work, dispite complaints to the contrary by some.
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#41 May 05 2011 at 4:03 AM Rating: Good
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I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea how the karma system actually works, but from what I've gathered, your personal rating doesn't kick in until 20 posts or whatever, right? You can still have your individual posts rated sub-default, but your personal rating won't change until after 20 posts.

Wouldn't it be possible to extend this period to 100 posts instead? That way, newbies have a chance to rectify their mistakes before being branded with it.

Again, I don't know if this is even possible, it just seemed like an obvious solution.

As for spammers, most of them get nuked by admins as it is. Sometimes we get to rate them sub-default before that happens, but meh.

Edit: Of course, this would not prevent newbies from being branded sub-default once those 100 posts are up. Maybe if the personal rating wasn't affected by those initial 100 post ratings, but then we're back to whether or not a personal rating is really necessary. I have the filter set to Never for that reason exactly. Even sub-default posters might have something to contribute with and I'd like to not miss out on it. And if someone is being annoying enough to warrant a permanent sub-default, I'd rather just put him or her on ignore.

But suggesting that we do away with personal ratings and titles would probably not go over well with the community.

Edited, May 5th 2011 12:22pm by Mazra
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#42 May 05 2011 at 2:01 PM Rating: Decent
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The biggest issue with the system imho is that cliques are often a source of a lot of ratings, you can be in the right clique by bagging on the same person everyone else does, or you can be in the wrong clique for not swimming in the same direction as the rest of the fish.

Thats about the only downfall I have seen with the system. Often times people rate posts based on the posters reputation in the community, not based on the content of the post. Even more often is that once someone is being downrated people just follow suit again likely not reading the content of the post. This works the exact same in reverse with rate ups.

I really don't want to bring him up, because it will likely spark a silly off topic discussion about him and not the point, but Rog is a prime example of someone who was targeted based on his name and not his content. Sure he was often shrewd in some of his retorts and answers, but the content in the answer that mattered was always spot on and informative. Yet based on his perception in the community he was downrated more often then not.

I am sure there are many others that are in the same position in either case, I mean nothing against Gaxe, hi humor is most welcome and appreciated, but someone like Rog who posted a wealth of information regarding FFXI was default, and Gaxe who has more pictures saved here than a google search offered very little in comparison, yet was rated up.

Basically what the Karma system has come to in my mind is the clique identifier, if your name is colored and you post at good+ you are in, if you don't have a special name and post decent- you are not, and regardless of how informative your post is or isn't you often get rated based on this fact.

At least thats how I observed it. It wasn't until =10 found out I was RDD that I began to get karma bombed. For nearly a month I got rated up based on my content (and because I picked on Rog so I was in the "In" crowd!). But as soon as people found out I was RDD I began getting karma bombed in pretty much every ffxi related thread, even though my posting style had remained the exact same.
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#43 May 05 2011 at 2:09 PM Rating: Good
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I think if I were going to implement a change today, I'd probably do the following:
1. Add a 100-200 post 3.00 buffer post count to all new accounts that are not registered from common spamming geographic locations or known problem e-mail addresses. That would miss some spammers, and put some non spammer legitimate accounts at a disadvantage, but it would be better than nothing
2. Adjust the down rate system so that instead of 1.00, 1.00, -2.00 rates, the system would instead go 4 1.00 rates in a row, but would then start hitting for -5 to -10 for each additional downrate. posts with just a few downrates mixed with uprates wouldn't fall as fast, posts with large numbers of consecutive downrates would dissappear quicker.
3. Add a postcount clause to rating. 3.01 karma OR 1k+ posts. Maybe less. I dunno.
As for #1, I think that 50 posts would be adequate. I mean if someone can't get it by 50, they probably won't by 200. The other two would be great.
#44 May 05 2011 at 4:06 PM Rating: Good
rdmcandie wrote:
The biggest issue with the system imho is that cliques are often a source of a lot of ratings, you can be in the right clique by bagging on the same person everyone else does, or you can be in the wrong clique for not swimming in the same direction as the rest of the fish.

