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posted by
NCommander
on Wednesday February 25 2015, @03:20PM
from the another-overdue-discussion dept.
from the another-overdue-discussion dept.
So as we make strides to upgrade the site, another long-standing issue is working to improve the karma system. Obviously, we've heard a lot of discussions and ideas on how to improve this, but we need a solid plan on how to improve it. Ideally, we need a system that allows a user to gain karma, and show progress (so to speak), but also not render a user immune to moderation. As such, I think I've come up with a rather solid idea, based on the concept of gamification to keep users competitive on earning karma.
Read past the break for more information.How Karma Works Today:
Before we get into how we're going to rework it, a quick recap is in order to explain how the system currently works. As of right now, karma is a signed integer in the database, with a range of -10 to 50. When a user has negative karma, their default posting score becomes 0 or -1. At +40, the user gains the ability to post at +2. Although the backend logs all up/down votes, karma is capped at 50, and can not be exceeded.
This obviously presents a problem since once a user hits 50, what incentive do they have to really keep posting? A lot of users have stated that earning karma is fun, and have long wished for us to improve the karma cap or something similar. Various suggestions such as karma aging has been proposed, but these all end up penalizing users for doing nothing wrong, something I dislike in concept. Thus we need a better system to handle this, while preventing a user from becoming immune to moderation.
Reworking Karma: Karma Levels + Recent Karma
The easiest solution is thus to break karma into two parts, one which is a total lifetime of karma earned, and a recent karma value. The recent value will be a range, similar to the current karma system, which can go up and down, and is capped; if a user decides to suddenly spam the site to hell, their recent karma scores can be destroyed via moderation. Abilities such as posting at +2 will be tied to this recent karma value. In short, it allows moderation to still impact a user in a meaningful way.
However, most people want to see the total sum of their contributions, hence a new value which is comprised of the total karma a user ever earned. This value only goes up, and is the total sum of positive contributions to the site. In line with the concept of gamification, this total karma is like XP in most role-playing games. Earn enough, and you level up. While I haven't worked out an exact algorithm just yet, take the following example.
User john_doe is newly registered.
His recent karma and lifetime karma are 0. It takes 10 points of karma to reach Lv. 2. john_doe decides to contribute 3 insightful comments, all getting moderated up to +5 Insightful, for a total 12 karma points. His recent karma is at 12, and he's levels up to 2, with 2 KP towards level 3. Lets say then John decides to be a dick, and posts spam, which rightfully gets hit with the spam moderation.
The spam moderation knocks the post down to +0, and inflicts a -10 karma ding. John's recent karma value will drop to 2, enough to still post at +1, but his total karma value will remain unchanged. If John continues misbehaving, his recent karma value will drop negative, locking him to posting at +0 or -1, but he will retain his levels, should he choose to change his behavior.
Due to the recent karma value being capped, any user can still be affected by moderation, but there is still plenty of inventive to keep posting and try and build levels, perhaps tie various rewards to karma levels (though ATM, I don't have any great ideas on this; if the community has any, I'm all ears).
This is my proposal in a nutshell, feedback welcome.
Read past the break for more information.How Karma Works Today:
Before we get into how we're going to rework it, a quick recap is in order to explain how the system currently works. As of right now, karma is a signed integer in the database, with a range of -10 to 50. When a user has negative karma, their default posting score becomes 0 or -1. At +40, the user gains the ability to post at +2. Although the backend logs all up/down votes, karma is capped at 50, and can not be exceeded.
This obviously presents a problem since once a user hits 50, what incentive do they have to really keep posting? A lot of users have stated that earning karma is fun, and have long wished for us to improve the karma cap or something similar. Various suggestions such as karma aging has been proposed, but these all end up penalizing users for doing nothing wrong, something I dislike in concept. Thus we need a better system to handle this, while preventing a user from becoming immune to moderation.
Reworking Karma: Karma Levels + Recent Karma
The easiest solution is thus to break karma into two parts, one which is a total lifetime of karma earned, and a recent karma value. The recent value will be a range, similar to the current karma system, which can go up and down, and is capped; if a user decides to suddenly spam the site to hell, their recent karma scores can be destroyed via moderation. Abilities such as posting at +2 will be tied to this recent karma value. In short, it allows moderation to still impact a user in a meaningful way.
However, most people want to see the total sum of their contributions, hence a new value which is comprised of the total karma a user ever earned. This value only goes up, and is the total sum of positive contributions to the site. In line with the concept of gamification, this total karma is like XP in most role-playing games. Earn enough, and you level up. While I haven't worked out an exact algorithm just yet, take the following example.
User john_doe is newly registered.
His recent karma and lifetime karma are 0. It takes 10 points of karma to reach Lv. 2. john_doe decides to contribute 3 insightful comments, all getting moderated up to +5 Insightful, for a total 12 karma points. His recent karma is at 12, and he's levels up to 2, with 2 KP towards level 3. Lets say then John decides to be a dick, and posts spam, which rightfully gets hit with the spam moderation.
The spam moderation knocks the post down to +0, and inflicts a -10 karma ding. John's recent karma value will drop to 2, enough to still post at +1, but his total karma value will remain unchanged. If John continues misbehaving, his recent karma value will drop negative, locking him to posting at +0 or -1, but he will retain his levels, should he choose to change his behavior.
Due to the recent karma value being capped, any user can still be affected by moderation, but there is still plenty of inventive to keep posting and try and build levels, perhaps tie various rewards to karma levels (though ATM, I don't have any great ideas on this; if the community has any, I'm all ears).
This is my proposal in a nutshell, feedback welcome.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 25 2015, @08:08PM
Let's say you lose 10% of your karma per day, but there's no cap. On a few days in the last few weeks, I've gathered about 10 +ve mod points per day. Even if I could do that every day, it's only enough to preserve a steady state of 100 Karma. So it's effectively self-capping, and rewards regular contributions.
However, before anything, I would say *is any change really necessary*? How is the current system actually broken? What is the problem for which a solution is being sought?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves