Tsar's Journal: A Modest Karma Proposal

A Parable of Karma

Joe Slashdotter signs in for an evening of /. reading, and catches a just-breaking story: the MicroWidget Corporation has just announced TeraWidget 1.0 (Open Source, of course, of course) and it's the greatest thing since punched cards. Joe happens to have some expertise in the HDW (High-Density Widget) field, so he posts a deeply insightful comment explaining his take on this development. He then settles in for a few hours of reading others' comments and responding thoughtfully and informatively to them. Everyone perceives Joe's insight, knowledge and incisive wit as a wonderful enhancement to the TeraWidget discussion, and continue to ply him for more. Before long, he's posted thirty comments, each with an initial score of 1, and an enthralled audience mods them up to an average of 4.5. His karma quickly caps at 50.

After the furor dies down, and folks begin to realize that TeraWidget 1.0 is really only GigaWidget 2.0 (or MegaWidget for Workgroups), later moderators won't perceive the same value in Joe's posts and mod them down as overrated. His thirty comments are reevaluated to an average of 2.5.

Now, look at what just happened. Joe has posted thirty comments today, which have now been modded up an average of 1.5 points each. His karma, though, now stands at -10, no matter what it was yesterday. His comments may now be initially scored -1, rendering him invisible to the vast majority of Slashdotters.

Is this scenario realistic? Perhaps not, but it happens all the time on a smaller scale, so it may happen periodically to this degree or something close to it. I just checked my stats: I've already made three comments today, and they were modded up to 3, 5 and 5 respectively. One of my comments was the site of a mod war which, after eight mods, brought it back down to 2. As a result, my karma now stands three points lower than it did this morning, even though my three comments for the day were modded up an average of 1 1/2 points.

Anybody else notice localized problems like this? I have a suggestion for a fix, though I'm sure there are better solutions:

Create a Glass Karma Cap. If a user is constantly pressed against it, with a large percentage of his comments being modded up, the pressure eventually causes the cap to yield. A secondary cap comes into play at 150, and the user can then post with a score of 1, 2 or 3 once he reaches 100 karma. If the user allows his karma to fall below 50, the cap reappears.

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this idea, or why it won't work, or why another idea (or the current setup as it stands) is infinitely better.

Thanks,
Tsar

not as important an issue as it seems

[orius_khan]

This issue is only encountered when you are at the "max cap", which means that it happens when it matters least. While your scenario seems to work technically, it's easily avoidable by simply not posting 30 messages on the same discussion. Really, I mean there are other slashdot readers out there who might want to post something too... :)

If you don't bet the whole basket on a single run at the 'slashdot craps table', you would have plenty of time to see your karma drop from the max and post some insightful comments about some other topic, which should get you back up there. The increased cap and additional "initial post value" possibility are interesting, but then you start getting into the issue of how much separation do you want to allow between a new or relatively unheralded poster, and those at the top. You might end up creating a Slashdot upper class of sorts, who always posts with a high number, so their opinions are always heard, and start to be taken as having more merit, which encourages other people to mod them up the rest of the way. By having a huge karma bank, they become nearly invincible to moderation and could always stay at the forefront of the conversation while everyone else is struggling to climb from "1". They could afford to gamble away some points on troll posts against people who disagree with them, because every reply they make will still be at "3".

I think that the current system of giving only a slight bonus is a good one. Someone's previously humorous comments about some article do not necessarily make their statements about a completely different topic that much more valuable than the rest of the people.

Whine whine whine bitch bitch bitch

[flikx]

As pointed out already, there are several logical flaws in your analysis. Any self-respecting crapflooder knows that 30+ comments to a single thread usually results in a bitchslap (-1 syndrome) regardless of moderator opinion.

The karma cap, to borrow a dumb phrase from drooling linux fanboys, is a good thing(TM). It prevents the useless game perpetuated by people like, and including, Signal 11. Ooo, let's judge our self worth by our karma count on slashdot. My psuedocelebrity status is growing! 18 inch dick here I come! If I could just hit 8583983 karma, it will grow another inch!! Karma is bullshit. Karma is a joke. I've heard all the dumb arguments as to which rating system is better.

Blah blah blah.. I read enough of this masturbatory mindfucking on the slash mailing lists.. Sheesh.

Relax dude

[20721]

it's just Karma. If you get to 50, just create another account!