dESTROYS [67441] —
Original article
In a traditional sense, Karma is the notion that 'what goes around comes around'. In Torn, a more appropriate proverb would be 'Those who sit in a round circle come together.'
For the uninitiated; karma is the system by which players rate one anothers submissions to the forums. Each post can be rated up or down, giving every player a rating on their profile, as well as displaying their cumulative total of posts and how much karma they have accrued. The ratio of posts to karma score is not always an indication of how worthwhile someone's contribution has been, but offers at least a rough indication. Or at least it used to.
The old karma system meant that one upvote was always equal to one Karma point, so long as the post was in the right section and met an arbitrary length that made it eligible for reward. Recently, this has changed. The new algorithms remain a little more obscure; if a single person uprates or down rates someone too often, their ratings start to count increasingly less (or not at all).
Does this new system work for Torn? Let's find out.
The forums serve a few primary purposes. Since it is such a social game, Torn's message boards were always going to be the best place for the community as a whole to come together and talk about the game. New players ask questions about getting started. Veterans remiss over past glories. There are sections to brag about achievements or to talk smack to other factions. It's a place where people can air grievances and offer up suggestions to improve certain aspects of gameplay.
There are also multiple guides to discover and follow for those who prefer to lurk. General Discussion is full of threads speculating on the finer details of the mechanics of the game, and these conversations help players to hone and refine their individual play styles. As each element of Torn is scrutinised and tested, the end result is a thorough, crowdsourced collection of information far more reliable than any one person could provide. Karma helps us identify useful and useless information, and in this respect it is essential.
People also use the forums for nearly all peer to peer interactions within the game, from organizing Russian Roulette games to setting up general trades. Then, there are more relaxed sections for discussion on points unrelated to the game; people can go to play games, discuss real world events or just chit chat. Aside from Global Chat, the forums are one of the few places where everyone can interact with players who are not in their faction or their company. And, unlike Global, for the most part, these boards are not openly hostile.
Or perhaps "weren't" would be a better choice of words.
The forums have been in transition for a while now. Since late November 2016, the rules regarding players interactions have been subtly changed. Before this, there was a forum "Code of Honour" which stated that players couldn't make threads about each other and that they couldn't openly flame or troll. However, in an attempt to bring about more open, fun and accessible forums which further engage the player base, these rules were slackened. As predicted by some, this has given rise to an awful lot of drama. So how does Karma play a role in all of this?
In this new age of forum drama, there is one type of player who thrives: The Karma Farmer. Someone who sews the seeds of drama and resentment only to harvest a meaningless series of digits in return. Someone who, with the loosening of the forum rules, is unabashed in their provocations, reaping the rewards (in attention and forum scores) where once they would only have been punished.
This would be ok - some people believe - if the community had the ability to police the system itself. But it could be argued that the Karma system has been declawed. As Mat-Senpai, a prolific forum poster put it:
"The recent change made it impossible to remove karma if you've downvoted even a few times then future dislikes will not remove karma and only dislike that post. With these changes, karma is essentially a one-way street."
When questioned, another well-known name in the forums, Beerstein, had this to say:
"Karma is a worthless pile of cow dung that has no use of any kind. It has no impact on how anyone posts except a couple people, and all it does in their cases is push them to spam more shit no one wants to see."
This sentiment was echoed by many of the top users we interviewed. Some had opposing views though. Champion, of the golden AK fame, was asked whether he would change anything if he ran the forums. His reply?
"I already run the forums nah."
The new rules and Karma system were implemented in order to entice more people to engage with the community. Perhaps it was an appeal to the lowest common denominator in the same way as trashy daytime TV, but it can't be denied that people do like to see a train-wreck unfold. So, a few months on, has this change had the desired effect?
Sadly, as some might conclude, yes it did. Unreleased data from Chedburn confirms that there has been a significant increase in forum activity in the months since the system was changed. More people are actively posting than ever before, and there are also more posts by sheer volume too. There are no stats for user satisfaction available, though, nor any statistical way of measuring the toxicity of posts in the forums.
An increase in something is not necessarily a positive change. One might be quite satisfied to discover that, after ordering a drink at the bar, your single has been upgraded to a double at no extra cost. However, if transpires that said tipple has been topped up with the bartender's urine, this is hardly a cause for celebration. To judge whether this increase in forum activity was a good thing or not, I interviewed all the top ten users for karma. None of them said they liked the new system in its entirety.
