[maemo-community] Explaining karma

[From: Jonas Hurrelmann]

Hello,

On Thursday 14 August 2008 11:57:53 Dave Neary wrote:

> I asked Henri for some more details about karma, given the reactions
> concerning using it as a criteria for being an eligible voter.
>
> [Snip]

Thanks for this information.

> Some people have said in https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2481
> that their contributions haven't been counted fully, and we should of
> course ensure that the karma plug-in is working if we're going to use it
> for anything more serious than giving unofficial kudos to people.

> There are some other issues with karma - this is something of a list:
> https://bugs.maemo.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+de
>sc&bug_status=__open__&product=&content=karma

So in short, karma is currently broken and hence should not be used to entitle 
one to vote or getting elected.

> But at the end, the criteria we need to put in place for the election
> are simple - it takes no effort to create a maemo account, and we should
> make sure that the community council are representing people who have
> put some effort into being part of the Maemo community. Currently, karma
> is the best measure we have of activity in the Maemo community
> (although, as jott pointed out, this is representative only of a subset
> of possible activities). I'm open to other suggestions.

For now there still seem to be two points:

1) Getting a vote in the election process, which in my opinion is out of 
question to be limited by some (faulty) karma value and is dangerous for the 
perceived legitimacy of the council.

2) Getting a chance to be in the council. I think most people can live with 
some karma value as a basic burden (me too). Anyway, what I said in my 
previous argument still seems valid to me: If the candidate has done nothing 
relevant (measured in "human perception" not in "karma"), the "democratic 
process" should stop him from becoming a council member. So I do not see your 
eager "need" for this measures in the first place.

Would it make any real difference if we say one needs 200 karma points to vote 
and 600 karma points to get elected? I don't think so.

Best wishes
Jonas