The main purpose of a karma~ system on perlmonks and on slashdot is *moderation*.
As your user levels go up you are allowed to approve threads for posting (similar to the moderation plugin discussesed somewhere in this forum). Then you are allowed to make changes to the site's FAQ and editorials, then you can join the dev team and see and make changes to the code and amongst this you can 'frontpage' nodelets - i.e. vote on which threads are hot enough to be on the front page. These are all powers given at different levels and carry a degree of responsibility that hardly ever gets abused over at perlmonks as their XP system actually works. As for slashdot and karma.. well.. set your threshold to -1 and let the troll flood gates open...
- wil
As your user levels go up you are allowed to approve threads for posting (similar to the moderation plugin discussesed somewhere in this forum). Then you are allowed to make changes to the site's FAQ and editorials, then you can join the dev team and see and make changes to the code and amongst this you can 'frontpage' nodelets - i.e. vote on which threads are hot enough to be on the front page. These are all powers given at different levels and carry a degree of responsibility that hardly ever gets abused over at perlmonks as their XP system actually works. As for slashdot and karma.. well.. set your threshold to -1 and let the troll flood gates open...
- wil
