Come on, don't take things too serious.
No Karma at all, please. It only provokes grief and jeaslousy.
I might agree with you if this were a forum about serious topics. But no...people here are discussing about imaginary adventures they had with their imaginary pixel avatars. They are discussing why it should to be allowed to virtually stab someone in the back inside a vertex town with a AI-guard right around the next corner or how they think casting a magic spell should look like and what laws of physic it should break. And now you really want to tell me it causes grief and jealousy if someone doesn't agree with your own vision of fantasy? I maybe would tend to agree with you in case this were a serious forum with opinions about RL topics...but as it is only a forum for spending spare time and having some fun discussing fantasies I really can't.
Every person here is just around for fun...that is true for players and devs. The majority of players doesn't use the forums anyway and those who do share virtual experiences and ideas about a pixel world. You really think with such topics a down-vote of karma hurts someone more than a bashing reply? Wouldn't it be already a gain if someone restrains from bashing another one because he can just [smite] him/her? And really, why take this karma system that serious at all. If you look at it a high karma only means a boring person who never had any controversial ideas. Start taking the system more in the spirit of a game (after all I still think that is what this forum originally was about). [Smite] the hell out of posters that make hilariously cute anime images from your char, [Applaud] well thought out efforts of others to make fun of you...whatever. [Smite] and [Applaude] in the end mean the same...the poster got attention. Also devs are only here for fun (and the majority of them doesn't read the forums either...what brings up the question of importance of these at all). Nobody is forced to contribute to this project...but it's fun to do so. If you really care more about what others think about yourself than the fun the coding/modeling/writing gives you it's maybe time to think about changing to a serious project that really matters. If you contribute for acknowledgment work on projects that give people something of real value like tor. And if you get discouraged by some [smite]s of users get a thicker skin.
So in the end I really can't agree with the karma system making these forums even worse then they are already. If you look at the system from the serious point of view the negative karma might even help to prevent some otherwise much more negative bashing posts. And if you allow yourself to get only slightly less serious this system even offers some nice possibilities for fun...and identifying interesting people by their high amount of [applaud]s
and [smite]s.
Karma will become a tool for trolls to give bad reputation to normal people and believe me the place is swarming with those beasts.
As the meaning of "troll" was perverted in these forums to apply to anyone not agreeing with your or the PS team's opinion that's indeed always a chance...But in case we take the original meaning of the term it might be sufficient to only disallow you from using the karma system (So, was that better than a simple [smite] for the post?).
tl;dr: Don't care...nothing important. You need to be able to read anyway to have noticed the karma system in the first place.
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