Question What is "karma" ?

Thanks @quila!

@quila wrote:

Azure wrote: To complete this, which file(s) do I need to look at in order to comment out any reference to the negative value?

Hi,
look into file components / com_kunena / func / view.php and comment line 191

Code:

//$this->userkarma .= ' '.CKunenaLink::GetKarmaLink ( 'decrease', $this->catid, $this->id, $this->userid, '<span class="kkarma-minus" alt="Karma-" border="0" title="' . JText::_('COM_KUNENA_KARMA_SMITE') . '"> </span>' );

and components / com_kunena / func / profile.php, comment line 377

Code:

//$userkarma .= ' '.CKunenaLink::GetKarmaLink ( 'decrease', '', '', $this->profile->userid, '<span class="kkarma-minus" title="' . JText::_('COM_KUNENA_KARMA_SMITE') . '"> </span>' );

That should do the trik

Regards

This is a temporary fix until the proposed rating system is added to the component. The thank you system, coupled with the proposed rating tool is the way to go with this long term and I commend the development team for taking this forward.

I think the notion of positive points appearing under a member's avatar is a concept that has a great deal of merit. Sure the thank you tool is great but it will only ever appear under that particular post or on the statistics page which means the average user being the beast that he is will never bother looking for that kind of information. We're dealing with very ordinary folk with a lot of these forums and as long as they're in the thread of a forum, they're very happy and are unlikely to spend much time elsewhere within the Kunena forum.

On the other hand, if we were to embed an up-to-date tally of the thank you info under a member's avatar, then that would extremely useful. Does that make sense? I do tend to waffle and talk at cross-purposes. :blink:

sozzled wrote: I have already responded to your message posted in Kunena Karma and Unanswered thread .

There are several reasons why I believe that this suggestion has a few problems (not the least of which finding the technical solution to stop the "karma" value going negative). The three main reasons are:

(1) There is no accountability with the karma feature: there is no way of discovering who gave the karma. You could "rename" Karma to "recommendation", if you wanted, but the issue of accountability still remains.

(2) There is already a personal "thank you" feature in K 1.6. The new feature is fully accountable: you can see who thanked you and whom you thanked.

(3) An improved way of showing what topics have been of benefit to others is to have a topic rating system; this is planned for a later version of Kunena.

Thank you very much for your reply. I am actually very pleased that I have read this message. As you say, quite rightly, the "solution" you have found is only really a temporary workaround. I was, in fact, a little disappointed to see that someone wanted to extend from an intrinsically flawed basis: the Karma system, regardless of how people feel about it, is basically flawed because there is no accountability for how it can be used and abused.

I would like to return to your opening remarks at the start of this topic. I will try to explain why I feel that while re-purposing the karma feature may start with all the right intentions it can easily become corrupted.

Suppose, for example, you have a group of regular users who routinely "thank" one another (by voting one another positive karma). There is no audit trail. There's no way of finding out who voted for whom. In then end, a group of people may emerge as a clique who tend to dominate the forum. I'm not trying to say that they haven't earned this kudos based on lack of merit, but I am saying that other people may feel that there's a culture of croneyism operating at the site. Furthermore, the public display of high "karma" levels may intimidate new users from contributing for fear that they might embarrass themselves or be laughed at. I know that these are not your intentions; I am just mentioning a possibility that you may not have considered. I have actually seen this happen but, as I'm sure you will appreciate, I'm not prepared to embarrass others by mentioning the websites where these kinds of activities occur.

Perhaps in addition to the display of karma (for what it's worth) beneath a user's profile, would be to display the number of Thank Yous received. However, would it not be equally important to display the number of Thank Yous given, too?

I totally agree.

BUT: For a mature forum where members have been hanging around for ages, irregardless of the presence of 'tools of prestige', it's inevitable that cliques will form; it is the job of good mods and site owners to keep an eye on things and try and ensure that the doors always remain open and that people, new or familiar will be warmly accepted. It's not always easy, but it can be done with careful management.

Both thank you's, given and received ought to be displayed with a backend tool to switch these on and off, depending on need.

For the interim, I have changed the Karma system by commenting out the negative karma and changed the text to "Applaud count:". It's a footy forum site, so it's very relevant. I've also changed the image from a green plus sign to a clapping smiley.

I'm not sold on a rating system but I can understand its merit with other types of message boards. I think it's a great fit for Kunena and the right approach to take, even though I'm not totally in favour of it.

Now where's that thank you button?

It would be great if there was a setting (similar to polls) to restrict the number of times someone can add/subtract the Karma of a user. We have a few users (no idea who since its not tracked) that are removing Karma by clicking it multiple times.

I have to agree, Karma, although in theory a nice way to reward someone just doesn't work. Either people don't know what it means or they just click it either out of curiosity or just to try and create trouble amongst other members which did happen on my forum which is why I would never use it again.