Negative Karma...negative impact?

[Jade Elizabeth]

So on my forum we have +positive/-negative karma enabled and it is HIGHLY visible (in posts, a log, people get a notification, reason for giving karma is required). Karma that is rude, nasty, or has no valid reason is deleted - so no fights can be started over this.

ONLY 1.3% of all karma given is negative (totals to 7 negative) on my forum but I noticed a trend.... 10 people gave or received negative karma. Of those 10 people only 4 have remained. Those who left had either no positive karma or a tonne of it so I don't think that can be factored in....but it begs the question...

Does participating (giving/receiving) in negative karma have a negative impact on forums? Have you seen the impact of karma, positive or negative?

[Arantor]

I've never liked karma. Because it's based on a person rather than their posts, it has a very nasty habit of forming cliques where people upvote their friends only.

[Jade Elizabeth]

Yes I worry about that. I have installed a way around it though.... I have offered money to who ever uses the system the most - so no one is (right now) caring who they like/dislike they are doing it based on whether they see an opportunity (also I have time based limits in place).

[Arantor]

Surely moving to promoting the content rather than the people who made the content is the way to go? (i.e. a likes system)

[Jade Elizabeth]

I am hoping to integrate a bit of a likes system with it, so that the karma for each post is recognised in the post.

[Irisado]

I share Arantor's dislike of karma.  It promotes cliques on the forum where members who like each other just award karma points based on personality, not on the content of the post, and award negative marks to those who they don't like, or whose arguments they disagree with, even though the counter arguments could be perfectly valid.

The other problem with karma is that the recipient doesn't know why they received positive or negative karma.  This was something which really irritated me on a forum which used to use the system.  A number of members joined me in asking the administrator of the forum which had the system to get rid of it on these grounds.

Also, just having a button to click can discourage members from posting, and that's another reason why I dislike this feature.

[Jade Elizabeth]

Well on my forum people have to give a reason. If their reason is ******e then I delete the karma and the reason...so I guess I prevent cliques in a way. How can it discourage members from posting?

[Irisado]

If you have the option to click a button, instead of typing a reply explaining why you agree/disagree with the other person's view, then it's in the nature of many to just click the button.  As a result, posting can decrease.

[Jade Elizabeth]

I've actually noticed an increase in posting since karma has been used - people are encouraged to post more when they get positive karma (with a reason) because they feel appreciated. That's why I forced reasons and notifications - to keep the system honest, enable it to be monitored, and so members would know why they had the karma they did.

Attached a couple of screen shots to show you some of my karma log .

[Justyne]

In my community we replaced karma with a manual system where people can nominate good posts every month and we make people vote which post was the best then give a little award that displays in the profile.

It's still a bit vulnerable to cliques, but it does good in that feedback is only ever positive. People are proud to be nominated and then proud again if they score a place.

We really disliked Karma because it was anonymous. Kinda brought out the worst in users both for positive and negative karma.  At first, I modded our forum to log karma so it was public who had done what and that seemed to fix behaviour somewhat. Still, we found the drama over the negative votes not worth keeping it as a feature and hence the poll solution happened.

So I agree... Karma is usually a source of social issues. I would imagine in a writing community it would be a big deal as people are very self-conscious of what they write so feedback is personal right away. My community is an RPG - so similar situation (and really why I am detailing as our solution might be helpful to you).

[Jade Elizabeth]

Yeah I think if you had the karma description mod it might have really helped you out. Nominating posts is a bit much work wise, we'll be holding awards yearly based on karma so hoping that works out well .

[Justyne]

You'd be surprised how few nominations there are when people need to go to a thread an post "I nominate such and such" but that is kinda a good thing. The posts that end up nominated are usually great quality.

I understand it being a lot of admin effort though.

[Jade Elizabeth]

Yeah I got way too much ****** I have to do alone without adding that to it. My staff have pretty much abandoned me.