Karma idea.

[Grok]

*  Allow only selected members to give karma points.

*  Allow selecting karma givers by forum.  Such that vL members could mod karma in one forum, while selected botdev community members could mod karma in BotDev, and CupHead would be the only one who could mod karma in his.

*  When karma reaches a configurable threshold or formula, trigger a rule.  This could be a warning, or a temporary or permanent ban.

The motivation for the idea comes from the deterioration of the botdev post quality, which we all know is attributable to CSB, but that can still be addressed as a discrete problem.

Were it possible for the top 20, say, respected bot developers to be able to mod karma, they could realistically, over time, keep the level of intelligence up.  Maybe.

Comments?

[Arta]

A brilliant idea, however, I'd implement it independently of the current karma system. It could even be something all members could use to 'vote' on nonmembers.

[j0k3r]

It sounds great, no more negative karma from little disputes... Top (number) respected and RESPONSIBLE people would be allowed to modify...

The bannings should (as always) be left up to the admins/mods I believe.

Would this restart the Karma or be an independant system as arta suggested?

[Raven]

Yeah, I agree, take away that devious Invert's ability to constantly zap my karma.

[Invert]

Um... I'm not responsible for the majority of your negative Karma. You have given me like -10 yourself.

[Hazard]

I have to agree with the idea. It really would be nice to know what members and select people think of us rather than just random people who smite you because you smited them.

!~!HaZaRD!~!

[iago]

You could make it like AIM, people can "warn" them, and if they get too many warnings in too short of a time they get temporarely banned.

[Raven]

Not true Invert, I only gave you like -4 as retal for you giving me -10.

[Adron]

Suggestions:

Split karma into global karma and karma for forum X. This way you can have good karma in one forum, bad karma in another, and average karma overall.

Store information on which post you received your good/bad karma from. This provides for:

* A post that gave its writer good karma could get an extra glow, or stars, or something like that - something to make other people notice that post in particular when searching that forum for answers. The opposite for bad posts.

* A poster could look at what posts he got good or bad karma from and use that to improve his postings.

Alternatives to limiting karma giving to very few select members (which I don't think you should, if you do limit to very few people, you could as well make them moderators and be done with it):

# Ensure that each user can only give +1/0/-1 for each post. Make it visible who gave karma, and make it possible to later write a small log analyzer program that bans people who always give karma in the other direction from everyone else.

# Allow only moderators and users with a positive karma (by X amount) to modify karma for others.

[Naem]

Ah, but who would have the motivation to code such a system?  

[Adron]

If it wasn't in php...

[UserLoser]

What about two bot dev forums?  One you have to have special access to get there, while the other is for everyone else to use.  I think it was DM who liked this idea.

[Hazard]

I don't think thats such a good idea UserLoser. I think it would be best if "newbs" were just invited to *Read* just like in the advanced programming secition.

!~!HaZaRD!~!

[Adron]

Note that there's no automatic enforcement of the "newbies are welcome to read, not post" rule of advanced programming. Me and the other moderators will manually delete any posts we deem too basic for the forum.

You can just make a rule against posting questions answered in the faq (oooh, maybe you should make a faq first? ) and then trashcan all posts that break the rule.

[Arta]

If it wasn't in php...

PHP is C based. You could learn it in 5 minutes.