Karma ratings don't seem accurate/helpful?

[LukeTheOrange]

I routinely see people who have dozens of time penalties in the last 60 days, but still have 100% karma. I personally prefer to play with players who honor the time limits. Why don't karma ratings account for time penalties

If a you play a lot of tournaments you can easily run into time penalties for various reasons. The tournament game usually has a separate total time limit. In most of those game players don't kick a player for running out of time they let the game timer decide if needed. So you can have what looks like a lot of time penalties but none that would have effected your karma.

Thanks for the info, but I'm not playing tournament games, and these are players who are routinely running out of time in the turn-based games I'm currently playing with them.

[vichy]

If he still have Karma 100 after dozens of penalties, it is because youhe probably plays dozens of games and the percentage of those delays is low. Or because he couldn't play 40 days ago but now he plays normally and has recovered his karma. Every case is a world.

Why don't you downvote him just so he can't play with you anymore? remember that you can see a person's reputation at all times on their profile.

That of "You can give players who run out of time a red thumb, but that's only after they've already joined the game and you've found out that their karma is misleading," is logical and reasonable. You can only value a person after having an experience with them. If not, what would prevent me from opening 17 accounts to vote negative for you and sink your karma?

The penalty you ask for is too general. If a person ends up a week in the hospital and their karma drops, do he have to be penalized forever? You don't know what happens on the other side of each player's screen. Just stop playing with that person. Not all of us have so many problems with people who are late in games in a timely manner.


PS: “I have had a premium membership before and am considering one again, but seeing how the karma ratings work makes me reluctant to do so.” I hate these kinds of useless veiled threats. First, by threatening to see if you get something instead of arguing it and that people give their opinion freely. And second, because of how absurd the chosen threat is. This website has 7,000,000 players. 1 premium account makes no difference. Please, just as you do not like sarcasm, next time avoid these kinds of useless authoritarian veiled threats for the rest of us.

[LukeTheOrange]

If he still have Karma 100 after dozens of penalties, it is because youhe probably plays dozens of games and the percentage of those delays is low. Or because he couldn't play 40 days ago but now he plays normally and has recovered his karma. Every case is a world.

Why don't you downvote him just so he can't play with you anymore? remember that you can see a person's reputation at all times on their profile.

That of "You can give players who run out of time a red thumb, but that's only after they've already joined the game and you've found out that their karma is misleading," is logical and reasonable. You can only value a person after having an experience with them. If not, what would prevent me from opening 17 accounts to vote negative for you and sink your karma?

The penalty you ask for is too general. If a person ends up a week in the hospital and their karma drops, do he have to be penalized forever? You don't know what happens on the other side of each player's screen. Just stop playing with that person. Not all of us have so many problems with people who are late in games in a timely manner.


PS: “I have had a premium membership before and am considering one again, but seeing how the karma ratings work makes me reluctant to do so.” I hate these kinds of useless veiled threats. First, by threatening to see if you get something instead of arguing it and that people give their opinion freely. And second, because of how absurd the chosen threat is. This website has 7,000,000 players. 1 premium account makes no difference. Please, just as you do not like sarcasm, next time avoid these kinds of useless authoritarian veiled threats for the rest of us.

Are you even serious about calling that a threat? Premium memberships help support this website and there should always be consideration for what would make a service better so more people would subscribe. This is normal stuff. Authoritarian? What authority do I have? That makes no sense at all. And I'm sure there are other people who feel the same way about potentially improving the service, as evidenced by the number of people who do honor time limits and some of the other responses in this thread.

How many people who are consistently late for games are actually in the hospital? That's a pretty ridiculous point, and don't you think those who are in the hospital have much better things to worry about? And even if they do care a lot about their karma and their BGA life, they probably have a ton of green thumbs and good ratings from before their hospitalization, so karma that reflects a percentage of games they're late for still wouldn't punish them much.

Your response about red thumbs is pointless and shows you didn't read or understand the original post. Of course I can give them a red thumb, but that doesn't help me avoid getting stuck with other people who are consistently late from being in other games. I distinctly pointed out that this is not a feasible way to play sift through players here, especially since the current karma formula could theoretically allow literally all 7 million players to be consistently late to games and still have perfect karma.

