Disabling Beer Karma

I am okay with it staying, but certainly think it needs some changes. Ticks (beers or places) should have little to no value, as well as likes. Just my 2 cents.

 

For sure, you definitely don't know how lucky you are. Some people are very territorial and find any change in the status quo of there being a sum total of ~3 specific, active users in certain standing threads to be threatening.

I understand where you're coming from, but someone's historical or cultural impact to the website shouldn't be relevant to anyone seeing that user post for the first time. To me it should be more about beer knowledge and advocacy, as opposed to website expertise or experience.

Anyone that has been around for a while has no problem recognizing those users that occasionally, or frequently, exhibit a high value to this site.

Maybe an alternative to doing away with it altogether, if some find it to be so valuable, we could bury it on the user's page, or allow them the option to have it shown.

But I think it does more harm than good.

 

Silly, but I liked when we had the different little beer glasses next to our names

 

I would like Karma back for the reasons stated above. I liked the rankings most of all too; made it easy to see how involved/invested in the site and beer overall.

 

I rarely "like" posts but found myself agreeing with pretty much everything you said.

 

Two points: I think actual thoughtful reviews should be encouraged/rewarded, and focus more on individual beer stats (I enjoy following mine).

 

Don't really care about beer karma but love being able to track styles and brewers that I have had. Maybe make it easier to see which brewers and styles that we have yet to try. I want to try them all! Also like tracking beers from different states. Like that to be easier too

 

The beer karma gives an idea about how long and how active an individual has been. Its useful.

 

Why get rid of it?

Exactly! Why get rid of it?

 

Please bring back BK! I agree with many others that there are improvements that could be made to the karma scoring system, but seeing a notification that "you have been awarded beer karma" every once in a while is a lot of fun.

 

I'd like to see beer karma revert back to something like it was 5-10 years ago when it had much more of an emphasis on reviews. Reviews have always been the heart of this site, and karma should be awarded adequately to those who still write them. I've always thought that giving karma for 'likes' gave people the wrong incentives in their contributions. There are a lot of people on here who's karma was artificially inflated by them doing no more than adding a photo of the beer they are drinking and getting 100 'likes' for it.

 

I didn't even notice it disappear, so I guess that means I never put much thought into its existence in the first place.

 

Agree here. It gives someone's posts some context, especially if they are commenting about something on the site that used to be different (ie. the various iterations of the scoring point system).

 

For those who keep asking, and/or haven't bothered to check Todd's link in his initial post:

• We weren't happy with the system, which was meant to be an interim solution to replace our original Beer Karma system after the forum crash of 2012.
• The system's overhead was too high, as we found out after disabling it. This is an issue that we'll address with any future updates, but the significant reduction in overhead simply outweighs keeping it enabled.

Let's hope an alternate Karma system can be devised.

 

Posting pics of what you are drinking or buying to add up likes so you work your way to poobah seems entirely silly to me and in no way is beer advocacy. Stop awarding points for likes!!

 

I visited new places and tried new beers because of Karma. I did not value any one members' opinion based on their Karma or title.
I found it a fun way to encourage participation. I'd like to see it come back.

That said, I also learned to negotiate the site based on the Karma points. Now that I have done that, I don't rely on them as much.

 

Example?

Maybe it's the particular sub-forums that I usually read, but I've never seen any thread that was limited to only a few users.

 

I never put much stock in beer karma, whether my own or others. It's really obvious that most beer karma was generated by fishing for likes on WBAYDN or NBS threads and has little to nothing to do with their site contributions or knowledge. I don't care or even noticed the beer karma was gone, but then I never cared when it was around to begin with. If it's a big deal to others to bring karma points back, then fine, I don't care... I will go back to ignoring it.

 

Way back when in the olden times, there was actually a 250 character minimum. But, there came much Hue & Cry from the folks who primarily use their phones to access the site, and the count was reduced to a more Twatterish 150.