Hi, I just wanted to discuss the negative karma solution as it is atm.
After the flame war I thought about the neagtive Karma thing.It can be abused very easily (I too have downvoted Bills posts) and it is a dangerous tool.
So what should the goal be of a negative karma? Something like mark this post as useless, it is spam, don't look into it, because it isn't worth. But should this get counted for the karma? I think there can be misusage of this system like it is doen in the flame war thread.
How can we change it? Perhaps let us kill the negative karma. If someone downvotes a post it can be marked as before, but doesn't get counted for the karma and the administrators get a message about the downvoting. if it is spam they decide to show or not?
Can this be a solution? Other opinions are welcome...
Maybe downvoting requires confirmation e.g. "Are you sure you want to give negative karma?"
Maybe when a post gets a certain amount of negative votes it is flagged for attention of an admin and if the negative voting continues then it is temporarily closed pending review.
It would be good to give people the ability to change their mind - I'm sure I've hit the down vote button once or twice and then realised later I was being a bit of an arse.
I do have problems with the whole Karma system in general as it doesn't really cover all contrubutions to the Umbraco community and as the "flame war" proved it is open to abuse - but there are definitely improvements could be made.
A quick note on this is that a few things are currently being implemented on the dev enviroment to help detect abuse. Also we are looking at how the karma system should work. For example it migt cost you a bit of your own karma to vote down a post. At the same time, you can onle vote if you have a certain amount of karma from for example making topics, writing comments and so on.
I'm not a fan of the "admin review" model, as it is dependant on a person actually being available to handle the review. However I like the "Are you sure you want to downvote" confirmation box. Maybe with a few pointers on when you should (not) vote down topics.
Perhaphs an idea to include some calculations in the value of negative karma? For example, if someone with under 10 posts (or 50 karma or whatever) gives a negative vote, it weighs less than someone with over 200 posts gives a negative vote? (just random numbers given, but you get the idea)
In addition, I like Darrens idea, if a few people gave negative votes, temporarily lock down topic for review?
An extra message 'Are you sure' doesn't help much I think. If you want to downvote a post, you will simply click through all extra messages you get. Most times when you flag something negative, you're in a state of mind which doesn't reflect your normal state. Like Darren said, sometimes you downvote while you want to undo that later.
Good to hear that you are working on the karma thing. In my opinion the negative karma should be stopped. There will be discussions like "why did I get negative karma". If you don't give the people positive karma it is a kind of "downvoting".
I also like the confirmation box for downvoting.
I don't like the idea of loosing own karma to downvote something, although it should be clear that downvoting is a serious thing which you should handle carefully.
My conclusion: downvoting of a post/thread with confirmation box, but no negative karma.
I am a long time member of dutch tech site tweakers.net they have a really nice Karma formula, you can get Karma for good reactions, and you get tweakotine based on how often you visit the site those combined give you less or more weight when moderating other people.
Funny thing is that you can use Karmapoints to buy items in their Karma store, simple stuff like storagespace, bannerfree site, etc.
I think it should be visible from who you get votes from. Maybe by writing a comment while voting, or by displaying the names of the people in each category.
I also think it is too easy to vote posts up... Special when you also earn karma yourself... If I want, I can vote a lot of posts up, and by that way get karmepoint on an easy way. Maybe that can be solved if you only can vote if you are participation in the thread....
Maybe when you give out negative karma you have to specify why either with a dropdown of reasons or as free text. It makes people stop and think about what they are doing.
I don't agree with losing karma yourself for downvoting - you may as well just remove it all together as people won't vote anything down if they know it will impact themselves.
I do think a flag as innapropriate is a good idea as a bad quality post and spam are two separate things.
Must say I favor removing the negative karma-option. It inspires people to 'go with the flow' rather than create topics that can be controversial. We don't necessarily agree to everything, and why punish someone for having another opinion? It's those other opinions that can be interesting at times.
yap, that's not the way the karma thing should work. You are doing a suggestion or having an idea and someone does not like it and is downvoting this. But this shouldn't be involved with the karma. You are participating and you are providing new ideas and all in a friendly and constuctive way. Why should you get negative karma for that??
For me it is clear: the negative karma should stop. About the other features you can discuss in many ways and there are good ideas in this thread to change it.