Again I have to ask, what is your problem with potentially not having perfect karma if you are late to games? Seriously, why would it bother you so much? I don't understand these replies at all and I would like people to think about that and be able to respond to it thoughtfully, but nobody seems able to. If you think it's okay to occasionally be late and don't like people who prefer to avoid it, why would it bother you AT ALL if there was a mechanism that prevents you from playing with players like me? What could your logic possibly be there? You would only be "stuck" playing with others who feel the same way and occasionally are late, so why is that a problem if you think it's okay to be late? Stop being so defensive about it. The only people you would miss out on playing with are people like me who prefer games with players who are almost never late, and I would think you would want to avoid that anyway, so what on earth is the problem?

[qwertasdfg]

A few years back when opening a table, you could restrict it by less than x% of games over time and less than x% of games quits.

That mechanism got axed by bga. But it looks like it is exactly what you (and many more) feel is needed.


Not sure if a forum search could find a thread with the reason for the change. Or maybe, een or souris could step in and give us either a pointer to that old thread or the reason they had for taking away the filter

[LukeTheOrange]

A few years back when opening a table, you could restrict it by less than x% of games over time and less than x% of games quits.

That mechanism got axed by bga. But it looks like it is exactly what you (and many more) feel is needed.


Not sure if a forum search could find a thread with the reason for the change. Or maybe, een or souris could step in and give us either a pointer to that old thread or the reason they had for taking away the filter

Interesting. Obviously, I would have loved that. Karma is almost meaningless under the current formula. I don't know what would be lost by bringing this back. I would think helping people find tables with people who are more like-minded in their habits would only improve participation, but I don't know... maybe it doesn't actually?

[qwertasdfg]

Found it: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 10&t=10651


By just browsing through some of the replies and questions, it is quite obvious many were against the change back then and they lived out clearly how the newer system is worse.
Alas, those posts were ignored and instead the thread got closed without providing good answers

[Ze Monstah]

[6element]

I'd prefer to have Karma-based table restriction replaced with recent-quit-rate-based one. IMHO, the most annoying thing an opponent can do is to quit mid game, but Karma in addition depends on moderation, running out of time, etc.

On the other hand, lack of quit-rate-based table restriction is a fairly minor issue. The workaround is to manually check quit rate of potential opponents before the game.

PS: It is interesting to know that quit rate-based table restriction existed in the past in some form.

[LukeTheOrange]

I'd prefer to have Karma-based table restriction replaced with recent-quit-rate-based one. IMHO, the most annoying thing an opponent can do is to quit mid game, but Karma in addition depends on moderation, running out of time, etc.

On the other hand, lack of quit-rate-based table restriction is a fairly minor issue. The workaround is to manually check quit rate of potential opponents before the game.

The current karma formula doesn't really reflect "running out of time" though. You don't lose points for being late unless someone kicks you out of the game, and people are loath to do that because it's unfair to other players at the table and because they want to see how the game turns out. Therefore you can literally be late to the majority of your games, get kicked out of just a few of them, and finish just enough games within the time limit to get your karma back to 100% easily. It's all but meaningless for filtering players by who honors time limits.

People can disagree about what's reasonable for expecting players to play on time, but I think everyone can agree that it's one of the factors that many people consider when choosing whom to play with. Why shouldn't there be a way to help players find tables that will maximize their enjoyment? Why should the karma rating prioritize people who routinely join far more games than they can possibly play on time over people who actually do play on time and prefer others who do the same? Based on some of the replies, it's pretty clear that some people want to still be able to join games with players who always honor the time limits, but they don't think they should have to honor the time limits themselves.

You have a strong preference for players who don't quit, but the current karma system actually encourages more quitting because it puts late players in with players who don't appreciate it and might quit. Also, if you really want a rating system that honors your preference to help you maximize your enjoyment of games, why shouldn't there also be a rating system that helps others do the same? If you don't care that much about time, you will be able to find tables with like-minded players.

It's not really feasible to manually check players all the time. If you see a table that's perfect for your schedule and your interests and you're the first player to join the creator, you don't know who else is going to join, nor are you likely to be online when the game starts if you're more of a turn-based player. Are you supposed to only join games where you're the last player to join?

[Ze Monstah]