Question What is "karma" ?

I'm jumping into this topic because we have a problem with one forum member dialing down the karma of another member each time he logs on. I equate it to bullying. The sad part to this story is that, for the most part, these are grown men on a fly fishing forum. Unbelievable. It would be nice to have options in Kunena for the items discussed in this thread. Possibly somewhere in the configuration, add options to disable negative karma, disallow karma for certain users, etc. I may try my hand at building an extension for that. There's enough info in this thread alone to do that. As with everything else in my life, time is valuable... Thanks to all, by the way, for the info.

-Keith

kdpickett wrote: I'm jumping into this topic because we have a problem with one forum member dialing down the karma of another member each time he logs on. I equate it to bullying.

I know, I understand and sympathise with your predicament. Some people have such low self-esteem that they seem to feel some sense of "achievement" if they can abuse others in this way. The same people suffer the same delusions of grandeur and feel the need to achieve "importance" by using multiple identities to dial up their own "karma".

Whichever way you look at it, karma is unhealthy because there's no measure of accountability built into it. I must have written dozens of messages about karma and they're mostly about the same issues that you've described. Ultimately, the simplest and most effective way to eliminate abusers of your forum from your forum is to disable the tools that give them their power. Disable karma completely and you will not have these problems because you disempower the bullies (in part).

If I disagree with what someone else writes on a forum then I state my opinions and the basis for my disagreement and I accept the responsibility for those things. I appreciate the criticism I may receive in return. But I do not appreciate the "attacks by stealth" that occur by those who lack the courage to acknowledge who they are and why they feel the need to make those attacks.

Whichever way you look at it, karma is unhealthy because there's no measure of accountability built into it.

Exactly. I just wish there was a way to reward the good and faithful members of the board. These are the ones who go out of their way to help others and make (in our case, anyway) a forum grow and the experience pleasurable. It's not a perfect world, I know, and there is no justice in this case. It's just another disappointment in life (not a reflection on Kunena, but forums in general). Trolls will be trolls. Having said all of that, I just disabled the karma feature based on suggestions here and I now sleep better.

Thanks for the info.
-Keith

kdpickett wrote: I just wish there was a way to reward the good and faithful members of the board

Well, there are ways to reward good members who contribute to your site. It's just that, in my opinion, karma isn't a particularly effective one.

If you want to reward users, reward their best messages by giving thank you. Thank you is bound to a message and it also logs other information and shows user who said thank you to everyone.

As every thank you comes from what user writes, it also removes rewards, which are based to feelings towards that user.

So looking at Kunena's core i notice that the time before you are allowed to increase a users karma is set to be 6 hours inbetween each increase and decrease.

com_kunena/lib/kunena.karma.php
But like forum posts what is to stop them from going and increasing or decreasing another members karma ? (Spam if you like across as many diffrent members as they like in less than a few seconds.)

I'm curious if it has a flood limit to it like kunena forum post's where you can set the time limit to prevent flooding of the entire forum "30 seconds between each post".