Enhanced KARMA system

[Zeus]

Enhanced KARMA system

Dear SqueezeQueens members,


Apologies for the short time I had to put forum offline tonight. We work hard behind the scenes to try and improve our forum, and I needed all public access to be off the server to perform some core forum modifications to install our new enhanced karma system.




First, what is karma? If you're new to forums, karma (giving karma) is basically a way of showing appreciation for other fellow member contributions. It is a way of saying thanks for their time and effort to share stuff with the community.


You give thanks/karma for posts you like. If someone shares a nice set of pictures, a good movie clip you'll enjoy, makes some great points in discussion topics, you click the 'Give Thanks/Karma' link below their username (or the thumb-up icon on the post's right hand side) to say you approve such post and thank the poster for a great contribution.


Not only is thanking for something you're given a basic courtesy, doing so makes the poster feel all warm and cozy inside and motivates him/her to post more 




Until now we ran a pretty basic karma system, that only tracked the total number of member karma, plus the total per post. With the new system installed today, we have a way of showing who gives karma to whom, where, and when.

It also works as a 'Likes' system you might know from other boards.... on the posts' right hand side, it says how many thanks/karma the post received. If you click on it, it will show you who and when thanked for that post.

All your karmas given / received can be seen in your Profile. You can see others' karma logs too. We may even use how much karma a user's given and received as one of the guidance parameters for HQ approvals (warning though: abusing it will only get you kicked out).



Another new thing is when you now click to 'Give Thanks/Karma', you fill in a little thank-you note that the karma receivers will see in their karma logs. This could be turned off... ie., you'd only click to give the point and no typing.. but I'm thinking, this can give a chance to say those "Thanks for a great contribution!" one-liners in a better place than cluttering the forum with such posts (although, you can still thank both ways of course!). Feel free to let us know your thought or preference. Btw - if you don't want to type in anything, just fill in a blank by hitting the space button.



One last note: Next to the familiar thumb-up icon on the posts' right hand side that used to (and still does) indicate a number of Thanks/Karma the post received, it now shows 2 numbers.

The first one shows how many thanks the post received before the new karma system installation today, the second number are the new thanks of the new system from now on. So add both together to know the total number of thanks for that post.
I'll probably remove the first number eventually to not confuse anyone, however didn't want to do it all at once so as to not lose continuality in the transition period.

The important part is no previous karmas were lost. So... continue using the new enhanced system, and I sincerely hope you like it!

If you find any bugs, let us know.

-Zeus & SqueezeQueens team 

[karo70bogy]

Thank you boss for this great thing, 

[RBAP]

Thanks for all your hard work in improving the forum.
Although I understand that giving people the chance to customize their thanks to posters under the new karma system is a good way to de-clutter the threads, it may become tiresome to have to "justify" your thanks every time you give them. Still, it's a minor point.
Karma for your leadership in this process.

[Ronald_Frump]

re. "Amount of karma points":

• What is the purpose of the declining numerical scale?
• What happens when it reaches zero?

[Zeus]

It's the max amount of total karma a user can give per day. I set it at 100 a day but it can be set to any number or disabled for no limit.


Regarding the filling in the short thank-you note when giving karma, it will allow an empty space so just hit the spacebar to fill in a blank. Alternatively, we could start a poll on whether to just give out the actual karma points sans the note.

[Ronald_Frump]

It's the max amount of total karma a user can give per day. I set it at 100 a day but it can be set to any number or disabled for no limit.

As you know, I try to give karma to everyone who makes an effort in contributing something of value to the forum. I'll report back here, should the new system limit my ability to do this.

Regarding the filling in the short thank-you note when giving karma, it will allow an empty space so just hit the spacebar to fill in a blank. Alternatively, we could start a poll on whether to just give out the actual karma points sans the note.

