Bal wrote:Too much baggage? So far as I know only two people ever abused the system, and one of them doesn't post here anymore. Not to mention that their abuse of that system amounted to little more than a private flame war with a numerical value attached to it. I mean, we're all fucking adults here, right? I've been posting in this community for something like 12-13 years now, and the trend has seemingly been toward less personal responsibility for the sake of, what? Reduced drama? Now, I'm not saying bring back Wrath, but come on. The last implementation of karma, where there are two positive options, that's some fucking AYSO shit right there. Are we all getting MVP trophies at the end of the season too? I always imagined that I would feel less coddled at 30 than at 17.
I think implementing a karma system in the first place is antithetical to the notion that we should act like adults and not worry about meaningless prizes.
It also seems to me that no two people who want a karma system actually seem to be able to agree on what that system should be at all.
And I am extremely skeptical of your suggestion that if we implement an up/down karma system with comments, it will end differently than the last two times we tried that exact thing.
I guess it's possible to have a karma system without people bragging about how many upvotes they got or complaining about how many downvotes they got. But I think those two things are both the logical conclusion and the entire point of having a karma system in the first place*.
For people who don't attach importance to those numbers, there's no reason to have them. And for people who DO attach importance to those numbers, well, that's where the drama comes in.
* There are valuable purposes for up/downvote systems in some forums -- places like Slashdot or Ars Technica were there's a threshold for comments to be visible, for example.
This is not one of those places. Those forums are for curating massive, heavily-trafficked comments sections full of people who don't know each other and which are subject to frequent abuse by trolls.
None of that is applicable on these forums. We have maybe a few dozen posts a day, we all know each other, and karma does not increase or decrease the prominence of posts. It's just a scorecard/popularity contest.