Quote:
Originally Posted by knc1
Being a newbie here, I still remember reading those directions...
Its a 'give some to get some' system -
After the intial receipt of karma, you have to give some to others before yours can be increased.
So your usual primary karma-givers are probably being blocked from pushing you past a 1/2 million.
Unless someone hack's the karma system. Who here would do something like that?  |
That's not the case here. When I first joined mobileread, I sent messages to the mobileread site operators with suggestions on how to prevent karma inflation and stop karma-gamers, and they said they are considering implementing some of these suggestions. I am not part of the group of multi-million karma-gamers who spend much of their time trading karma (the ones with too many "thanks for the K" messages in their profile). But I have received large karma donations from karma-rich old-timers for some of my better posts.
In my case, every time I see a post that contributes something useful by a karma-deficient author, I set their karma to 2600. 2600 is the name of a famous "hacker quarterly" magazine, and the frequency used by the first product sold by Apple Computer's "two Steves" (a bluebox used to hack the telephone system to make free long distance calls). Their first blue box is now in a museum. Most of their units were reportedly sold to "the mob" for placing untraceable phone calls. There is a picture of it here:
http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/stevejobs/
To me, 2600 is a badge of accomplishment, to encourage more accomplishments, and 26x what beginners start with around here. 2600 is also near the limit of what I can bestow upon others. Because we can only contribute a fraction of our own karma, most people can only donate a few karma points. My karma has been growing steadily, but proportional to the total, even with the last 50,000 points I am still stuck at "around a half million".
To get my karma up to one million, I need at least 100,000 "karma 10" people to each give me their maximum contribution, or somebody with a LOT more than me to just bump me to 1,000,000 like I bump others to 2600. The system will not let me add karma to those I have already given it to, so I keep looking for new "2600-worthy" posts. If you see karmas suddenly jump to the 2600 range, you know who to "blame"...
If my donations are contributing to "karma inflation" which reduces overall karma value, sorry about that... 
I could add a PayPal Donate button, but that would just encourage me to buy more stuff to add to my huge collection of stuff still in the original boxes that I plan to play with "some day", and my house is paid for (no mortgage) and I have too many vehicles (and I rarely drive, sitting at my wall of LCD panels up to 20 hours per day). I have six quad-core computers and a 20Mbps internet connection, and I already have 9 kindles, after buying my first one not many months ago. I cannot think of anything I want that I do not already have too much of, except time... If you can tell me how to clone myself and link all my cloned minds together (so I have more time to create more stuff faster), I will be eternally in your debt.
So karma is the only thing we all have that I "need", thank you very much.
Actually, you CAN donate some of your time to me by helping me do things on my (unpublished) TO DO list. I have been looking for an apprentice for decades, but the three young apprentices that I had over past decades were ripped away from me when they got girlfriends. I want a new apprentice that I can trust with my lifetime of hard-earned knowledge and experience.
P.S. There is another thing I have been waiting for my entire life, and I am still waiting for it. I want a bio-powered computer implant with direct neural interface (and now I want it to have Internet access too). If you know where I can get one that I can afford to buy, please let me know.