Alot of great feedback on the issues with the current Karma system, keep it coming, thank you all so far :)
So could we seperate down-voting a topic/comment and the posters karma? So people who post something that some-one votes down, will not loose karma-points on his profile, but the item itself will get a lower score?
I also like the idea of attaching a comment to a vote, and actually make the list of votes public, so it's not some sort of invisble mob punishing posts.
Introduce restrictions on who can vote based on their profile karma
I think it is okey to vote items down because you do not agree with the content, but currently voters are not public, so being a cowardly down-voting mob is too easy.
So:
1. Make it public who votes on who to make it transparent and spot the cowards.
2. Set a minimum score before you can start rating content to avoid fake profiles voting items up/down
3. Set mandatory comments on negative votes so people can see why a person was down-voted.
4. Seperate forum item votes and profile karma, so your profile karma does not get damaged because someone disagrees with your opinion, but we still get the spam detection and content quality indication
I agree that we shouldn't disable negative karma yet, but that it's currently aren't used as we anticipated.
The original reason for introducing negative karma was to help moderators keep the forum from trolling/dirty/spam posts. As the community grows, so does the number of posts and by sharring the "burden" of monitoring the forum we can ensure that moderators can work more effectively.
I'm 100% with Per's suggestions 1-3. I still think it might be a good idea that negative scores still affects your profile as if the negative karma gets used as intended it'll further help the original purpose. For the mandatory comment I think the comment should at least be x number of characters words, to prevent almost non-comments like "s***" (albeit one *could* write the same word many types - but hey, can't prevent everything).
From a different view point, I've marked people as negative karma, but then decided I was a bit harsh. However, I cannot remove my negativity.
Report as spam may be better. Better to have opinion that is promoted or marked as 'spam'. If someone disagrees with something then they can say so, and in turn others can promot their view point.
Stop negative Karma, introduce Spam?
Hi, I just wanted to discuss the negative karma solution as it is atm.
After the flame war I thought about the neagtive Karma thing.It can be abused very easily (I too have downvoted Bills posts) and it is a dangerous tool.
So what should the goal be of a negative karma? Something like mark this post as useless, it is spam, don't look into it, because it isn't worth. But should this get counted for the karma? I think there can be misusage of this system like it is doen in the flame war thread.
How can we change it? Perhaps let us kill the negative karma. If someone downvotes a post it can be marked as before, but doesn't get counted for the karma and the administrators get a message about the downvoting. if it is spam they decide to show or not?
Can this be a solution? Other opinions are welcome...
Thomas
A couple of ideas.
Maybe downvoting requires confirmation e.g. "Are you sure you want to give negative karma?"
Maybe when a post gets a certain amount of negative votes it is flagged for attention of an admin and if the negative voting continues then it is temporarily closed pending review.
It would be good to give people the ability to change their mind - I'm sure I've hit the down vote button once or twice and then realised later I was being a bit of an arse.
I do have problems with the whole Karma system in general as it doesn't really cover all contrubutions to the Umbraco community and as the "flame war" proved it is open to abuse - but there are definitely improvements could be made.
A quick note on this is that a few things are currently being implemented on the dev enviroment to help detect abuse. Also we are looking at how the karma system should work. For example it migt cost you a bit of your own karma to vote down a post. At the same time, you can onle vote if you have a certain amount of karma from for example making topics, writing comments and so on.
I'm not a fan of the "admin review" model, as it is dependant on a person actually being available to handle the review. However I like the "Are you sure you want to downvote" confirmation box. Maybe with a few pointers on when you should (not) vote down topics.
Perhaphs an idea to include some calculations in the value of negative karma? For example, if someone with under 10 posts (or 50 karma or whatever) gives a negative vote, it weighs less than someone with over 200 posts gives a negative vote? (just random numbers given, but you get the idea)
In addition, I like Darrens idea, if a few people gave negative votes, temporarily lock down topic for review?
An extra message 'Are you sure' doesn't help much I think. If you want to downvote a post, you will simply click through all extra messages you get. Most times when you flag something negative, you're in a state of mind which doesn't reflect your normal state. Like Darren said, sometimes you downvote while you want to undo that later.
Good to hear that you are working on the karma thing. In my opinion the negative karma should be stopped. There will be discussions like "why did I get negative karma". If you don't give the people positive karma it is a kind of "downvoting".
I also like the confirmation box for downvoting.
I don't like the idea of loosing own karma to downvote something, although it should be clear that downvoting is a serious thing which you should handle carefully.
