I guess the ultimate question is does the karma system do more harm than good, in my opinion it does.
The only benefits of the karma system as it stands are selfish pleasures. The pleasure of seeing someone you dislike with low karma and equally the pleasure of seeing your own high karma. Yes in some cases a "player's" karma can give an idea as to their nature both in games and on the forums, however for the large part we accept that it is silly to judge someone solely by their karma on tus... that goes without saying.
To those of you saying stupid stuff like "dood who the f@#! care about karma wtf"... ive noticed that you yourselves dont have negative karma. No matter what you say, NOBODY wants to log on to a website they visit daily about a game they love and see that members of a community they consider themselves to be a part of have been "disliking" them. Sure nobody is gonna commit suicide over worms... at the same time its no fun seeing people have been "disliking" you. Its also annoying seeing people with very high karma who's attitudes don't always reflect this "score". I do not like the way the karma system instils a false sense of authority and righteousness, suggesting someone with a higher karma may be more likely to be right about something is irritating and patronising. This is a small community, we know each other well enough to not need a number to tell us who does what and who acts dumb.
Its also near impossible for people with seriously negative karma to climb back up, even if they change their ways.
I take the example of crash, sure he acted dumb sometimes.... but for the last year or so he has been perfectly fine and his karma is not fair. Even if people do change their attitude, the community doesnt care enough to raise their karma in acknowledgement.
If the current system is to be kept then as I already suggested people should be allowed to reset their karma every few months or so. That way if people do change their attitude, they can start fresh. Personally I think it should be removed completely as all it does is cause arguments, discourage people from posting what they truly feel and eventually discourages people from using the forum altogether. Im sure this was exactly the sort of thing you didnt want tus to promote MI!
I havent even bothered mentioning the ABUSE of the karma system which everyone is well aware of. This is already reason alone to remove it completely or set up another system. Someone mentioned removing smite and only having +. That sounds good to me, at least its a vast improvement from what we have now.