Proxima, one of the highest karma members of arguably the faction with the highest forum activity, had quite a fair bit of input to give on the matter:
"I'd be quite pleased if Ched just turned around one day and wiped everyone's karma completely. [...] The one thing I can't stand recently is users like SA-Dude / Kata etc who are, for some reason, having all of their retarded spam validated by a small, but large enough, area of the community. [...] thanks to the likes of Dude et al I don't read most of GD any more."
This was an idea that seemed to be shared by many. Active forum poster dunmugmeh, presented a similar view:
"If I ran the forums there would be no karma. I think its a flawed concept and encourages spamming and people being 'clever' just to get upvotes."
However, there does seem to be an odd few that enjoy this system at least partially. Further inquiring Champion, the self-acclaimed owner of the forums, resulted in this:
"I think more people now use the forums to have fun while having discussions, as opposed to how it was before where it was boring as shit, and also I think a few people use the forums to troll (100% not me) which can be funny to read. I also have a gold ak, if you didn't know that already."
In its calmer days, the forums served as a place for helpful discussion, friendly competition and a bit of a respite from the hustle and bustle of city life. Now the forums have become a minefield for all who enter. Bigger, yes. Better, no. So what could we change? How could the forums suit both the wishes of Torn's creators and community by growing in both a statistical and mental sense?
There have been a few suggestions bandied about. One of the most common requests from forum users is a retightening of the lax laws which have allowed trolling and spamming to persist. Such activity should be made illegal, say many, with infractions dealt with through the application of certain punishments. But who should mete out these penalties? Should this power be placed into the hands of staff, or is the application of the law best placed in the hands of those who give Karma in the first place?
If we tried the latter solution, applying Karma-based posting restrictions for posters who receive awful ratings, we may be able to curtail those who routinely abuse the forums for the sake of seeking attention. Obviously, it is not normal for a poster to lose one hundred Karma in a day, and if this happens, they may be being targeted. But it could also mean, as is often the case, that they are being punished for posting unpopular rubbish which adds little to the forums. A Karma-based posting ban would perhaps solve this, but it would also need to be flexible enough to allow recourse and prevent it being used as a tool of oppression.
This is but one example of how the forums could change for the better while retaining an increase in posting activity. Overall, there is a call for more moderation in general, just not to the extent that it was present before. We've gone from black to white and skipped out any kind of mid-tone in between. Those in charge have pooh-poohed other suggestions such as forum badges that reflect players posting style and usefulness. These awards are successfully used in other online forums, but for a place like Torn, they may admittedly be a little redundant.
The problem with having these rewards based on others' votes is that certain factions who already abuse the Karma system in the form of circle-jerking would almost certainly vote for each other to acquire these badges - they would become as meaningless as SA_DUDE within a matter of days.
Another more radical suggestion is to scrap Karma and records of forum interaction altogether. This would be a shame, though, since while it would dissuade many Karma Farmers from posting, those who troll for attention would still likely get enough of it to scratch their itch.
In conclusion, I think it is important to state once again the importance of the forums for the game. They serve a vital role and offer a place for players to hang out once they're done with their daily clicks. Complaints against the forums are made with an understanding of this fact - people want the forums to be better because they are so integral for so many of us. Karma was a good idea when it was initially implemented, but it has now been declawed to the point that it does little more than keep a tally of how forum-active a user is. While forum use is on the increase, how positive this is becomes a subjective question that we all can answer for ourselves.
Any change which boosts the number of useful contributions would be welcomed with open arms, of course. But from my digging around and asking questions to those most engaged, I've not found many who would say the new system has had this effect. The answers I received ranged from apathetic to negative, and as such, I would urge those in charge to carefully consider players' calls for further changes and a better system.
One exception, perhaps proving the rule, was a user named CatHead who has himself amassed a small sum of Karma. When questioned on the matter, he said:
"The forums are far livelier now, if you can give as good as you get then you shouldn't have a problem. If you don't like what some users post, just don't open their threads. It's not rocket science."
And perhaps that is the right outlook to take. At the end of the day, if drama and Karma are causing activity and discussion in a forum which is intended for activity and discussion, maybe it is fulfilling its purpose after all? Perhaps we shouldn't have the option to be shielded against stupidity. If someone wants to mark themselves out as an idiot, why not let them? We could even add a Graved Threads tally to their profile page. They're already wearing their lack of intelligence like a badge of honour, so let's stitch it to their skin and let it never be removed.
George Carlin 'Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.'
