| attila77 |
2010-02-22 15:54 |
Re: Sprint task: Refine the karma system (community input requested)
Remembering some old game-designer-days... How about doing this top-down ? I mean, we can set up a scoring scheme and set on to discover who is the big winner in the new scenario, but maybe it would be easier to go the other way round. Say there is a karma pool for an area (wiki, blogs, etc), and then split that karma across participants. Their internal relations will not change (more karma is still more karma), and karma inflation will be more easy to control. This would also have the side effect of moving karma whores to areas that have less people working on them (=better karma density). It's also more indicative then a general number and arguably reflects 'activity' better. Obviously to maintain real value and prevent deflation, you need to accomodate the total karma in accordance with the GCP (gross community product), for example scaling the karma pool with the number of (active) members on talk, number of applications in extras, etc. I also like achievements-style notices (Ubuntu does this, too) like 'Extras general (10+ apps in extras)', 'Bugsquad lt. (25+ bugs reported/triaged)', 'Wiki sage (100+ wiki edits)', 'Forum master (1000+ thanks)' both for (not condescending) bragging rights and getting to know what people actually DO in a fun manner without digging through karma tables. Okay, so, that would be the completely out there off-topic gaming approach many will dismiss off-hand :) , but now, seriously, a step back to gain a little top-down insight could be useful in this case to clarify (again) what goals we want to reach with the (approximative metric) of karma.
PS. Also, it's hard to define the usefulness of karma. Yes, sure, we see the destructive effects as they tend to be more noticeable (like when the N900 DDP program turned the karma game into a deadly serious device contest). On the other hand, the small little plusses that karma motivation gives, while present, will hardly manifest directly, making a final conclusion difficult.
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