I do think karma is a bit of a catch-all, and mostly I think that’s OK. We need a way to integrate a diversity of positive / negative sentiment into a metric, even if people have different reasons for their votes.
In terms of the tool tip, the other sites lack any explanation for their “upvote” or “like” buttons, and one of the reasons we have a whole explanation is to differentiate karma-votes from agree-votes, which other sites don’t have.
That said, It’s possible that reactions will help call out some of the behaviors we want to encourage on the Forum, like truth-seekingness and helpfulness. We’re also open to other suggestions for core reactions, but as mentioned in the post we do value simplicity.
I do think karma is a bit of a catch-all, and mostly I think that’s OK. We need a way to integrate a diversity of positive / negative sentiment into a metric, even if people have different reasons for their votes.
In terms of the tool tip, the other sites lack any explanation for their “upvote” or “like” buttons, and one of the reasons we have a whole explanation is to differentiate karma-votes from agree-votes, which other sites don’t have.
That said, It’s possible that reactions will help call out some of the behaviors we want to encourage on the Forum, like truth-seekingness and helpfulness. We’re also open to other suggestions for core reactions, but as mentioned in the post we do value simplicity.