*groan* another karma thread!!

[cqueen]

I hate threads about Karma so I stuck in this forum.

I dont get this...

Jamie stokes has been here for 3 months, his spelling/grammar is woeful and he has been karma bashed to buggery. Yet he still has more good Karma than me(5 green)?!

Ive been here 2 years, have made over 3000 posts, spelling/grammar is 'average', very occasionally I get a bad rating.

I have 4 green blobs and have done so for about a year, before that I had 5 blobs for about a year until I got bashed.

Someone explain?

[Jamie S]

duno if this helps but it might. Briefly, the karma system here is a "rating" attached to each user. Your karma can be affected by many things, the most important factors are listed here in roughly descending order of importance:

Post Ratings
If all your posts keep being voted into the red, your karma may suffer. Likewise, if you post pure gems - it may well rise. Your own karma is also be affected by the ratings you hand out, so if you use ratings unfairly (in a vendetta against another user, for example) your karma rating will suffer. There is a separate guide to post ratings which you can read here to familiarise yourself with how this system works.

Where You Post
If you spend your time helping people with problems in The Workshop or debating MotoGP racing in General Bike Chat you will find your karma rising faster than if you were to spend most of your time in Offtopic Chat discussing football (this is Bike Chat Forums, after all). Posting abuse and participating in the threads found in the Fights & Flame Wars area will hurt your karma rating, so try to avoid it.

Relationships
Your karma will rise/fall slightly depending on how many friends and enemies you have. You can find a list of these people by viewing your profile.

Your Language
Spelling, grammar, punctuation. All these affect your karma, so it's a good idea to proof read your posts and use the spell check. Also, don't write as if you were sending a text message - it makes your posts hard to decipher.

A few common questions relating to karma:

Q) Why do I have bad karma?
A) Because you're doing something wrong. You can find a list of your most recent received ratings on your profile, along with your list of friends & enemies. Also, when you post, try to use the preview function and the system will warn you if it finds something in your posts it doesn't like giving you the opportunity to fix it before posting the message.

Q) How do I get good karma?
A) By following the rules above. Try to be friendly in your posts, treat people with respect, don't start or get involved in flame wars and abusive threads and pay attention to your writing - you should soon see your karma rating improving.

Q) Why should I care about my Karma?
A) Some of the benefits of having good karma include: not having to preview all of your posts, being able to use post rating buttons, having your birthday listed in the calendar. Some of the pitfalls of bad karma include: not having your avatar or signature displayed, not being allowed to use the Live Chat room, having your posts on the global ignore list, and ultimately being barred from posting altogether. Also, the higher your karma rating the more weight your opinion carries when it comes to using post ratings - so it pays to have good karma!

Q) What if I'm dyslexic or a bad speller?
A) Don't worry too much about it, compared to the other factors of karma it isn't the end of the world if you can't spell. A good idea might be to try using the built in forum spell checker to help with your posts, but ultimately content is more important than presentation.

Q) How do the blobs work?
A) The blobs are coloured according to your rating; black for terrible, red for bad, white for neutral, green for good and gold for excellent. Each blob slowly 'fills up' until it's full of colour, at which point you gain another one, and so on.

[m99dws]

Well done Captain Copy+Paste.

That doesn't answer the mathmatics of his question, which is WHY?

[Rookie]

cqueen it might be that out of those 3000+ posts, 161 have been in any of the bike forums.

[john2]

Yeh ^^

I agree with that one. Judt make pointless posts in the bike forums, like "lol" and "what he said" etc etc, Jamie has got away with it so far.

[G]

I have seen some people rate quite a lot of Jamie's posts with 'informative' etc, when others have rated them as "off topic" or whatever. Informative gives relatively more 'karma' as such.

[cqueen]

Ah ok, I would imagine it's probably because I dont post in the 'biker' forums that much then. What a complex system!

[Mr.Everready]

McGee your nose must be dripping in brown stuff.

I was actually thinking the same thing about Jamies karma the other day and why it was so high, it surely is a weird system.
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the undemocratically unelected mod of the Scottish section

[veeeffarr]

[Mr.Everready]

I realise that, so whats the point in the ratings if it makes no difference in the long run to his karma ?

I thought the whole point of it was so that the forum could "police" itself.
____________________
the undemocratically unelected mod of the Scottish section

[ncrn]

[G]

[john2]

So your saying, if we rate his posts as abusive, spam or flame it WILL have an effect on his karma

[G]

[Mr.Everready]

There are plenty of the higher ratings given when not appropriate also ( as seen in this thread ) Why are they never revoked ?
____________________
the undemocratically unelected mod of the Scottish section

[G]

Because they are generally more of a personal opinion - it's easy to revoke something listed as 'abusive' or 'spam' because it doesn't meet the criteria. However it's much harder to say that someone hasn't actually got 'a new perspective' from the poster replying with 'lol' say - it is quite possible. >>Use this rating if the post has given you a new perspective on a subject.<<.
The positive ratings are more subjective, while the negative ones are generally more objective.

[JonB]

What is really funny is that Jamie has had 73 ratings in the past 48 hours.
____________________
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it?s worth.