What many karma-givers do on other forums which use this system, is give a generic term as a response, rather than constantly different comments: so up until now, I have been using:

<<<<< Stewie4Karma >>>>>

Kostag uses

Карма

IMHO, unless members are going to use the reason-box for a specific comment (instead of posting a thank-you reply) it is an unnecessary step. In fact I'd go one step further. This is a great utility that Zeus has implemented and I'm going to take full advantage of it (obviously, other members can choose to do as they feel appropriate).

From now on, I'm going to take the minimalistic approach 

Attention all posters: When you click on your "Thanks/Karma" box and you see MY NAME there - it means ALL of the below:

<<<<< Stewie4Karma >>>>> 

....... AND it keeps the topics nice and clean, uncluttered with thank-you replies and easy to navigate.

Simple is efficient! 

[Ronald_Frump]

Can I remove karma, if I find later on that I have been deceived? 

[Zeus]

I can remove karma from admin panel, PM me.



Added a poll regarding the thank-you notes!

[karo70bogy]

Thanks dear Admin for all your hard work here on this great forum i really appreciate it and the HQ boards against the leecher but i would prefer a system with hidden links , so the members need to say thanks or giving karma if they want to see the hidden links, this methode works on other forums where the material also will be downloaded from filehosts exactly like here.. (sorry for my bad english)

[paul0415]

People rarely give "karma" in the best of times. Having to justify why you are giving it strikes me as an excercise in futility.

[Ronald_Frump]

i would prefer a system with hidden links , so the members need to say thanks or giving karma if they want to see the hidden links

Hidden links revealed by giving karma?.....yes that would work.

Hidden links revealed by posting a comment/saying thanks? no - it would just clog up every topic with pages of useless posts: like a certain board with muscular women. It just got ridiculous.

[femfightwatcher]

... but I'm thinking, this can give a chance to say those "Thanks for a great contribution!" one-liners in a better place than cluttering the forum with such posts (although, you can still thank both ways of course!). Feel free to let us know your thought or preference. Btw - if you don't want to type in anything, just fill in a blank by hitting the space button.

Is there a consensus here that thank you posts in the threads are unhelpful? 

The first one shows how many thanks the post received before the new karma system installation today, the second number are the new thanks of the new system from now on. So add both together to know the total number of thanks for that post.

Was wondering about that.  Thanks for the clarification.

Re: needing to give karma to see links, I normally post thanks and give karma after downloading, so at the very least this means the link is alive, the password (if any) works and the video is as described.

[Zeus]

We don't want to force anyone to give thanks or karma in order to see post content, such gestures should come automatically if one was raised to appreciate others' contributions to (any) community.

Making content (optionally) viewable only to those who earned certain amount of karma would work, I checked out forum modification that could possibly be adapted, however, it adds more database queries for each post displayed and server load is something I need to keep in check while I'm paying hosting bills out of my own pocket; and, we started HQ sections that fulfill similar goal.. ie., its contents become viewable once you reach a certain level of what we consider an active valuable forum contributor.

[Zeus]

... but I'm thinking, this can give a chance to say those "Thanks for a great contribution!" one-liners in a better place than cluttering the forum with such posts (although, you can still thank both ways of course!). Feel free to let us know your thought or preference. Btw - if you don't want to type in anything, just fill in a blank by hitting the space button.

Is there a consensus here that thank you posts in the threads are unhelpful? 

Not really... on one hand, it does clutter topics with repeated 'empty' posts, on the other, so few actually do thank that it's not a real problem, and major plus is of course that the contributors get some positive feedback, which most rightfully expect.
Hence I was hoping the thank-you note during karma giving would only give us positives (no topic clutter AND posters get to hear some kind appreciative words), although currently the poll votes say otherwise   

[ChicagoAlan]

I agree with Zeus.  I always enjoy it when I know people like the videos I post.  Also, if a video I upload gets a great reaction or a specific comment,  it gives me an idea of the type of videos guys are looking for, or a particular girl people might like to see.  I might be more likely to purchase a video like that, knowing it's more 'shareable' than something that might appeal more to just me.