Karma SystemFollow

Hello, everyone. I've been playing FFXI on and off for over four years and while I always lurk Alla, I didn't post here much until recently. I like getting into discussions, even if it means tolerating flame wars, but the karma system here just seems very flawed to me.

Of course, it generally can easily be ignored, but when topics go to sub-default, that is when you need to really look at the merits of this system. This is because many people do not have the "no filter" option on and could be missing out on informative topics.

The reason I'm unhappy with the system is because the posters themselves have too much power. Everyone has their rivals and people they clash with, and nothing is stopping them from rating down everything they see posted by that person. If you go into a certain job's forum and bring up a discussion that not everyone is okay with discussing, it gets nuked pretty quickly and commonly goes to sub-default. Sometimes, informative topics get banished because the some guys had a personal issue with the OP.

Don't get me wrong, I see the merit in it. Giving the members the opportunity to police themselves saves a lot of hard work for mods, and in theory would keep boards free of trashy troll topics. But the fact of the matter is, it never works out that way in practice.

One thing that sites like GameFaqs do, and I think it's one of the best systems out there, is if a post is offensive or against the ToS or whatever, you can report it. You have to specifically state what is wrong with the post (can't just say you don't like the poster) and a mod will delete the message if it is indeed an infraction. This might not work on this site, but I think something is wrong with the way things are now.

I'm not saying this because I personally get my posts sub-defaulted, but I see unjust instances all of the time. And I also see the high-post count regulars getting rated up to oblivion for things that "unpopular" posted would get nuked the Hell for posting. It doesn't seem right to encourage this conformist, "say what people want to hear" attitude on this site.

Well, there's my little feedback. Flame/Rate down away! :p

Edited, Jun 24th 2008 10:16am by Darqflame

I could see that argument, but it begs the question: why even have it if it's nothing to care about?

Karma is like smokes, they are not needed but without them I will prolly hit you.

Really, it's not even that. It actually started when I turned off my default filter on the BLU forums and saw a very informative topic on the front page.

But yeah, the SMN forum is bad -.-

Yeah. Basically, what happens is you have people who aren't posting ****.. in fact they may be posting good stuff, it's just that person A and his friends don't like what's being said and so downrate every post just because.

This system is also inherantly flawed in that some people (ie, people who aren't Sages yet) can't downrate, and therefore can't defend themselves if they're being downrated maliciously. At a certain point, with a certain post count, everyone should become a Sage and thus have the ability to rate.

the way I see it is this.

there are many more forums than admins, and if every post that offended someone had to be reported, the admins would end up working 24/7 aand still not keep up with the report rate.

hence, we have the karma system, which leaves the issues in the hands of the posters and their ethics. people are asses, it's a fact of life. If you don't like what they're doing, call them on it, to their face, instead of going and ******** to the admins and giving them more work.

Thanks for the detective work, but the topic was rated back up when I posted in it, asking why it was sub-default.




It becomes a brown-nosing quest that really shouldn't exist in the first place. Obviously people with the ability to rate up/rate down won't see a problem with this because they hold the power, but it's really hard to justify otherwise.

When my LS mate was giving me tips on which forum to go to for the most rate ups, I felt that it was pretty ridiculous.

Edit: And thus we prove that the color of the name has little to do with the arrow pressed.

Edited, Jun 21st 2008 11:06pm by lolgaxe

lolGaxe, you both prove and disprove my point. O.o

I WANNA SAY IT! I WANNA SAY IT! PUUUUH-LEEEZ CAN I SAY IT???


*AHEM*





~Jedi powers! nnnGOOOOOO!~

These are not the Admins you are looking for...

THAT I can do! /ppppshaw

bow before me, minion!

While all the forums have the abuse you speak of to a minor extent, the FFXI forums seem to be the only ones where it's a real issue. Since it's only one section of the forums where it's a major problem, that would point to the posters, not the system.

If an admin felt like it, they could find the groups of posters in those forums who are unjustly rating people based on personal agendas and not based on post quality and norate them. It's shouldn't be too hard to track them down but I get the feeling it's a good portion of the FFXI community who abuses the system based on the number of karma threads started by users from that section of the forums.

Unfortunately, you can't fix stupid, I've tried. If your worried about missing something important, just leave your filter settings set to never filter and ignore the idiots.

As far as Karma in general, ignore it. If your Scholar or higher, rate the idiots down and the informative people up, just don't abuse it. If you can't rate people, don't worry. If it's ignorant enough to deserve a red arrow, I am sure someone else will rate it for you.

And I am happy to say that although the post count vs. rating problem is still around, I watched a high post count Scholar deservingly drop to default a few weeks back. Unfortunately, Scholar was returned to him later that day.

What?