explain what Karma is and how "important" it is in the community

[Daniel Holbach]

There's the impression in parts of the Ubuntu community (and probably elsewhere) that only a high karma number indicates how good somebody's contributions are and that it's essential to have a high karma number.

I feel this should be clarified in Launchpad and convey that it's only an indicator, not more.

[Ursula Junque (ursinha)]

I think this gets worse because in the https://launchpad.net/ubuntu page there's a list of "Top Contributors", ordered by karma.

[Matthew Revell (matthew.revell)]

As Ursula suggests, this isn't a purely documentation problem: we use karma to decide who we list as a top contributor to a project and also the way we calculate karma is not ideal.

However, I'll add a help pop-up next to the karma score on profile pages -- suggestions for where else this should appear will be gratefully received. I'll also update the help wiki karma page.