Karma meters on message boards

All Nines

They unnerve me a bit. Why have them?

(I have a feeling I'll be getting responses as to why to have them, but I don't feel like listing them right now, so I'll respond to what comes up)

Wicked223

So that people can distinguish which members are more accomplished/valued by the community than others.

personally, I think they're only really useful on tech-support forums, or things where reliable testimony is paramount.

glennmagusharvey

Just curious: what about reputation meters (which can only go up)?

All Nines

^^ I can see where it might be valuable, but I think it carries the risk of overvaluing seniority, and it could almost certainly be manipulated for bad ends. I feel like attaching a post count and a flag button to each post makes it redundant, as well; if they've been around for a while, it'll show in their post count and make it clear that this is a person who knows what they're talking about (at least, in the eyes of the community), and if someone is being a problem, it's up to the community to alert that person to the moderation and have them done away with, rather than letting a negative rating become gigantic, since that's an indication that they shouldn't be there anyway.

^ That seems less like it could be manipulated, but still kinda redundant if post count is being used. You don't get a lot of posts in a good community by being a prick.

InsanityAddict

My posting style would be Renegade.

*tumbleweeds, rimshots and crickets chirping, oh my!*

Hatter

Post counts, karma and upvotes are just ways to attract megalomaniacs and assholes who'll turn any discussion into a circle jerk.

Hell, I'm a little against the concept of profiles at all, because establishing a persona that can accumulate fame or prestige is a great way of turning people into dribbling morons.

Schitzo

>Flame war or argument is won.
>Notice that the winner only has Karma in the single digits
>Instant Ban

RedEyedAbyss

"personally, I think they're only really useful on tech-support forums, or things where reliable testimony is paramount."

That's the idea in theory; to see whose advice is most helpful. In practice, it ends up leading to vote wars such as downvoting everyone a person disagrees with and then claiming that their low karma meant they don't deserve to be listened to. I remember on another forum that people constantly complained that they wanted the karma system dropped due to the sheer amount of abuse.

Icalasari

On one forum I go to, they used to have a karma system

If one's karma was too low, they were insta banned

There were people with tons of karma

The more karma you had, the more points you could give or remove from someone

Kind of obvious why it was eventually removed

CountryPumpkin

Fucking Reddit

LouieW

I am not sure if this counts as a karma meter, but I think it can be somewhat useful if something like it is a way for mods/admins to encourage good behavior and discourage rule-breaking. I know of one forum that uses a meters like that, giving and taking away points based on a user's behavior. Everyone started at around 50% and people who dropped down to 0% were banned while those who reached 100% were given special icons by their names and some other random privileges.

From what I could tell, the effect of the meters was generally that people tended to do some good stuff to help out mods (e.g., greeting new members, answering FAQs, and reporting rule-breaking), but the forum could be rather competitive at times and the meters sometimes encouraged elitism and such.

Personally, I am not a fan of post counts, karma meters, MOFWs, fancy pants user titles/icons because I think they can encourage newbie bullying, cliquey junk, and otherwise promote hierarchies between users. I understand that some people like them though and whether or not a site has them is probably not a big deal in the scheme of things.

Icalasari

^^ Until you annoy the wrong group

Bob

"Post counts, karma and upvotes are just ways to attract megalomaniacs and assholes who'll turn any discussion into a circle jerk."

DYRE

I gave someone negative karma on a forum once because they changed their username to something I thought sounded dumb.  They got mad at me.

That's really the only experience I've ever had with karma systems. 

Bob

You can tell who gives karma?

DYRE

On that forum, yeah.  I don't know how common that is though since I don't think I've ever been active on any other forum with a karma system.

TheConductor

I quite like them, when they're entirely post-by-post, being able to downgrade or upgrade posts is a good way to show approval or disapproval without having to post "This" or "wut". 

All Nines

I wouldn't mind if karma was by post; it could show that someone has a disagreeable opinion that has no effect on other opinions that they have; in other words, show that they've made mistakes, but are perhaps not entirely bad of character, because if they are, they could just be banned anyway.

MillerCross

I still maintain these things are goddamn dumb

With that said, caring about them is worse.