After the great feedback from many people I want to give a second attempt to the topic, taking in consideration the worries and additional ideas that were mentioned. I want to start with a different description this time:
Scenario 1:
Imagine you have a karma account. People can give and take karma away from you, depending if they like what you do or if they do not like what you do. The karma is shown to other users so you can show off if you have a lot of karma. People can give you karma for whatever reason, but it is invisible to you who gave you karma – or who took it. The karma given to you expires after 3 months – per each point. You also get some karma for getting ranked on a contest. Karma is only relevant in dimensions such as 10-50, 50-75 etc. Having 1 or 5 karma more or less should not make an impact.
You can also give karma to other people. In order to do so, you get a karma spending account that is dependent on your online time, your level and the karma you received from others. You can use that karma as positive or negative to other people. Giving karma on top of that costs you a little money. So you have to decide if you rather give karma or buy that diamond pickaxe.
Scenario 2:
Imagine we are reddit. You can give one karma or take one karma from every user. That’s it. You have unlimited karma to give or to take – but in the end you can only do a “like” or “dislike” once per user. Everyone the same. Easy and simple. No expiries, no allowances – just like reddit.
The consequence:
For that would be the end of the story. A little bling for you if you are good and nice or maybe not so much if you are controversial. If you are purely bad and annoying to everyone, you might even have negative karma. In the end, having no karma is normal, having a lot is good, and having negative is bad. But if there is a balance of people liking you and disliking you, you will simply be the standard – no karma.
When I as an admin look at people’s karma, I would point my attention to those with the most or the least karma and think if a promotion or maybe a ban is in order. Or I just ignore it. Since
Opinions wanted.
I have an issue with Scenario 2 (the one similar to reddit). If that method is used, then people will give positive karma to who they like, and give negative karma to the people they don’t like very much. Now, that is a very generic statement. But some people just don’t get along with certain people. And, since it costs them nothing to give negative/positive karma to someone, they don’t have to go out of the way to give negative karma to someone they don’t get along well with.
I know it sounds stupid, the way I’m putting it. It’s just a little hard to explain. Some people don’t get along with other people who are nice. This can be because of jealousy, envy, competition, etc. . . . Oh, it’s hard to explain. >.<
I like the first scenario, because this way, you can be sure that whoever gave the karma truly felt it was necessary. Why? Because you have to pay. Now, I'm not saying everyone saves/needs to save their money. But I don't think anyone would want to waste all their money giving negative karma to someone they dislike, or giving positive karma to someone they favor.
My humble apologies if my comment makes absolutely no sense to you. :D
I think you confuse some things here that I could have made clearer:
In option 2, People do not HAVE to rate everyone. There is not only the option of good and bad, but also nothing at all. Further, despite the fact that the second solution does not cost anything, there is only 1 negative point to give. Option one costs something, but you could give multiple negatives which would make the situation a bit worse.
Also, these are just two extreme example. We can still ask for money in option 2.
I think that the modified reddit style scenario is a good way of going.
It prevents many of the pitfalls assosciated with these kind of systems where you get close knit groups of friends ranking each othe rup in karma, or ranking down a user that one of them dislikes in particular.
I think a variation of the second scenario, where you can give or take 1 karma at a cost in uncs is a good idea. I think it should cost to decrease karma only, because this will discourage people from making petty contributions to other peoples karma. If someone has helped you out, you should be able to give them a “plug” so to speak without a cost, but if you dislike somebody enough to be downranking them, you should be willing to put uncs where your disagreement is.
I also think that when rewarded for high karma levels (ie promoted), the account should have to be reset to low positive karma levels again, so that a user isn’t rewarded too quickly in a short period of time.
ie
A user spams the chat heavily and abuses everyone online. Many people pay (?200?) uncs to lower his karma, once each. Uncovery notices and when it hits a certain benchmark relative to active playerbase count and decides that this player really isn’t a good contribution to the server.
ie
A single user has a strong disagreement with another player, player 1 can only drop his rank a small amount, as many others might like said player.
ie
Petty antics aren’t worth the money to downrank. People just get on with life.
ie
A player helps you, you give them a +plug for the assistance.
Anyone with thoughts on this proposal should also drop a comment!