Thats about the only downfall I have seen with the system. Often times people rate posts based on the posters reputation in the community, not based on the content of the post. Even more often is that once someone is being downrated people just follow suit again likely not reading the content of the post. This works the exact same in reverse with rate ups.

I really don't want to bring him up, because it will likely spark a silly off topic discussion about him and not the point, but Rog is a prime example of someone who was targeted based on his name and not his content. Sure he was often shrewd in some of his retorts and answers, but the content in the answer that mattered was always spot on and informative. Yet based on his perception in the community he was downrated more often then not.

I am sure there are many others that are in the same position in either case, I mean nothing against Gaxe, hi humor is most welcome and appreciated, but someone like Rog who posted a wealth of information regarding FFXI was default, and Gaxe who has more pictures saved here than a google search offered very little in comparison, yet was rated up.

Basically what the Karma system has come to in my mind is the clique identifier, if your name is colored and you post at good+ you are in, if you don't have a special name and post decent- you are not, and regardless of how informative your post is or isn't you often get rated based on this fact.

At least thats how I observed it. It wasn't until =10 found out I was RDD that I began to get karma bombed. For nearly a month I got rated up based on my content (and because I picked on Rog so I was in the "In" crowd!). But as soon as people found out I was RDD I began getting karma bombed in pretty much every ffxi related thread, even though my posting style had remained the exact same.


I for one have never rated someone up or down based solely on their name, not even Rog. I only rate based on the contents of the post. Some people tend to get rated down more often from me simply because I disagree with them or their method of presentation. Some people tend to get rated up from me more often because I find them genuinely witty or informative. I don't have the time or the energy to systematically hunt down someone and hit arrows on all their posts.

This isn't to say I'm not biased - I'm probably going to rate someone up if they agree with me, and I'm probably going to rate them down if they call me a terrible player. But that's still rating on the content of the post rather than the name.
#45 May 05 2011 at 6:51 PM Rating: Good
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The problem with the karma system is that it's being used as a way to agree or disagree with a post, not to rate the value of it. A post can be very informative, witty and helpful, but if someone disagrees with the statement in it, it's going to get rated down. I've noticed that this happens a lot in the TV/Movies forum, likely because we all have different tastes in movies, tastes that we want to defend. And the board attracts posters from across communities, so there are none of the cliques that rdmcandle mentioned.

Also, the human brain seems to be wired in a way that we see the negatives before the positives. Probably a survival instinct from back in the days, designed to help us improve by finding and overcoming obstacles (rather than focusing on the obstacles we've already overcome).

I don't have the statistics to back any of this up, but I'll bet that, overall, there have been more rate-downs than rate-ups since the karma system was implemented (well, maybe if we filter out the OOT CJ fad back then).

We don't necessarily rate people up if we agree with them, because we take the posts for granted. We expect them to be that good. Some probably only rate up posts that surprised them - in a positive way. I know I do. However, if someone says something we disagree with, we will go out of our way to display our disapproval. And with anonymity, we don't have to risk facing any consequences, so it probably amplifies it.

I don't have a solution to the original topic of this thread, other than to remove the personal rating and let each post be judged by its content rather than the poster's history. This would, however, mean the end of titles and all that jazz, which would likely upset some. And it would not solve the actual source of the issue: our psyche. Nor would it prevent the karma system from being misused the way it currently is.

Edited, May 6th 2011 2:54am by Mazra
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#46 May 05 2011 at 8:26 PM Rating: Good
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I donot have more pictures than google search. I'll be damned if i'm not trying though.
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#47 May 05 2011 at 9:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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Mazra wrote:

I don't have the statistics to back any of this up, but I'll bet that, overall, there have been more rate-downs than rate-ups since the karma system was implemented (well, maybe if we filter out the OOT CJ fad back then).


