Doesn't anyone else, besides me, despise the idea of a karma/reputation system? It really isn't necessary. There's plenty of people on here that type quality stuff who have 0 karma. Likewise, there's plenty of people with many karma points whom, in my opinion, are somewhere out there in space with their ideas and opinions. I really don't like playing high school popularity games and that's what karma/reputation systems appear like to me.

Karma should be optional. Many forums give you the ability to turn it on and off. So you liked what I said? Good for you. So you didn't like what I said? Also, good for you. Welcome to humanity and individualism. Everyone has their own opinions, thoughts, objections, and so forth. Giving someone like myself a +1 or -1 because of something that was said adds nothing to the conversation. If you like it, chime in and say so and contribute. If you don't like it, do the exact same thing. A +1 or -1 contributes nothing and just creates yet another useless e-popularity, merit badge, achievement, etc. system.

You could have karma +99 and I still might think you're an idiot and be more receptive to a person at karma 0. Likewise, the opposite could be true. Furthermore, some forums suffer from 'karma/reputation-padding' (multiple accounts by the same user padding the reputation of a particular account or multiple accounts). Karma/reputation is just another avenue ripe for exploitation. I care about the meaning and content of a person's message, not of their popularity, karma/reputation, achievements, merit badges, etc.

Quoted for truth. In every +/- reputation system I've seen, people are much more eager to complain about negative comments or things they don't agree with than when they do like or agree with what you're saying.

I agree with you ZJBDragon about the Reputation/Karma seen it many times myself.

My problem with Reputation/Thanks/Karma is that it's often abused, especially by new comers. More often than not they'll get into some arrangements to give each other Reputation, or in this case karma, so they get a high number to make them see important. The other is that sometimes people use karma (not here I have seen yet) for negative purposes. So they'll give you +karma but put in a insult in the comment area.

Best way to judge reputation is by reading the person's posts. Not looking at their Karma/Reputation score (Met a few high Reputation people who were absolute jerks, espeically when it came to a certain issue like tastes in games or worse politics).

Personally: I don't give a damn about my reputation

I will say though that if you DO decide to add Negative Karma I would not allow it in the off-topic or debating area, for it would just be easily abused by people giving others negatives for their difference in view/opnion.

How do you give someone karma points?

Thumbs up button.

Nice. Worthy of some positive karma, I think.

I've always found the idea of political threads in the context of these game forums as silly. As if there is anything positive that can come from such discussions.

Inevitably there will be a rash of offensive/abusive threads that annoy most normal folks and there will be a brief but unsuccessful campaign to have the Off Topic forum removed from the Recent Posts list, but things usually settle down once one or more of the more blatantly offensive threads are locked.

Personally, I still would prefer the removal of the Off Topic forum from the Recent Posts list. It seems that the potential for abuse has increased since the reorganization of the forums. My guess is that this is because the Off Topic forum is now shared among sites that otherwise have little in common.

As far as the point of the thread the idea of negative karma just seems like it has too much potential for abuse and is probably a bad idea. The current system seems reasonable, if something is sufficiently bad then report it, else simply try your best to ignore the merely annoying.

I still disagree with Mumble (and others) about "political threads," or at least I disagree with the idea that they can or should be forbidden outright. The game title includes the word "civilizations," and those are political systems by definition. Talking about the real world in its own right and/or using real things as part of game discussions just makes sense to me.

But the flaming is indeed silly, at best. I heartily concur with the suggestion that Off-Topic be removed from the Recent Posts list, and, like Mumblefratz, I feel more strongly about this since the forum reorg/merger/orgy/whatever.

I also agree that negative karma would be even sillier than the positive stuff. I gave a few points when the button appeared, but remained a bit weird-feeling about it and have stopped using it. ZJBDragon explained things to me pretty well. I'd give karma to reply 31 but I'm afraid it would start some weird irony loop.

I gave up on a outright banning long ago. Simply having some separation by not listing the Off Topic forum in the recent posts list is probably the best idea.

In a similar vein I would also prefer more separation between the different stardock sites. I personally have no desire to see any of the windowblinds/object desktop, sins, political machine, etc. threads.

It seems the kinds of folks that inhabit these different sites have different interests and perspectives that make interaction between them somewhat problematic. I really would prefer a GalCiv2 exclusive site and let everyone else have their exclusive sites as well. If someone does actually have interests in multiple sites then let them go to the different sites or to the catch all forums.stardock.com site.

