I was glad to see Dave validate something I said earlier, ie, that the purpose can't be divorced from the calibration. Some had argued that was wrong and I don't think this conversation goes anywhere if too many participants don't get why it really is important.

Regardless of how we may each choose to look at it, karma is a currency and there will always be those wanting to spend it somehow.

Not sure if this next anecdote will be helpful but this discussion put me in mind of a dilemma we had when I worked for TI. We were doing a lot of drawing rework and managers wanted to quantify the effort in order to gauge who did the most work. Starting off on a competitive basis caused the quantification brainstorming to get ugly fast-- we were going to be pitted against each other so every person wanted his/her pet metric to be the ultimate measurement. I preferred to work on big projects for instance and a colleague preferred quick and dirty stuff.

The discussion quickly polarized into 2 camps along those lines. One camp wanted every single change item as the core metric; the other wanted only pages of the change order. The simplicity of the latter appealed to our simple-minded manager but the ugliness of it turned off the project-minded in the group. There were often times a change order would have one page and one line: "completely redraw this multipage manual document in CAD".

The group leader (not manager) and I saw this was going nowhere so we brainstormed on our own. We realized the solution was absurdly simple: every drawing was divided into a number of marked zones, and regardless of the document size the zone sizes were the same. We realized that "zones affected" was a very reasonable middle ground, easy to measure and fair to all including those doing the hardest work. This was important since the metrics would drive performance reviews (the karmic "reward").

But our simple-minded manager and those who cherry-picked the easy work overruled the idea and we went with the per-page metric against some protests. A rule was put in place to pull work from the top of the stack with the hope that it would even out over time (I later proved statistically that this could not occur within the expected time frame).

Fast-forward to several weeks later. Certain individuals started coming in early in order to raid the work queue. They only drew out drawings with very simple changes and cranked through them. Others of us were assigned to specific projects which meant extensive work (ironically, the better employees were always picked for projects). Based on our metrics, we did "less" work though.

In no time the metrics were heavily skewed toward the cherry-pickers. Things started getting ugly, a lot of sabotage and backstabbing. Our useless manager thought reminding us of policy and posting a pointless note at the queue would solve the problem. Nope.

Review time was a disaster. Even our clueless manager realized his solution didn't work, because he knew some had worked on complex projects. He also noted that the peer-review portion exhibited a high degree of petty backstabbing toward the cherry-pickers.

Our division was sold off before this was ever resolved so there was no real ending.

Again I don't know if that story helps this discussion, but at the very least it should point out the pitfalls of a bad karmic system... hence the value of diverse, objective discussion. The only bad ideas are the ones that wantonly screw people over.

so, what's the verdict?

Guilty.

Sheesh. Typical Texan.

No doubt... I'm usually the loudest voice in that choir. In this thread however, I'm being pragmatic and playing a bit of the devil's advocate.

If karma is not used to shape positive behaviors; then what is its purpose?

If its purpose is to promote positive outcomes; then what is its value?

I still believe we are dealing with two very different cultures.
The forum side of the house will continue to grow while the active developer side may actually get smaller in number. I'm sure it certainly has already when expressed as a percentage of the total.

With Meego.com, maemo.org gets a do over. IMHO, a new house should be built.
I wouldn't carry anything over.

At least "we're gonna have a fair trial... followed by a first class hangin'".

(I love Silverado)

Only if you think that maemo.org as a community has no value, and that nothing has been learned by trial and error in the several years running it

Do you mean single sign on?

The maemo.org community has plenty of value it can add to MeeGo... just as the internet Tablet Talk community had with maemo.org.

BTW: If you just drop an "E" from the name, there is already a site set up where you can earn "points" >> HERE <<



***

No where did I say the community that I belong to has no value.

This a very serious consideration and as such requires some introspection and honest self evaluation regarding "what was learned".

Attitudes about what aspect of our community has more "value" than another have to be dropped is what I am saying... If that hasn't been "learned" yet then it will be carried over into a new organization and IMHO, so will any retrograde.

If we can't let go of karma or any other rank determination and not start off fresh like everyone else in the new organization, then we haven't learned a dang thing.

I learned that the people who contribute here will pro'ly also contribute there. If you revisit this a year after a new system is in place, (one that starts from scratch) you will see pretty much the same faces at the top of the leader boards....
You will also see some new faces though, and that should be the goal.

Actually, this should take us again a bit further with single sign-on. Now if only we had TMO accepting OpenID...