Dear Launchpad: Please stop arbitrarily blowing away my KARAMAAM

The current behaviour is what's in the https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/KarmaImplementation spec, and I don't think it's a problem.

Also, this behaviour is something that was explicitly requested by Mark, so I think you'll need to discuss this change with him.

On 12/16/05, Guilherme Salgado <email address hidden> wrote:
> Public bug report changed:
> https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/5482
>
> Comment:
> The current behaviour is what's in the
> https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/KarmaImplementation spec, and I
> don't think it's a problem.
>
> Also, this behaviour is something that was explicitly requested by Mark,
> so I think you'll need to discuss this change with him.

mpt, do you think karma is useful for motivating people to do good
things in Launchpad?

If so, do you think it's a feature that you can be doing
borderline-psychotic triaging in Malone and still suddenly lose ~300
points in one day?

Cheers,

--
Brad Bollenbach

On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 06:01:36PM -0000, Guilherme Salgado wrote:
> Public bug report changed:
> https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/5482
>
> Comment:
> The current behaviour is what's in the
> https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/KarmaImplementation spec, and I
> don't think it's a problem.

I think Brad has a good point. KarmaImplementation doesn't provide any
examples of how karma is changing during time, thus there's no
rationale for the specific formula that's given. I think it's OK to
have karma disappear over time, but at the moment it's degrading too
fast, I think it would better to adjust the formula, so that you divide
into into a few more time periods, so that you don't have to start
deducting 50% of the karma. For example, after a while the gathered
karma is worth 90%, then 80%, and so on. Not sure exactly how many
steps there should be, and what the time periods should be. It
deserves a small spec, where example of reasonable karma activities are
given, and how they change during time.

It probably would be worth to skip showing the actual numbers, and show
levels instead. This, though, should be done only after the karma
system has stabilised, and when we can analyse the current karma activity
and choose reasonable levels.

I agree that karma shouldn't drop precipitously. Perhaps something like this would be better:

def person.calculateKarma:
    karma = 0
    for event in events:
        age = today() - date(event)
        if age < 1 year:
            karma = karma + (
              value(event) *
              (1 - age/1 year)
            )
    if user = bradb:
        karma = random.randint(-300, 300)

This is very annoying indeed. I spent hours yesterday doing some translations and STILL managed to drop my karma! What gives? I'm very sure I have contributed more than 3000+ yet LP claims it to be 115... Should we bring this up at the next CC meeting?

Stuart has implemented this exactly as I suggested (except for the bradb exception).