Making forums.stardock.com the common site allowing access to all sites and then limiting forums.galciv2.com, forums.sinsofasolarempire.com, forums.politicalmachine.com, etc. to their respective dedicated threads makes a *lot* of sense.

I specifically come to forums.galciv2.com as opposed to forums.stardock.com. By doing so it seems to me to imply that my interest is limited to GalCiv2 as opposed to Stardock's entire offering. Why must I be forced to wade through a multitude of threads that have no interest to me.

I do realize that there are some topics (such as Impulse) that necessarily span multiple forums but even so I believe such things should be kept to a minimum. Frankly these days I probably have interest in far less than one in ten threads that I see on forums.galciv2.com.


Per the above comments note that karma is separate dependent on the site from which it was given. Take a look at Frogboy's post in each of the following three forums. In each case different karma is reported.

forums.stardock.com
forums.sinsofasolarempire.com
forums.galciv2.com

Also take a look at Kitkun who has 0 karma in forums.galciv2.com but 38 karma in forums.sinsofasolarempire.com and 37 in forums.stardock.com whereas I have 0 karma at forums.stardock.com, 5 karma at forums.sinsofasolarempire.com and 38 karma "here" at forums.galciv2.com.

The more I think about it the more sense it makes to have forums.stardock.com to be the central location for *all* forums and then allow the individual forums to be more restrictive to content dedicated to each individula site's purpose.

Meh.

I like the crossover posts for the most part.  It's gotten me more interested in the "other worlds" of the Stardock universe.  Good marketing for them too. 

Funny thing is I made reply #37 to this thread from forums.sinsofasolarempire.com and there is a noticeable latency between posting there are the update of the thread here.

My reply #37 was reported as posted at 11:18:45 but as of this posting at 11:25:32 it hadn't yet appeared on forums.galciv2.com.

Wonder what will happen when I post this from forums.galciv2.com? Will my replies "pass each other in the night" or will causality be preserved?

While I don't like to participate in them, I don't think it's a good idea to ban discussion on a topic. When it gets out of hand, it should be locked of course.

I rather like that recent posts show everything. I like to be able to see whats going on where from one place.

Sure. No problem.

As I suggested you always have the choice to view *everything* simply by going to forums.stardock.com.

Otherwise what is the purpose of having individual sites if everything funnels to the same thing. In any case why do you insist on forcing others that may not want to view everything to do so?

Ah but you really can't. It's pretty much a hodgepodge. For example you can view this Off Topic forum from forums.galciv2.com, forums.stardock.com and forums.sinsofasolarempire.com but *not* forums.politicalmachine.com.

There are certainly more forums that stardock supports than this but these are all I really checked out. There's no real rhyme or reason.

My suggestion makes perfect sense. If you want everything goto stardock, if you want galciv2 go there if you want sins go there. What could be more natural and understandable?

Point.

Isn't that how it already works, though? I do most of my posting from forums.sinsofasolarempire.com and other than the Impulse and the Off Topic boards that are globally shared, everything I see is dedicated to Sins.

Or do you mean that Off Topic is only visible from forums.stardock.com, and off the individual game forum pages, so that you only see that particular game's discussions without seeing Impulse/Off Topic at all?

No it isn't that simple, although the sins site does seem to be better controlled than others.

I wonder if it's at all possible for some Stardockian to post some kind of map of how all the various sites are inter-related. I doubt that they even can because it's really a total mess.

I tried to look into it to see if I could make any sense of it but that's definitely not an easy task.

For example if you go to totalgaming (tgnforums.stardock.com) then the Galciv2 forum is not listed or directly accessible from the forums list but individual posts from (for example) the GalCiv2 Metaverse subforum are listed and accessible in the recent posts list.

The link is posted as http://tgnforums.stardock.com/forum/345 yet looking at the forum path shows:

Home > > GalCiv II > Metaverse >

Note that blank forum between Home (i.e. http://tgnforums.stardock.com/) and GalCiv II (i.e. http://tgnforums.stardock.com/forum/162) and the GalCiv II forum does *not* appear as a subforum to any listed forum in tgnforums. Similarly if you click on the GalCiv II link in the above you appear to be taken to the GalCiv II forum that's the same as on the GlaCiv2 site except that there are no listed subforums (i.e. like the Metaverse subforum).

Like I said the set of sites that SD maintains is a hodge podge collection of things that have evolved over time with no real attempt at a logical organization. I don't envy the web teams task of trying to make sense of this. Like I said I doubt anyone could reasonably explain the interaction between all of these disparate sites. It defies all logic.