Wow, cowboy! The slashdot karma system is the most controversial piece of moderation tool ever to be released on the 'net! It's a good system in principal, and it mostly works, but my god has there been in-depth discussions about it.

I recommend anyone who is seriously thinking about this i.e. Paul and Yogi to become a member of slashdot and really familiarise with the way the website works and how the karma system works. Then try reading past threads about the issues raised with such a system, and the issues about implanmenting such systems. Definitions are difficult.

Yes, allowing you to label your own levels is good, and the system does help to eliminate some trolls. On the other, it usually just encourages persistant trolls to sign up under a hundred different names and flood threads with pointless gibberish just to 'beat the system'.

A better system, IMO, is the XP system being used at http://www.perlmonks.org/ where users gain eXperience Points. This is calculated by some weird algorithm, basically how many times users log in each day, how many threads they read, how many posts they vote upon, how many votes their posts recieve, the sum of moderation done to their posts, the number of root nodes posted and more. This gives a broader perspective of how good an user is, or how valuable his or her's contribution is likely to be.

Update: The perlmonks.org website uses the Everything Web Development engine, with it's own built in karma like XP system. Do a search for Everything Web Development to see what I mean.

Implamenting a slashdot style sysem *is* a mamoth task. Working out the logic, and making the logic work for the 'average forum' is something very difficult. The karma system is very personalized for slashdot, even though it is bundled with the latest slashcode.

I dunno. I just have my doubts about this one.

- wil