Torn Wisdom 'Never waste time arguing over idiots. They will only bring you down to their level when you could've spent that time beating someone for experience.'
For the uninitiated; karma is the system by which players rate one anothers submissions to the forums. Each post can be rated up or down, giving every player a rating on their profile, as well as displaying their cumulative total of posts and how much karma they have accrued. The ratio of posts to karma score is not always an indication of how worthwhile someone's contribution has been, but offers at least a rough indication. Or at least it used to.
The old karma system meant that one upvote was always equal to one Karma point, so long as the post was in the right section and met an arbitrary length that made it eligible for reward. Recently, this has changed. The new algorithms remain a little more obscure; if a single person uprates or down rates someone too often, their ratings start to count increasingly less (or not at all).
Does this new system work for Torn? Let's find out.
The forums serve a few primary purposes. Since it is such a social game, Torn's message boards were always going to be the best place for the community as a whole to come together and talk about the game. New players ask questions about getting started. Veterans remiss over past glories. There are sections to brag about achievements or to talk smack to other factions. It's a place where people can air grievances and offer up suggestions to improve certain aspects of gameplay.
There are also multiple guides to discover and follow for those who prefer to lurk. General Discussion is full of threads speculating on the finer details of the mechanics of the game, and these conversations help players to hone and refine their individual play styles. As each element of Torn is scrutinised and tested, the end result is a thorough, crowdsourced collection of information far more reliable than any one person could provide. Karma helps us identify useful and useless information, and in this respect it is essential.
People also use the forums for nearly all peer to peer interactions within the game, from organizing Russian Roulette games to setting up general trades. Then, there are more relaxed sections for discussion on points unrelated to the game; people can go to play games, discuss real world events or just chit chat. Aside from Global Chat, the forums are one of the few places where everyone can interact with players who are not in their faction or their company. And, unlike Global, for the most part, these boards are not openly hostile.
Or perhaps "weren't" would be a better choice of words.
The forums have been in transition for a while now. Since late November 2016, the rules regarding players interactions have been subtly changed. Before this, there was a forum "Code of Honour" which stated that players couldn't make threads about each other and that they couldn't openly flame or troll. However, in an attempt to bring about more open, fun and accessible forums which further engage the player base, these rules were slackened. As predicted by some, this has given rise to an awful lot of drama. So how does Karma play a role in all of this?
In this new age of forum drama, there is one type of player who thrives: The Karma Farmer. Someone who sews the seeds of drama and resentment only to harvest a meaningless series of digits in return. Someone who, with the loosening of the forum rules, is unabashed in their provocations, reaping the rewards (in attention and forum scores) where once they would only have been punished.
This would be ok - some people believe - if the community had the ability to police the system itself. But it could be argued that the Karma system has been declawed. As Mat-Senpai, a prolific forum poster put it:
"The recent change made it impossible to remove karma if you've downvoted even a few times then future dislikes will not remove karma and only dislike that post. With these changes, karma is essentially a one-way street."
When questioned, another well-known name in the forums, Beerstein, had this to say:
"Karma is a worthless pile of cow dung that has no use of any kind. It has no impact on how anyone posts except a couple people, and all it does in their cases is push them to spam more shit no one wants to see."
This sentiment was echoed by many of the top users we interviewed. Some had opposing views though. Champion, of the golden AK fame, was asked whether he would change anything if he ran the forums. His reply?
"I already run the forums nah."
The new rules and Karma system were implemented in order to entice more people to engage with the community. Perhaps it was an appeal to the lowest common denominator in the same way as trashy daytime TV, but it can't be denied that people do like to see a train-wreck unfold. So, a few months on, has this change had the desired effect?
Sadly, as some might conclude, yes it did. Unreleased data from Chedburn confirms that there has been a significant increase in forum activity in the months since the system was changed. More people are actively posting than ever before, and there are also more posts by sheer volume too. There are no stats for user satisfaction available, though, nor any statistical way of measuring the toxicity of posts in the forums.
An increase in something is not necessarily a positive change. One might be quite satisfied to discover that, after ordering a drink at the bar, your single has been upgraded to a double at no extra cost. However, if transpires that said tipple has been topped up with the bartender's urine, this is hardly a cause for celebration. To judge whether this increase in forum activity was a good thing or not, I interviewed all the top ten users for karma. None of them said they liked the new system in its entirety.
