How do you get possitive and negative karma? And what is it in this forum?
A definition of Karma, as always, can be found
here. Yet another article I can read sometime, after this stupid semester is over.
As far as its bearing on the forums, it's somewhat a way of rewarding / reprimanding users for their behaviour, or something like that. If a user is an asshat, they get smited (negative Karma); if they're a saint, they get applauded (positive Karma).
However, for now, it doesn't really do anything besides give people an "applaud" / "smite" option under people's names. Neo is upset that people are smiting him; I'm concerned for the general wellbeing of the forum that people just get smited or applauded for no apparent reason. I'm hoping we can set up something to log the smites / applauds and require users to give a reason for applauding / smiting. However, until we figure that out, the Karma system has no real meaning - we aren't basing any decisions off of it.
As of yet noone has answered my question... Neo is pissed (as is the norm the past 5 days)
Well, for right now, the karma thing is BS - until we figure out what, if anything, we're going to do with it, nobody will be paying any attention to it.
Then why does it matter if I change it?
~Neo
Well, I'm sorry that you're pissed, but I can't really do anything about that.
As far as someone answering your question (presumed to be "Who smited me and why?"), I wouldn't hold my breath. I've only applauded 2 people that I know of, and smited no one, not even you
. Since there's currently no accountability, then people have no problem smiting or rewarding. I wouldn't worry about it at all, since nothing's being based on it at the current time.
But if you're worried about the image it presents and you want to change your karma, go ahead. It's just when I saw "+999" for your karma, I immediately thought "Oh shit, we're being hacked," especially after seeing the thread on the GoRC forums about it.
Just realize we'll eventually figure out what, if anything, we want to do with this. At that point, we'll reset everybody (since no one's Karma till that point has any bearing, why should we keep it?). Then, changing your Karma will be frowned upon. But till then, go right ahead.