Comment Karma
January 24th, 2013 at 8:49 pm by David FarrarWe have reactivated comment karma which allows you to vote up or down on comments you feel are especially good or especially bad. Don’t vote on every comment as that can cause load issues, and if you vote try and be fair – vote on what is being said, not on who is saying it.
No comments get hidden if they get negative ratings. The ratings are just a feedback device.
Tags: Kiwiblog
January 24th, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Why did you deactivate it, out of interest? When you had it previously, people appeared to use it simply to judge whether or not they agreed with a particular comment, not whether or not it was a good quality comment that presented a reasoned argument. So it was very predictable, given the bias of the blog itself, which comments would attract positive and negative karma. This made the facility itself little but a gimmick of very limited value IMHO.
[DPF: it was deactivated for technical reasons]
January 24th, 2013 at 9:16 pm
Woohoo
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:24 pm
Can you change ups to
and downs to whatever you like cause I never use them.
Nothing could be nicer than to see a comment followed by say
etc. etc. etc. 
January 24th, 2013 at 9:27 pm
Its retrospective !
:Twisted:
I can see a fruitful night ahead
All joking aside there could be times when the vocal minority drown out the true support for some posts Karma may show up this misdirection
Vote:The problem will be discerning this value in amongst the inevitable static.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:36 pm
Mmmm, I find the voting stats detract from the comments. Might just be me. It was great to have edit/delete re-actived a while back.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:37 pm
That’s very deep logic there bach. I’ll have to have another drink while I think about it!
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:37 pm
Farrar it is an Americanism to say try and be fair.
Vote:You have to try to do something.
Try invites the objective to be fair,
therefor ‘ try to be fair’
January 24th, 2013 at 9:38 pm
Why did you deactivate it, out of interest?
From what I recall, it was being used as an entry to attack the site by overloading the server etc.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:41 pm
I like comment karma. It shows me I have more hidden friends than weird stalkers who hate me. That’s always a good thing.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Bad Karma could be
turned green (with envy) 
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:43 pm
I have always loved you Lucia even though you are not an Ovine.
Except for once when you were really nasty!
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:44 pm
It was deactivated because of the load it caused on the server, not because it was being used to attack the site. Indeed, judging from DPF’s comment above
server load is still an issue.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:46 pm
It was a poorly written wordpress plugin not designed to work on sites of this magnitude, so it got Alderaan’d. Hopefully it has been re-written since then.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Or, possibly, the server has been upgraded to something a bit more powerful.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 10:12 pm
DPF – do you have the option to change the colours? I can’t bring myself to vote green or red.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 10:13 pm
DPF
Go all lprent on us and describe how the comment karma was something you rewrote while pondering the bootup script binary universal low level software hardware interface technique.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 10:18 pm
Let the night owls scroll thru the last Bain thread and let them know that they are obsessed!
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 10:22 pm
Lol, like that’s going to happen. The vote counts just represent the degree to which Redbaiter agrees with the comment. It works like a charm even though he just has the one account. It’s uncanny, really.
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 10:22 pm
Nice 1 Burt!
Vote:January 24th, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Love when people down vote innocuous comments, shows they’re more interested in who said it than what’s said.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 12:08 am
I liked it when comments with lots of negative votes got hidden – reading abusive and stupid comments spoils the enjoyment of the blog.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 3:48 am
Have you looked into using the Disqus commenting system? It’s brilliant and a big step up from the native commenting system in WordPress. Works well on Whale’s site too.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 7:38 am
This is a politico blog so side taking is only natural and post behavior is given the shrug but out in the wider net it looks to become an arena where highly intelligent people get caught up in strange dances of stupidity. The gun debate was just stupid, I kept arguing there’s no need to change anything in their constitution but instead of arguing and supplying good data they got rednecked on me. I actually found better data here from fletch and others. If you ask me (which no one will) people have taken on a filibuster type arguing stance type without realizing it.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 8:35 am
The thumbs-up number is actually just an automated count of how many times a comment uses the word “liarbore”.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 8:53 am
I have seen an instance of Comment hidden due to low rating. Click here to view”
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 12:01 pm
2 observations – you do not need to be logged in to vote which has the potential for abuse by losers lurking on the site and not contributing.. and second (possbily due to the first point) there already seems to be an overwhelming bias of down-votes on many comments across the site including those which are pretty neutral and shouldn’t really attract any votes all.
This one by Fletch as an example running 2 up 7 down at the time of writing..
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Like it back.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 1:15 pm
Kleva Kiwi (52) Says:
January 25th, 2013 at 10:22 am
?
The ultimate accolade for a KBer you own highlighted comment.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 6:24 pm
That was inadvertent and has now been fixed.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 7:19 pm
Pete – really? I’ve seen another instance of it since then.
Interesting that I can make a statement of uncontroversial, non-partizan, incontrovertible fact; and yet one person still thought it was worth voting it down… makes me wonder what good the voting system really is!?
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Imagine it must be somewhat distressing for smug self deluding sophists like Grief and others to discover their pathetic liberal/ progressive views do not have quite the widespread public backing they believe them to have.
Vote:January 25th, 2013 at 8:41 pm
Yes red you will be able to attain the almost fifty likes you so justly earn.
Whilst my views will continually result in many bad marks from the conservonutters.
This makes me laugh conservonutters are such a funny bunch.
sophists :The term originated from Greek σόφισμα, sophisma, from σοφίζω, sophizo “I am wise”; confer σοφιστής, sophistēs, meaning “wise-ist, one who does wisdom,” and σοφός, sophós means “wise man”.
Vote: