Ahh, thanks, your example got me to understand what you mean. It may be that since Sins/Demigod (my other page that I post from) are basically the two most recent additions, they are actually organized in the logical way so that stuff from unrelated forums doesn't appear in their recent posts section. But I guess the older forums didn't survive the re-organization too well

Negative karma is useless imho. Just look at the average forum, most members have -10 at max

The other point about the mixing is one of sheer quantity.

Looking at the Category list on the GalCiv2 site the major forums are the following.

GalCiv Dev Journals
GalCiv II
GalCiv II News
Impulse
Off-topic

It is true that the only non-Galciv2 forums are Impulse and Off-topic and the OTF subforums; General, PC Gaming and Personal Computing. However what percentage of all posts on a particular forum (i.e. Galciv2, Sins, etc.) is dependent on the traffic on that forum. For sins it's likely that this OTF traffic represents a small percentage of total posts and so is easier to ignore. But since GalCiv2 is a declining forum these threads represent a much higher portion of traffic and you begin to have to weed through all the chaff to get to the wheat of GalCiv2 specific posts.

For example the first page of the recent posts list on the GalCiv2 site is a total of 50 threads of which 28 (56%) of them are either Impulse or Off-Topic. To me this is way too much interference in what it is I come to the GalCiv2 site to view. In contrast at the sins site only 18 of the 50 most recent are Impluse/OFT threads. Personally I'd consider 18 of 50 as still too high but clearly that's better than 28 of 50.

Basicly, a community of gamers gather on this site to discuss gameplay & (sometimes, just like life itself) other issues.
My objection to a reasonable 'karma' system on a dedicated forum created by SD for its GC2 games is, indirectly, a continual loop into people's mindsets; effectively representing a way to observe and detect whatever situations anyone would care to shime in. Freedom of expression aside... i come here cuz i love this game i bought, i share my vision by modding for it. I can always have an opinion on "other" social items (so to speak) and i'm also free to write it up for all to read like everyone else.

Should i get a big juicy precious karma point for being such a geek in world events & knowledgeable about a number of different issues **OUTSIDE** the realm of gaming, though?

Nope, since if you look carefully at the top banner of this web page -- the title graphic logo is 'Galactic Civilizations II'.

Olympics in Beijing, anyone? See? What if the 100 meters dash world record is standing at 9.72 seconds flat right now!
Does that make my colony ships speed up faster off the homeworld in a TotA game?
No.
And that is, with or without public Karmas (community driven) included.

ZubaZ is reading this from impulsedriven.com 

Great. Never knew this site existed. This seems to have access to more sites than forums.stardock.com. I guess this is the Impulse Community Forums. Fine. Wonderful.

Like I said there should be mechanisms that allow people to view what it is they want to view. If you want everything then clearly there's a way for you to do that. Since this is what you appear to want then I'm happy for you.

However I would like the same opportunity to view what I want which in my case is a far more limited set of forums. Regrettably you get your wish but I don't get mine.

My recent posts don't seem to ever update, the list looks the same now as it did at 7:30 this morning (it 2:20 PM now).

Since i like to look at this list to see what topics are being discussed, when its working, I would like it limited to Galciv topics, that's what I come here for. Out of the top 10, about 5 have something to do with Impulse.

Perhaps its a way of advertising their other products.

Yes it seems this behavior is not all that uncommon although for me at least at the moment the current list seems only a bit over an hour behind.

To clarify, there are a number of different "recent posts" lists that people may be referring to. These probably differ from one site to another and here I'm specifically talking about how these are listed on the GalCiv2 site.

First off if you come in via www.galciv2.com then there is a Recents Posts box along the left margin. I think this is the one that Captain Yar is refering to because the latest post I see there at the moment is one from 9AM forum time this morning. This isn't the list I usually look at.

I usually go directly to forums.galciv2.com which is the same as goind to www.galciv2.com and pressing the Forums button in the left margin near the top of the page. Anyway once at forums.galciv2.com you see the Category list showing the forums and subforums along with the ten most recent posts at the bottom of the page. This list also has a tendency to get somewhat out of date but currently the most recent listed here is from 13:19 forum time (about an hour and a half old).

To actually get the most current "recent posts" you click on the "More Recent Posts" link at the bottom of the page that takes you to the first page (50 per page) of the current Recent post list (https://forums.galciv2.com/recent). The most recent post listed here is from 14:44 (only 5 minutes old). This is the most accurate place to view the "recent posts". This list goes back 72 hours and usually consists of 3 to 4 pages of 50 threads per page.

AS far as Impluse being the most active, it probably is only natural since it's a new product that cuts across all of SD's products. I guess it is a way to "advertise" Impluse but given that it's to be the future upgrade mechanism for GalCiv II it does have some relevence in the GalCiv2 site and perhaps legitimately belongs in the list of recent posts on the GalCiv2 site. However I don't think the same thing can honestly be said for the OTF and it's subforums.

I would have changed it from the colony example to the usefulness/helpfulness that you are in respect to galciv topics. Karma I thought was to be used if you thought somebody's post was useful or such. As you pointed out, this isn't TECHNICALLY an open forum about the popularity of cake or waffles, it's about galciv/pm/sins/demigod/winblinds...etc Stardock products or products they were the production house for.

Now, it Karma would make my colony ships go faster, I'll start having a mooch signature at the end of every post asking people to give me karma if they liked my post. I'd be fine with my 18 or a 0 though.

Back on topic.... sort of:
Would negative karma then make your ships go slower? And what if you're in Yor space at the time? Does and interdiction field have any affect?

BTW i like both waffles and cake. And I was going to give you karma JUST to make your post inaccurate.

eh, it'll happen sometime. I troll the forums enough that someone is BOUND to accidentally hit the karma button for me. See, 17 people have done it so far.

Yeah, I don't understand the 18 points, 17 people aspect...Did someone extra-cool able to give me 2? Or in my interpretation on how I got them, did they accidentally double-click the karma button?

The number of points anyone can give is dependant on their forum rank. So all the rank 1 citizens can only give +1, but forum mods, etc can give higher since they're higher ranked.

Ah, I never knew that. I assumed that everyone could give up to 4 karma at any one time. I guess it makes sense to make it proportional to rank. Finally a benefit to rank.

For the forums that use them On Sins, everyone's a citizen and nobody gets ranked up.

Perhaps Sins just hasn't been around long enough. I know Kryo goes around looking for likely candidates every year or so. But it is kind of a matter of luck whether or not someone stands out. It generally takes quite awhile to form an informed opinion. It's far more likely for the annoying types to stand out than it is for the helpful.

Rank used to be displayed instead of Member number and karma. It never really meant much but it provided some minor recognition for "service to the community".