Quim, your last statement makes me want to qualify one of my own: contributor recognition is what's important to me, not necessarily any particular system.

The browser team (mostly timeless, I think) had a short-lived bugzilla contributor recognition program at the end of 2007 involving t-shirts. I'd love to see a budget for some swag-bribery recognition programs for the various contribution areas. . . .

This is an issue that's almost impossible to discuss in isolation.

What it boils down to is: What is Karma used for?

My gut instinct is that your initial (perhaps provocative) position is correct - Karma is more hassle than it's worth, and starting from when it becomes used for anything important, there are endless debates about what activity is more important than others.

Application karma, on the other hand, is excessively useful for ranking applications - it is like the hit parade/box office charts for apps. It won't tell you that "Twelve Angry Men" is a great movie, but it will tell you that in recent weeks a bunch of people really liked Avatar.

Cheers,
Dave.

Sure, application karma and News karma are very useful!

Just put a Thanks! button on all the activities and sum it up in the end. The absolute stats and raw numbers can stay for those that care for those things.

Like many said you can't really quantify how much work a simple app is or a bug report or a wiki edit. In the end you really want to know did this activity made a lot of people happy or not? You can't do that with an algorithm so let the people decide to award it or not.

And the purpose of the karma is to award for the stuff that you did and that people liked. It doesn't really need to have a physical award, just the appreciation is enough for the right people to do good things. You said it yourself that bringing the device program corrupted the whole process.

If you like the idea, hit the Thanks! button

Ultimately, this whole debate is discussed in Normative ethics.
Let me structure it for you:

1. Virtue ethics - here the intent is more important than the actual outcome. If you agree with this theory, then you only need the raw numbers. It doesn't matter that one wiki edit describing a "how-to free up the root partition" was more helpful than 10 small for grammar edits. The first one gets 1 point, the second 10.

2. Deontology - this is pretty much what we have now. Some arcane algorithms deciding the karma of us mere mortals.

3. Consequentialism - that's what I propose. Make a global karma/thanks donation system spanning all the relevant activities so that every user can decide what's the most important, helpful and useful to him. Crowd source karma.


Those guys have hit the nail imho. Give every user each month 100 karma points to give away and put karma buttons everywhere.

I am going to have to go with GA in some respects on this.

Karma in this case is a token economy. A token economy only works if the tokens can be redeemed for something that is valued.
What is valued by one may not be valued by another.
The simple way to equalize this is to have a standard. A swag standard is a good idea. T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. should be offered in exchange for karma. Nothing more.

Because after all, participation in the community has it's own rewards and what they are is determined by each individual.

However, how would redemption affect totals? Once karma is redeemed is it removed so it can not be used again or should the amount be tagged as used but still carried in the total?

Manufacturers developer or promotional device programs should not be tied visibly to karma because that is when the silliness ensues.

The organization should never accept the role of determining who is eligible for a device. Period.

If promotional devices have a value to the manufacturer then dang it, they need to do their homework and determine who is eligible. Who will give them a return on their investment. If they want to use the karma system as a guide then that would be their decision and not the organizations. How they actually end up determining who the recipients are and when they will begin doling them out should not be public information either, unless it is their intent to influence the organization in some way.

If the manufacturer wishes to donate devices to this organization for distribution then this organization should introduce chance into the equation. Every member should have a chance regardless of ranking. This will provide the appearance that the organization is at least an arms length away from any individual outcome. It would also help support the value proposition of the organization; that of one member, one vote. Karma could be used for additional chances. However, every member has at least a chance.

Anything else would be seen as corrupting or corruptible, no matter how innocently it is determined by the organization.

That there^ is my two bits and nothing more.

You raise valid points YoDude but excluded the Pure Ego aspect. For some the number itself is worth bragging rights and that is enough. But maybe the expected praise and adoration of the humble masses is the redemption.

I thought that^ kind of covered it. However, we can post back and forth a few times in order to raise our karma.

If karma can be perceived to be redeemed for something as valuable as the device we are all here for in the first place, then sooner or later an ego, through self evaluation may determine that our posts are not as valuable as his or her edits, bug reports, etc...
Just as likely is the possibility that an ego may determine that the words we type in forum discussions like this somehow have a greater importance than they actually do .

Either way, if the net difference is a dang t-shirt, refrigerator magnet, or coffee mug there would be less tumult IMHO, and anyone can still brag over totals if that's what floats their boat.

I meant the karma number... I didn't get the impression you were including that in your statement.