Also, what do you think of karma as a measure to the contribution of a post to the community? I realize that I am conflating this with a measure of trust, but these are not the same.
When I upvote, I usually think of how useful I think of the post for the community. Say, downvote a post because it was a waste of my time
Karma is awarded definitely as a recognition of the usefulness of the contribution. The user’s overall karma is an unprincipled straight addition of those “usefulness scores”. Still, it’s the closest thing the site has to it’s trust in the user and we use it to award: a) More influence in the form of higher-powered votes b) More ability to moderate one’s own posts (ability to moderate personal blogposts at 50 karma, and those that have been promoted to the frontpage or community at 2000)
Also, what do you think of karma as a measure to the contribution of a post to the community? I realize that I am conflating this with a measure of trust, but these are not the same.
When I upvote, I usually think of how useful I think of the post for the community. Say, downvote a post because it was a waste of my time
Karma is awarded definitely as a recognition of the usefulness of the contribution. The user’s overall karma is an unprincipled straight addition of those “usefulness scores”. Still, it’s the closest thing the site has to it’s trust in the user and we use it to award:
a) More influence in the form of higher-powered votes
b) More ability to moderate one’s own posts (ability to moderate personal blogposts at 50 karma, and those that have been promoted to the frontpage or community at 2000)