As much as I have disagreed with devilesk in the past concerning concerning forum moderation, I'll have to agree 100% with him. At first I didn't see any problem with it, but people started talking more and more about it, paid more attention and in the end it started being more of a nuisance. You never saw me gloating about how in 3 weeks I went from a 4 to 45, no reason why people should whine about their -1 or gloat about their 60+.
This reminds me a lot of the mineral system we had in SEN v3 and SEN v4 back in 04-05 where you'd get 8 minerals per post. Spam everywhere and people posting two word posts just for the minerals. Then we gave minerals based on post length, it worked for a while but then they just made long mindless posts. We also had icons you got based on post number, you started out as a drone and worked your way up ending in wraith at 2500 posts. People also posted two word posts just to get a new icon. Regulars and Elites also had special privileges based on post number and again people posted a lot just to get these privileges.
Something that I do see working a lot is the activity system. You just have to be active once a day and slowly work your way up, there's no way around it like all the other systems.
Karma really didn't do anything, but people like to see a number that puts them "above" other members and will work towards improving said number, much like how the old ladder system used to work. Karma had a flaw and it was that you could go negative and people could abuse it. It worked on giving and taking, something which could easily be abused.
Something that could work? Implement the current karma system, but users can only give minerals so that you eliminate the "hate abuse". Now how to fix the "I'm going to give all my friends karma", easy, we implement a cool down system that penalizes this. What I have in mind is similar to the old warn system we used to have back then which we used to moderate with. Here's a simple design:
- All users have a scale from 0% to 100%.
- Each time you give karma to someone, the scale goes up by 5%.
- You can only give karma once every 15 minutes.
- Once it reaches 50%, you will be deducted the amount you gave to another person.
- Once it reaches 100%, you will be deducted double the amount you gave another person.
- After 25%, the cooldown will be 2x as long, 50% 4x as long, 75% 8x as long and 100% 16x as long.
- Every hour the scale will go down 2% until it reaches 0.
What this does is that the more you give to someone, the less frequent you will be able to give karma and if you keep going at it you will be penalized yourself. An abuser will just see his own karma plummet down and the cool down go way high.
But there's no negative karma now for bad people. Doesn't need to be. People with good productivity will have higher karma than those who don't.
Personally I don't like the karma system because it promotes competitiveness like if it were a ladder, I'd just switch karma for minerals when there is something to use minerals with. For now, just remove karma.
None.