twesterm said:
Here's a good example. The Guildhall at SMU forums once decided to have a karma system in place. While there are of course fun topics, it is a professional forum and most things that go on other forums like this one will not fly there. There are no trolls, there is strict monitoring on who signs up, and very strict modding.
They decided to try out a karma system where you could vote up or down a post so many times per day. New users could not vote until they were taken off user probation. It was not anonymous and everyone knew who voted a post down. This sounds like a perfect place for this system and sounds like it should work.
Can you guess what happened?
Even in a place like this people got karma camped because they were having fun with their friends, people got karma camped because people were bored, threads got karma camped because they could, and all hell broke out.
Do you know how long this karma system lasted?
I'm pretty sure it didn't last longer than two weeks. Two weeks Even in a professional highly monitored and strict place like that the system did not work.
What makes you think it would work here?
|
EVERYTHING is based upon implementation. A poorly designed system will surely fail. I'm not saying add a "generic" karma system, I'm saying build one from the ground up, using similar principles, but focussed for THIS forum and this forum alone. Make it restrictive as possible to prevent abuse, yet easy to use. Yes abuse will happen in ANY forum with a system like this, but it's how you design it to prevent that from happening.
