GuitarBizarre

"Hey guys I want karma go +1 my posts".

oh look, people destroying your system.

tore, it doesn't work. it never has worked, in the entire history of online forums it probably hasn't worked, and I've seen it fail a whole ton of times the same way. it just becomes a pissing contest. hell, reddit is a site devoted to the idea of making something very similar work...and it just doesn't.

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Guybrush

In your example, other people would still get +1s for good posts, even if one person somehow cheats. I agree that it is possible to abuse karma systems, but I don't want to categorically dismiss them all. I have heard of such systems working and so I assume it is possible.

But regardless, it was just an example of a possible way one could reward good behaviour. It is not one which can be implemented here and so it is a bit off-topic, but I would like to discuss its implementation if we were to have a new site. If only for a test run .. removing it if it didn't work as intended would be a simple matter.

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Something Completely Different

Neapolitan

I am at a lost... I thought you were going on about this site not being friendly?

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Zer0

I post and mod on a forum which has a thanks system in place and I think it does more harm than good. Basically what it encourages people to do is thanks-whore by trying to make the wittiest posts they can so they can massage their e-dick. This often leads to completely pointless and counter-productive replies to serious and potentially interesting threads and can often derail a thread before it even gets off the ground. There seems to be a common habit in some threads to try to be the first to reply with a witty remark and receive loads of thanks from everybody, even if the reply adds nothing to the original post and in quite a lot of cases it doesn't. Some people will even just thank posts and not contribute anything at all just like the way people vote in polls here and not add anything in the thread itself.

It does have it's benefits such as posts which actually deserve thanks getting just that. This can be useful when you're skimming through a non-debate thread with quite a lot of posts and you only want to find the posts worth viewing. It also discourages people from replying to posts with just '+1' or 'I agree' which is a complete waste of a post if you ask me.

I think MB is just fine without a thanks or rep system in place and a simple statistic such as a post count doesn't even mean that much to me.

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GuitarBizarre

Same as the karma thing. It just becomes a competition, not to mention it fails to perform its primary function and just becomes an ego boost for those people who get thanked a lot - of course, if you apply that to a "cliquey" forum...guess who gets most thanks? Right, the person at the top of the biggest clique.

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sopsych

I said that to Trollheart after he attacked me, which wasn't the first time. I do appreciate some of his music posts when I read them (but until this week, I had never read a journal here). And I stand by my incendiary comment about people patting themselves on the back for making more music posts, as though that does much to prevent drama. (Yeah, I'm a glass-half-empty kind of person. That won't get me friends, but it shouldn't negate my ideas.)

Tore has said enough in my defense, I agree. It's time to move on to specific, non-technical solutions.

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Trollheart

I challenge you to tell me where you think I attacked you. You were the one who slagged off my journal (well, all journals) by basically telling me they were not worth considering. I responded by telling you how many posts mine and others got. You responded by sneering that I wanted a medal. Nobody has attacked you: people have been quite tolerant really and have tried over and over to point things out to you, but you keep ignoring posts that don't fit in with your agenda. I would definitely love to see where I attacked you. People here know me (and don't mention cliques because I do not belong to one) and know that I do not attack anyone. It's not how I work.

And Neapolitan, thank you for your kind support of my work in the journals section. It's certainly appreciated mate.

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Black Francis

i agree with your last statement tore imo this place needs a friendlier vibe and though mods can set an exmpl by participating in the community while enforcing the rules it's also up to us the community to behave properly

what i mean by friendlier vibe is just acknowledging ppl and trying to be nice to them not just respecting someone for how much they know about music

sometimes i feel this forum as an elitist undertone to it and that you have to be a professional music critic to stand out or even be acknowledged so its ok for ppl who know more to inslut or offend someone who knows less to prove that

i don't blame anybody in particularly for this, sometimes ignorance needs to be stopped right away but instead of first degrading an ignorant person we should try to educate them not just use our knowledge to justify superiority over them and degrade them.

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Trollheart

Francis, I love it! You've just invented a cool new word!

Also, picking up your point somewhat. Oh no wait, first, let me echo Jamsz's welcome back to you. You have been missed.

Now, when I first joined here in 2008 I did indeed feel that there was an elitist, you-dont-know-jack-about-music attitude, and that people were laughing at what they saw as my "pedestrian" music preferences. I left. Some time later |I rejoined and changed my attitude, to the point where I now think hell if people don't like my music then fine; there's music here I wouldn't listen to. But I made the effort to get out and meet these people and found them all, mostly, to be really nice people. I used to think Urban was a grumpy so-and-so who had it in for me, now I know he's a grumpy so-and-so who doesn't have it in for me. I actually really like him. A lot of it is about perception. Are you feeling marginalised because you're letting yourself be? Are you taking things too seriously? Hell, if someone talks about my "crappy prog albums" or "stupid genesis fetish" or whatever, I just laugh. Doesn't mean anything, and isn't meant to. It's just someone's opinion, and it could also be meant as a joke.

In the end, as everyone here knows, you make the forum better by how you approach it. If everyone here was gloomy, tight-arsed and up themselves about their music, it's likely we wouldn't even talk to each other, or stay here. Some people bring drama with them like the Irish summer brings the rain, but that doesn't mean you have to join in, or be affected by it. If you make it your mission to enjoy, and try to help others enjoy the forum, chances are it will work. Maybe not all the time, but I find more often than not it does.

One last point, to everyone. I noticed myself laughing at a post today (can't recall which, think it was Urban's comment about my power metal in my journal) but it set me to thinking, how often do I laugh here at posts and how often do I scowl or get angry/insulted/take offence? It's weighted far in favour of the former, and I think that has to be a good thing. It also hinges a lot on how you see, and use, the forum.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

sopsych

I too think there's an elitist feel to this site. Maybe that's why few people seem to respect my music knowledge or even reply to my music comments.

There are two posts in that other thread that show you're not an innocent victim of my "medal" comment. One post includes an eye-roll and the second is a long derail filled with put-downs and technical truths that are worded sharply. I consider this mini-discussion over. In the future, please stick to your alleged non-attack policy. If people really did operate that way, there would be less drama on this site.

Anyway, when will people meet the challenge of coming up with doable, non-technical ideas for curtailing drama? This thread has been almost an amazing dance away from such musings.

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