Guide to karma

[Korn]

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.
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3516 Miles, 11 Countries

[Korn]

A little bit more about the blobs

When you first join you start with a neutral blob:

This blob will slowly "fill up" with colour as you gain karma:

Once you have completely filled a blob, another empty one will be added to the end:

Each blob takes twice as long to fill up as your previous blob, and when you have completely filled five ( ) your five green blobs will be collapsed into one full gold blob () and the process begins again - only this time your new empty blobs will fill with gold and not green colour.
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3516 Miles, 11 Countries

[Korn]

Sure fire ways to earn good karma

• Talk about bikes!
• Be friendly to other users and avoid getting into squabbles.
• Use post rating buttons fairly.
• Share knowledge and interesting stories.
• Write coherent, well presented messages.
• Try to be a part of the community.
• Did I mention talking about bikes?

Guaranteed ways to gain bad karma

• Be abusive, smart arsed and rude.
• Mis-use post ratings maliciously.
• Spend a lot of time in arguments and flame wars.
• Pick fights, hold grudges and make threats.
• Post trivial off topic drivel.
• Use mobile phone text-message language.
• Drag up long forgotten threads to add pointless comments.

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3516 Miles, 11 Countries