I like your proposal, but it has one problem. If you have a group of multiple friends, it doesn’t prevent them from 1-upping each other just to get their karma up. For that reason I think there should be some kind of cost to increasing karma, or at least some kind of control mechanism. You are right that for most people it wouldn’t have too much of an effect, but who knows, maybe a “big” group of friends will join tomorrow.
We had a group of 5 people max. So then they have 5 karma – so what? even 10? if they are really nice people, let them have it. If they are jerks, they will be downranked very quickly by others – and there are 20 others every day to do so. If everyone has 1 vote per other user, there is no risk at all at this if you ask me.
Okay, you have a point. I agree.
The kind of size group of friends you are talking about would have to be a fairly chunk of player base, which would under this system make their karma scoring statistically significant?
If we further refine this idea, one could also say that you must play for a minimum of say 10 hours before you get karma power perhaps?
On important point should be that it does not make sense to rank down people for obvious rule violations. Those will be banned based on screenshots.
Yeah, that is a good point. Okay so lets just say if in general you don’t like somebody that much because they are generally testy, irksome and arrogant yet not blatantly breaking rules.
I like scenario 2. But maybe weighted karma based on rank – kind of like how we do contest voting. Of course, I’m an elder and obviously biased and power hungry. Also, I’m regular hungry. What to eat..?
I think what is important to remember is, This isn’t an automatic ban or promotion system.
It is merely a tool to tell Unc that he needs to pay attention to a particular player. (good or bad)
I dont think Unc’s intention is to set limits on that Karma, it is only for him to see. So when someone stands out with high or low karma, he would investigate that person.
The other thing is that if I see that there is abuse – and newbies having tons of karma for no obvious reason would be one – I could stop the whole thing immediately and keep it at that. no harm done. nobody promoted or whatever.
I suggest having a minimum playtime on the server before being able to apply karma.
Agree to that.
I agree with Magnum. Uncovery is not looking to implement an automatic promotion system. This would be a process to be able to see who is helping and who is hurting the community. You are a good helper, but not a great builder. Should that hold a person back from getting promoted?
Also the proposed process is to show trends of behavior of individuals in the community to Uncovery or the elders(?).
If anything, I’d prefer scenario 2 but for the sake of avoiding hate and blood, make the “votes” anonymous (you don’t see who gave you karma, positive or negative). I still think such a system has more downsides than upsides (see other karma post), but since you seem to be set on making this happen somehow, I’d prefer a simple and “anonymous” version.
In my eyes scenario 2 is better. Pointing out positiv or negative “karmaed” people is more effectful for these players. Too much negative should lead to a ban, “too much” positive should/could mean that you are upgraded. Those who have a lot of karma (let’s decide Unc how much is a lot) enter a club which has the same level then e.g. master (prob. “The Stone Cutters Club of Uncovery”).
To be honnest for me as an elder it’s not important how much karma I have and its not a problem when “deeper” graded players would be upgraded because of their karma. I play the game because it’s the game, only I don’t want an accumulation of laggards and nitwits (sorry to say that).
And again – karma should not be buyable.
If karma doesn’t have any *Real* value, that is to say: It isn’t DIRECTLY related to promotions or bans, merely an indicator for unc and the staff to gauge the server’s general feeling regarding a player, then I like scenario 2 better.
Reason being, that I’m stingy. While it’s true that I’ll go out of my way, and spend my uncs, to make it known that a certain person is a real delight to play with, those instances are fewer and much further between (Assuming I run through my allotment of given karma points downvoting Hiosa for every creepy picture of his knees he keeps sending me…), especially if I know that they don’t have “Real” value.
If I were given the option to *upvote* or *downvote* a player once per player per day, I’d absolutely use it more often. Witty comment in chat? General server goodwill? Helping out a new user? Karma for you! Poor English? I can’t take away your karma fast enough :).
TL;DR: As long as karma doesn’t DIRECTLY relate to promotions/bans, I vote for Scenario 2
Maybe you cant give karma or take karma if you have negative karma. Also, people having a limit to karma they can give/take. What wouldnt stop someone from blamming or upping peoples karma?
i like this there are some people i like and some people i don’t like on the server and i think this is a great way to express how i feel about them!