In topics, under the avatar of each user's post there is this "karma" bit.
First off, for those unfamiliar with the term, what is karma you ask? As always wikipedia has the answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma#Western_interpretationSo basically, each user can give positive karma or negative karma once every sixty minutes. The purpose of this is to essentially provide a 'credibility rating' for each user.
If while reading a topic you think a given user has made an excellent post, you can award them positive karma[applaud]. If you think someone is being a complete idiot and should not have wasted their finger energy to type the post, you can give them negative karma[smite]. Their net total is then displayed in each post. In this way new users can [maybe] have a better idea of who's opinions are respected and who's are less respected.
As was stated above [although slightly embedded] karma can only be awarded by each user once per hour (this
includes admins - so they cant skew things drastically) to keep people from abusing the system.
I thought it would be fun to try out and see what happens, I can disable it at any time so please place your thoughts in the "forums feedback" forum.
Enjoy!
