I've been looking at this issue for about a week now.
The sites that I've seen seem to use the basic slashdot code for karma, it seems. Using a two-level rating system M1 and M2 whatever they term it.
In trying to get a handle on all this, I'm really confused
Is there any place that describes the theory of karmic ratings, or where people have discussed the problems and solutions for something like this?
In using systems, what would be the pros/cons of a system? No system can ever be everything. People want things to work differently, but there can be some "core" logic that can be developed that can be perhaps built upon.
Some issues:
1) new members: How do they get karma? How are they limited? Do you start a site off with "selected" individuals, or do you wait til people achieve some karmic level to moderate?
2) Moderation? What is the moderation supposed to do?
3) Who moderates? Anyone? Just those assigned as moderators for that day or week?
4) Are karmic values shown, or "obscured" to prevent manipulation?
5) What values are rated? Threads (who gets credit? the originator or everyone?)? Posts? Users?
6) How does a users karma change? By +/- on posts? By direct +/- on the user by members who find them "helpful"?
7) How do you tally "points" (and keep track of them), how do you assign karma? Is karma a level you attain, or is it calculated daily? There are _serious_ pros/cons to each side of that one.
8) Do you track TWO ratings -- karma and relevance? ie: Karma -- is the post liked and enjoyable relavance -- is the post on topic/offtopic/flamebait/etc
9) Do you use a +/- system where 9992 people found this post useful, 821 people found this post not useful, 99 found it off-topic. If so, how many things do you track?? And, display? And, do you only allow REGISTERED users to find posts helpful or not? After all, lurkers may be the ones who benefit most from a post -- and the post applies to lurkers mainly (think a support forum). If you only allow registered users, do you also track how many people had no opinion, and how many people did not read the post yet ?? (you can easily calculate those values from the user database)
10) oh... just about anything else <G>
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