It's actually exactly the opposite if you factor out all the spammers and sockpuppets that have been nuked into oblivion. For just general users, the overall average is an upward trend. Certanly that is not distributed evenly. Some people get far more rates than others in certain directions. People who are generally ******** get more downrates except in the asylum. People who are generally nice and make an effort at it get more uprates. We generally act on karma camping in the downward direction. You'll find that unless ratebots are involved, we usually don't act on upward direction karma camping until it gets to extreme levels.

There are people that agree that removing the karma system entirely, or at least the rate down portion is the way to go. I am not one of those people. The more vocal ones on the system tend to be the people who percieve themselves as having been "wronged" by it in the past. Very rarely do those people take an honest look their past posting history and acknowledge that they might indeed be part of the problem.

Regarding the rog issue. We've ben over this, and henceforth in this thread I'm ignoring it. But when it came to karma, it was working exactly as intended with him. He was essentially an ******* with occasional bouts of good informational posting. He pissed alot more people off than he tended to help. and his karma trended downwards because of it. When people get rated huge volumes, us admins tend to get curious and check out their rating and post histories. We'll intervene if its just isolated karma camping, but if a majority of a forum is rating someone one way, who am I to stop them? Any further rog related enquiries in this thread will be ignored and or nuked. if you want to read my position on the matter further, I've written probably several dozen long posts on all facets of the issue that should be pretty easy to find.

Regarding the "100-200 posts" pre appended rating number, my thoughts are this. 1. Scholar is supposed to be the normal karma state. Sages and Gurus should be the exception. and 2. the current 16 post buffer, or 32 rates, is far to easy to shift dramatically one way or the other. By making it a higher number , it would tend to take 30 to 40 rates to shift the karma up or down appriciably, as apposed to the 5-10 it takes now. Sufficiently distasteful posters would get there in a hurry, or be reported. But the average clueless noob would get an average of 50 or so posts to figure things out, as opposed to the 15-20 they get now.

Maybe karma needs some sort of "time in grade" automatic promotion factor. We don't have signup dates for the earliest accounts so that would be problematic to implement, but maybe some sort of permanent .10 karma boost for each year of active forum account status. I definitly would not ever consider anything postcount based. too much encourgement to spam.
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#48 May 05 2011 at 9:29 PM Rating: Decent
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Give a new account 50 built-in posts at 3.00 rating. Let them sink or swim from there. Having accounts rate themselves when they post is ridiculous and disincentivizes improvement. The only way I should be able to affect my karma is with what I post. If my first ten posts all land in a ding thread, I shouldn't be able to hide out in relatively safe threads (or journals) to boost my postcount to the point where I'm an immovable guru. That trend will always be there as long as the ease of rating someone is tied to their post count.
#49 May 05 2011 at 9:36 PM Rating: Good
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Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
Maybe karma needs some sort of "time in grade" automatic promotion factor. We don't have signup dates for the earliest accounts so that would be problematic to implement, but maybe some sort of permanent .10 karma boost for each year of active forum account status. I definitly would not ever consider anything postcount based. too much encourgement to spam.
So instead of grandfathering it for past posters, just start it now.

Edited, May 5th 2011 11:37pm by lolgaxe
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#50 May 05 2011 at 9:38 PM Rating: Excellent
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If we don't have it self reinforce, the system becomes to volitile, with even more instant gurus and sub scholar accounts. It used to only rate you once per post, we added the second rate deliberatly to make the whole system more self stabilizing. It's supposed to be an agrigate of your entire posting history, not just a reflection of your current abilities by design.
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#51 May 05 2011 at 10:08 PM Rating: Decent
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So have it self-reinforce, but not quite at your current karma. If you always rate yourself at 3.0, then over time good/bad karma will degrade back to neutral, so that only posters who continuously contribute (or get rated down) will have their karma be anything special. Maybe don't have it do it at 3.0, but somewhere between where you're at and 3.0.
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