Quote:
Originally Posted by kindlekitten
I'm really sorry you feel that way as well. the last person that came in here with a smiley face and relatively no karma left here with over 7000 karma points.
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And I think that's a big part of the problem.
Did that person contribute more to MobileRead than a dozen other people? Doubtful. I quit paying much attention to karma a long time ago because I realized that most of the time, it symbolizes either pity (as in that case) or cynical manipulation (in the case of the karmic circle-jerks) and very rarely reflects any actual appreciation of posters for services rendered.
Mind you, I'm not saying I would reject the kind opinions of people who give me karma because of my opinions or their expression. As the system stands now, that's how it works. But when I see sets of people who have been here only a short time, who post mostly or entirely in opinion-type discussions (especially in P&R), and who hold similar views, getting hundreds of thousands of points of karma together, I have to think it's less of a thank-you and more of a "you give me yours and I'll give you mine" repeated ad nauseum. That's not how it's supposed to work.
I don't know if there is a solution. I don't know if there can be a solution. I doubt if it's possible to implement one that doesn't involve enormous amounts of programming. But the system we have, as much fun as it is to watch my karma gain skyrocket when I post a detailed opinion on something, is primarily rewarding the abusers and manipulators, not the people who really
should be being highlighted for the good they bring to MobileRead.
Perhaps an interim solution would involve tighter limits on when someone can give karma to someone else (no more than once a week, perhaps?) or on the amount that could be given to any one person per unit time, or something like that. Maybe there should be two types of karma, "opinion" karma and "technical" karma (preferably with much better names), with the former the only option in certain forums, and the mods more willing to switch karma between the two as needed. Most likely there's some much better solution I haven't thought of. But I really do think it's gotten out of hand in all the wrong directions, to the point of being useless for most of the things it's meant for and primarily useful for small groups of friends (or sock puppets?) to boost their apparent standing at the expense of those who really are benefiting the forums.