My conclusion: downvoting of a post/thread with confirmation box, but no negative karma.
Agreed, would like to remove the negative karma thing, so you either like it and vote for it or don't like (and don't care).
But you'll need a way to distinguesh between a poor post (as in spam) and a good/excellent one. I'd opt to change to vote down into 'Mark as spam'.
We can stand criticism, but don't like spam!
My 2 cents,
Cheers,
/Dirk
Tangentially, it would be nice to allow for one to change his vote.
I am a long time member of dutch tech site tweakers.net they have a really nice Karma formula, you can get Karma for good reactions, and you get tweakotine based on how often you visit the site those combined give you less or more weight when moderating other people.
Funny thing is that you can use Karmapoints to buy items in their Karma store, simple stuff like storagespace, bannerfree site, etc.
http://www.tweakers.net/ext/i.dsp/968374702.gif
I think it should be visible from who you get votes from. Maybe by writing a comment while voting, or by displaying the names of the people in each category.
I also think it is too easy to vote posts up... Special when you also earn karma yourself... If I want, I can vote a lot of posts up, and by that way get karmepoint on an easy way. Maybe that can be solved if you only can vote if you are participation in the thread....
Just my thoughts...
Martins point gives me an idea:
Maybe when you give out negative karma you have to specify why either with a dropdown of reasons or as free text. It makes people stop and think about what they are doing.
I don't agree with losing karma yourself for downvoting - you may as well just remove it all together as people won't vote anything down if they know it will impact themselves.
I do think a flag as innapropriate is a good idea as a bad quality post and spam are two separate things.
Must say I favor removing the negative karma-option. It inspires people to 'go with the flow' rather than create topics that can be controversial. We don't necessarily agree to everything, and why punish someone for having another opinion? It's those other opinions that can be interesting at times.
I just got down voted for voicing a rational opinion - that kind of sucks.
Maybe someone disagreed with what I said - doesn't make it a bad suggestion though!
yap, that's not the way the karma thing should work. You are doing a suggestion or having an idea and someone does not like it and is downvoting this. But this shouldn't be involved with the karma. You are participating and you are providing new ideas and all in a friendly and constuctive way. Why should you get negative karma for that??
For me it is clear: the negative karma should stop. About the other features you can discuss in many ways and there are good ideas in this thread to change it.
Thomas
Alot of great feedback on the issues with the current Karma system, keep it coming, thank you all so far :)
So could we seperate down-voting a topic/comment and the posters karma? So people who post something that some-one votes down, will not loose karma-points on his profile, but the item itself will get a lower score?
I also like the idea of attaching a comment to a vote, and actually make the list of votes public, so it's not some sort of invisble mob punishing posts.
Introduce restrictions on who can vote based on their profile karma
I think it is okey to vote items down because you do not agree with the content, but currently voters are not public, so being a cowardly down-voting mob is too easy.
So:
1. Make it public who votes on who to make it transparent and spot the cowards.
2. Set a minimum score before you can start rating content to avoid fake profiles voting items up/down
3. Set mandatory comments on negative votes so people can see why a person was down-voted.
4. Seperate forum item votes and profile karma, so your profile karma does not get damaged because someone disagrees with your opinion, but we still get the spam detection and content quality indication
Feedback / comments? :)
I agree that we shouldn't disable negative karma yet, but that it's currently aren't used as we anticipated.
The original reason for introducing negative karma was to help moderators keep the forum from trolling/dirty/spam posts. As the community grows, so does the number of posts and by sharring the "burden" of monitoring the forum we can ensure that moderators can work more effectively.
I'm 100% with Per's suggestions 1-3. I still think it might be a good idea that negative scores still affects your profile as if the negative karma gets used as intended it'll further help the original purpose. For the mandatory comment I think the comment should at least be x number of characters words, to prevent almost non-comments like "s***" (albeit one *could* write the same word many types - but hey, can't prevent everything).
Per's suggestions are really step forward. +1
Maybe comments like s*** can give commenter same negative karma.
I agree.
From a different view point, I've marked people as negative karma, but then decided I was a bit harsh. However, I cannot remove my negativity.
Report as spam may be better. Better to have opinion that is promoted or marked as 'spam'. If someone disagrees with something then they can say so, and in turn others can promot their view point.
Chris
is working on a reply...