Welp... after much deliberation, here is what the RS staff has decided is the best course of action concerning karma.
first of all, it is pretty much unanimous that the commenting system is the most valuable part of karma. Everyone likes that part, and there is pretty much no controversy there.
On the other hand, the points system is where things become polarizing. Karma parties, do the points mean anything, does it mislead new users, why did the admin give people -9,000,000 points
et cetera.
I think MOST of us could be perfectly happy with a system that emphasizes the commenting system and de-emphasizes the points system without doing away with it altogether.
In this spirit, karma will be turned back on. However, on a user's posts, I am going to remove the actual point number and green bars. Those should still be accessible via someone's user control panel.
I know it seems like we've made a big deal over a relatively small change. Believe me, I did my best to find a suitable alternative that would meet our needs as a community, and the perfect system isn't there. But what I can do is customize the system we have to make it better suited to RS.
As with any polict decision, I know that not everyone will be pleased with this. But I think the majority of you will recognize that this is an attempt to preserve what's best about RS, while evolving away from something that never really worked the way it was intended.
I am going to re-enable karma for now, and will change the behavior with the system live... please be patient with any glitches/weirdness.
Comments welcome. This thread will remain open for all to comment. As always, feel free to PM me your thoughts as well.
Travis
first of all, it is pretty much unanimous that the commenting system is the most valuable part of karma. Everyone likes that part, and there is pretty much no controversy there.
On the other hand, the points system is where things become polarizing. Karma parties, do the points mean anything, does it mislead new users, why did the admin give people -9,000,000 points
et cetera.I think MOST of us could be perfectly happy with a system that emphasizes the commenting system and de-emphasizes the points system without doing away with it altogether.
In this spirit, karma will be turned back on. However, on a user's posts, I am going to remove the actual point number and green bars. Those should still be accessible via someone's user control panel.
I know it seems like we've made a big deal over a relatively small change. Believe me, I did my best to find a suitable alternative that would meet our needs as a community, and the perfect system isn't there. But what I can do is customize the system we have to make it better suited to RS.
As with any polict decision, I know that not everyone will be pleased with this. But I think the majority of you will recognize that this is an attempt to preserve what's best about RS, while evolving away from something that never really worked the way it was intended.
I am going to re-enable karma for now, and will change the behavior with the system live... please be patient with any glitches/weirdness.
Comments welcome. This thread will remain open for all to comment. As always, feel free to PM me your thoughts as well.
Travis
