I agree that karma should decay - I would argue there should be different decay rates for different karma (with talk posts probably decaying fastest since the posts themselves become dead-and-gone fastest.)

However, I would also like to see a few points accrued for 'continued involvement', so every three months your first karma point picks up an extra four, making it value five. That way, people are encouraged not only to be involved but to stay involved, and long time contibutors are rewarded for their longer commitment.

Please some patience about karma, I was also surprised with this change, same for X-Fade. Since we are now discussion the karma values let's reach a consensus and then we'll change it, no need to do a small change today and other tomorrow and other in the next day .

I'll recap the discussion tomorrow or Saturday, let's hope to have a plan by Monday and apply it

Ehr... This might be a silly question, but how often does the karma update? Mine has been the same for more than a week now.

I do not think Karma should degrade over time. I see no reason for it. I would not want someone to be eligible and than ineligible. Whether that mean voting/running for council/Future DDP if applicable/ or any other future use of karma.

Value: keeps people from resting on their laurels.

I see more of a contribution value from someone who steadily maintains a moderate karma level with continual contributions over someone who loaded up at some point and then coasts for a couple of years.

It also helps to prevent allocating benefits to people who have left.

I would concede the last point..

But I am with PB on the others. A user who gets a lot of karma right now did something to warrant that karma.. say someone develops an app that people like and use.. and still use 6 months from now.. but that user never developed another app.

How is his contribution any less of a contribution in 6 months, when people are still using the app, than it was today?

I understand your point that someone that continues to help the community will make themselves more valuable... well - that will be reflected in their karma level. See, if I score say 1000 karma points today because I save the world (for whatever reason) and then disappear for 6 months... someone who has 1 karma point has 6 months of continuous karma buildup to surpass my 1000.

If we assume that you maintain a steady rate of growth in karma every day (to make things easy) - and karma decays - then both mine and your karma that is older than XYZ or meets ABC criteria for decay falls - and you will maintain yours as I drop mine. Sure, that makes sense and is fine.

OTOH: If Karma does not decay, and you maintain the same growth of karma every day, then even without me dropping down and you coming up - you will surpass me: arguably faster than with the decaying weight - and then you will still continue to increase your karma by your level every day... you will soon completely dwarf the user that only earned it once.

So I guess.. I just convinced myself it's really completely irrelevant in either system.. but I personally would prefer to keep the karma I earned than to watch it fall away. I mean, long long term, it obviously won't mean much my 1000 fantasy karma points when everyone else on the board is up to 1 million ... but it still feels a bit better than to be back at 0, and everyone else still fighting in the 1000's. Because I (or whoever) *did* contribute, and to be at 0 makes it appear as if they've never done anything of value...

What about someone like Thoughtfix.... he has left the community, as evidenced by his lack of attendance here and his recent blog post about selling tabletblog.com. Should his relatively high karma maintain itself a year from now, say? Texrat makes a point about maintaining yourself in the community and therefore reaping any rewards (like karma) for doing so. I use Thoughtfix as an example because it illustrates in concrete terms what Texrat is saying. Nothing personal... his blog was helpful when he was around.

6 months fine. But what about 12, 18? What about when Maemo 7 is out and his helpful little utility either doesn't compile or isn't used?

No-one's suggesting that everyone has to release a new mega-app every day to maintain their karma; and there are fundamentally hard technical issues with implementing it (every time I've raised it and pushed for it, it'd require a fairly hefty rejig of the way karma is calculated[1]).

However, say you lost 25% of your karma every 18 months. Obviously if you're still active in Talk, Bugzilla, Downloads, Packages, Brainstorm, the mailing lists you'll not go down that far - and may even go up. But it'll prevent a static list of people in the top 10.

The point of karma (crudely) is to measure a person's value to the community at this point in time. There's no point rewarding someone for work they did on the 770, if they've done nothing since OS2005. If nothing else, if they released it and were still supporting users of it in Talk, and it still got Downloads, they'd still be earning fresh karma.

That changes things... I thought Karma was a reflection of a users total contribution to the community... not just a current snapshot of the useful people right now.

But it appears this specific distinction is exactly what is being discussed.

Ok, recapping the discussion held here and at the Mailing lists, we got this:

Agreed changes (consensus):

* Blog Posts:

score = 1 + (number of favorites for post) - (number of buries for post)
if (score < 1) then score = 1;
if (score > 10) then score = 10;

* Discussion: 2 * sqrt(# posts)

* Comments: 2 * sqrt(# comments)

* Testing (new, need to be implemented): 0.5 for each thumb up/thumb down

* Wiki: 6*sqrt(# edits)

*Brainstorm - New proposal in 'Under consideration' (new, need to be implemented) - 5p
*Brainstorm - New solution in 'Under Consideration' (new, need to be implemented) - 2p

New proposals:

*Brainstorm - Idea got implemented (new, need to be implemented) - 10p
*Brainstorm - Solution got implemented (new, need to be implemented) - 10p

Partial consensus:

* Apps: each new app in Maemo5 extras earn 50p
if (votes > 300) then (300*stars)/6 + 50
if(stars>=3 && votes =<300) then (votes*stars)/6 + 50
if(stars <3) then 50

New formula ? Lower the numbers a bit ?

No Consensus:

*TMO 'gold posts'(new, need to be implemented): Posts with +40/+50 thanks receive additional karma.

* Gold blog posts'(new, need to be implemented): Posts with +40/+50 thumbs up receive additional karma.


I'm more in favor of the gold posts for blogs than for TMO, because TMO posts already generate karma from two sources, the post itself and the thanks.