Proxima, one of the highest karma members of arguably the faction with the highest forum activity, had quite a fair bit of input to give on the matter:
"I'd be quite pleased if Ched just turned around one day and wiped everyone's karma completely. [...] The one thing I can't stand recently is users like SA-Dude / Kata etc who are, for some reason, having all of their retarded spam validated by a small, but large enough, area of the community. [...] thanks to the likes of Dude et al I don't read most of GD any more."
This was an idea that seemed to be shared by many. Active forum poster dunmugmeh, presented a similar view:
"If I ran the forums there would be no karma. I think its a flawed concept and encourages spamming and people being 'clever' just to get upvotes."
However, there does seem to be an odd few that enjoy this system at least partially. Further inquiring Champion, the self-acclaimed owner of the forums, resulted in this:
"I think more people now use the forums to have fun while having discussions, as opposed to how it was before where it was boring as shit, and also I think a few people use the forums to troll (100% not me) which can be funny to read. I also have a gold ak, if you didn't know that already."
In its calmer days, the forums served as a place for helpful discussion, friendly competition and a bit of a respite from the hustle and bustle of city life. Now the forums have become a minefield for all who enter. Bigger, yes. Better, no. So what could we change? How could the forums suit both the wishes of Torn's creators and community by growing in both a statistical and mental sense?
There have been a few suggestions bandied about. One of the most common requests from forum users is a retightening of the lax laws which have allowed trolling and spamming to persist. Such activity should be made illegal, say many, with infractions dealt with through the application of certain punishments. But who should mete out these penalties? Should this power be placed into the hands of staff, or is the application of the law best placed in the hands of those who give Karma in the first place?
If we tried the latter solution, applying Karma-based posting restrictions for posters who receive awful ratings, we may be able to curtail those who routinely abuse the forums for the sake of seeking attention. Obviously, it is not normal for a poster to lose one hundred Karma in a day, and if this happens, they may be being targeted. But it could also mean, as is often the case, that they are being punished for posting unpopular rubbish which adds little to the forums. A Karma-based posting ban would perhaps solve this, but it would also need to be flexible enough to allow recourse and prevent it being used as a tool of oppression.
This is but one example of how the forums could change for the better while retaining an increase in posting activity. Overall, there is a call for more moderation in general, just not to the extent that it was present before. We've gone from black to white and skipped out any kind of mid-tone in between. Those in charge have pooh-poohed other suggestions such as forum badges that reflect players posting style and usefulness. These awards are successfully used in other online forums, but for a place like Torn, they may admittedly be a little redundant.
The problem with having these rewards based on others' votes is that certain factions who already abuse the Karma system in the form of circle-jerking would almost certainly vote for each other to acquire these badges - they would become as meaningless as SA_DUDE within a matter of days.
Another more radical suggestion is to scrap Karma and records of forum interaction altogether. This would be a shame, though, since while it would dissuade many Karma Farmers from posting, those who troll for attention would still likely get enough of it to scratch their itch.
In conclusion, I think it is important to state once again the importance of the forums for the game. They serve a vital role and offer a place for players to hang out once they're done with their daily clicks. Complaints against the forums are made with an understanding of this fact - people want the forums to be better because they are so integral for so many of us. Karma was a good idea when it was initially implemented, but it has now been declawed to the point that it does little more than keep a tally of how forum-active a user is. While forum use is on the increase, how positive this is becomes a subjective question that we all can answer for ourselves.
Any change which boosts the number of useful contributions would be welcomed with open arms, of course. But from my digging around and asking questions to those most engaged, I've not found many who would say the new system has had this effect. The answers I received ranged from apathetic to negative, and as such, I would urge those in charge to carefully consider players' calls for further changes and a better system.
One exception, perhaps proving the rule, was a user named CatHead who has himself amassed a small sum of Karma. When questioned on the matter, he said:
"The forums are far livelier now, if you can give as good as you get then you shouldn't have a problem. If you don't like what some users post, just don't open their threads. It's not rocket science."
And perhaps that is the right outlook to take. At the end of the day, if drama and Karma are causing activity and discussion in a forum which is intended for activity and discussion, maybe it is fulfilling its purpose after all? Perhaps we shouldn't have the option to be shielded against stupidity. If someone wants to mark themselves out as an idiot, why not let them? We could even add a Graved Threads tally to their profile page. They're already wearing their lack of intelligence like a badge of honour, so let's stitch it to their skin and let it never be removed.
George Carlin 'Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.'
Torn Wisdom 'Never waste time arguing over idiots. They will only bring you down to their level when you could've spent that time beating someone for experience.'
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