[maemo-community] Sprint task: Refine the karma system

[From: Sanjeev (EIPI)]

Karma by itself does not mean much.  We have seen, however, that in
the maemo.org world, it *can* translate into tangible/monetary
benefits (sponsorship to Summit, DDP, etc).  Therefore, I think when
the time comes to sponsor community members to events, handing out
invites to Device Programs, etc; that there should be some thought
given outside of karma.  Ideally, the criteria outside of karma should
be published in advance - similar to what Jaffa did for the 2009
Summit [1].  We have seen that the DDP raised a large stink over at
t.m.o when the threshold of 200 karma was the 'line in the sand'.
Albeit, there were efforts after the fact to reward people that
slipped through the cracks.

The proposed system does seem rather developer-focussed.
Understandably, they should receive a significant amount of karma for
their apps, downloads, stars, etc.  I think if you are going to that
level with developers, then I would like to ask how to reward
non-developers who expend considerable effort in what you call
'talker' type activities such as tutorials and interviews?  There is
no way that I know of, for instance, to measure how many times a
well-written FAQ on the wiki was read.   Surely, that is an important
contribution that will go unrewarded in any karma system due to the
lack of any tracking.

I am not trying to be a pain - I am just trying to highlight
'community' type activities that fall under 'talking' that are really
more than that.

Question: Is this a topic that will go to referendum, or will it be
decided amongst the council?

Regards,

Sanjeev

[1] http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=307196&postcount=34

On 1/12/10, Sebastian 'CrashandDie' Lauwers <crashanddie at gmail.com> wrote:
> Valerio,
>
> Thanks for putting this discussion up.
>
> Now, I'm not a big supporter of karma at all. I believe it is a flawed
> system which encourages cheating and ego-trips, and neither of those
> have citizenship in this community.
>
> There is no moderation on the discussion lists, which means anyone who
> even pollutes the lists receives karma. Same thing for tmo, a lot of
> redundant discussions mean a lot of redundant karma. At this point,
> trolling is the best, effortless way of amassing heaps of karma. Sure,
> off-topic doesn't count anymore, but I have yet to see (non-spam)
> threads be deleted instead of locked in most other fora.
>
> Rewarding app developers is a great and noble idea, however I honestly
> doubt karma is the most appriopriate medium for it. More than
> anything, I have to side with Dave and notice that this implementation
> is highly developer-focal.
>
> If I were crazy enough, I would post the suggestion that karma be
> removed as a whole. If someone is active on tmo, you can see this by
> his number of posts, and the thanks ratio. If someone offers well
> formulated and mature advice, it should ring with your own mind. If a
> dev writes a new app every week, I hope the website and app manager
> will allow to "Browse by developer", and maybe the dev's stats will
> indicate he has contributed positively on a number of occasions. The
> real important thing is that if the main argument *for* karma is that
> it allows newcomers to *know* who is *good*, and this is also
> extremely flawed.
>
> If there is a worry that false information may be spread by unsavy
> users, then this is a useless worry; a waste of time. People don't
> care about an unknown status on an unknown forum. They will care, and
> will listen to any person who echoes their thoughts and resonates
> their ideas. Whether that person is "true or false" doesn't matter,
> and neither does their karma rating.
>
> My main issue is that there is no such thing as karma in real life, so
> why have any in our community? There is no formal rating of every
> single individual on the planet on a website like rottentomatoes,
> where people can check if they should agree or listen to this
> politician or this sportsman; why would our community rating have
> something which is, by lack of better words and lack of proof
> impossible to create.
>
> I like politician X, but how does he match up against the NFL Top 10?
>
> Thanks for reading, and apologies about the rant.
>
>
> On 12/01/2010, Attila Csipa <maemo at csipa.in.rs> wrote:
>> On Tuesday 12 January 2010 20:46:14 Valerio Valerio wrote:
>>> All suggestions/improvements are welcome, but please keep in mind that
>>> the
>>> karma should be simple to calculate.
>>
>> Brainstorm seems to be missing (maybe the generic vote/comment score can
>> apply, but surely proposals/solutions themselves are worth something ?).
>>
>> The current scoring scheme does not take into account developers who don't
>> develop end-user software (like libraries). No idea how to honor that
>> except
>> for download/spike counting.
>>
>> Also, you don't mention bugs.maemo.org, with more karma for apps it's
>> somewhat
>> better (reporting 3-5 bugs, regardless of report quality was roughly equal
>> to
>> writing (!) an app). Anyhow, if possible, maybe it would make sense to
>> include
>> bug status (i.e. karma for developers fixing the bugs in question, or no
>> karma
>> for duplicate, invalid, etc bugs). Yes, this can be tricky with projects
>> handling their own bugs, but then again, it's the same now - you get karma
>> only for reporting bugs on projects in b.m.o.
>>
>> Overall, I feel maybe the new proposal is noticeably tilted towards
>> developers, non-dev community members will very likely have difficulty
>> 'keeping
>> up' with dev karma (which may or may not be what you want).
>>
>> Regards,
>> Attila
>>
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>
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