Using Karma/Reputation and your experiences

What have your experiences been like using karma on your forums and using karma as a member? Do you feel it improves the overall quality of your forum and the posts of your members or does it become a popularity contest over time?

How has your experience as a user been with such systems? Do you usually reward quality posts or do you not use the system at all?

 

what's karma?

 

It's another form of reputation.

 

ah. I've never used it.

 

I'm quite sure that one of the only forum software scripts to use an actual feature called "Karma" is SMF.

 

I am almost never using reputation because it is not used very much on my forums. But maybe if i have a different kind of forum i might use it.

 

That's a good point - the amount of use the reputation system receives could depend on the subject matter of the forum.

 

I enabled reputation on my forum 3 days ago. Looks promising, But I am already getting a few complaints of abuse.

 

Mmm, I'm thinking of just a + - help counter being useful as well.

 

We have a rep system on the forum i mod on. Its totally abused.

I can't can't see me ever adding any rep system to my forum although I have looked at the thank you hack, which looks ok.

 

Sorry to hear that, doodles - it's never fun when such a system is abused.

 

I enjoy using the reputation system, but all of the experiences I've had with it are lack of use. It's a shame that not too many people like to use the reputation system because it can make for a great addition to the community.

 

I think that if it were more obviously implemented in vBulletin (i.e. a more clearly defined rep. icon in the postbit), the system would be used more often.

 

I agree very much. Here, the "Did you find this post helpful" is supposed to be tied in with the reputation system; this is a much more prominent way of reputing users and it is much more widely-used.

The problem is, I don't think it's working right. :p

 

I noticed that the other day, Nick - I've been "thanked" on a variety of posts, yet none of these points have been transferred over to my reputation status.

 

This brings up another issue - I can't see which posts of mine that members have marked helpful; it's a complete mystery to me.

I get so frustrated when things don't work.

 

I'm experiencing the same problem - the only way that I'm able to tell if I've been "thanked" is by viewing the "Statistics" page in my profile.

 

Gah. Somebody else told me they are able to see that their posts have been marked as helpful.

Anyway, I'm looking into it right now with the mod author. Will let you know how it goes.

 

Is it possible that we are experiencing these "issues" solely due to the fact that we're both administrators?

 

Possibly. Not sure though.