Karma is too exclusive

[Randall Ross]

Karma score is (arguably) a measure of one's effort/contribution to the Ubuntu ecosystem, and demonstration community ethos.

However, there is a bias in the way that Karma is assigned that suggests exclusion and developer-focus. This is unfortunate given that there are so many people participating in making Ubuntu the best computing platform in the world, many of which have never written code, translated code, filed a bug report, or packaged an application.

[Randall Ross (randall)]

An example of developer-bias is documented here: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21908/ Refer to comment #1 from a Brainstorm moderator.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

You get karma in launchpad for stuff other than development activity.

For example launchpad answers http://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu will grant you karma.

It's documented here:-

https://help.launchpad.net/YourAccount/Karma

[Jorge Castro (jorge)]

The lp team takes a great deal of care to calculate karma, perhaps they could offer some recommendations for brainstorm?

[Randall Ross (randall)]

answers.launchpad.net does award Karma. My oversight.

I'd still like to get some more focus on all the activities that aren't covered and not the exclusive domain of developers and power-users.

Some of these (not exhaustive, but purely for illustration):
a) offering a game-changing idea that redefines computing (using Brainstorm)
b) offering an idea the results in a killer app for Ubuntu (using Brainstorm)
c) handing out flyers
d) helping a friend to try Ubuntu, resulting in a switch
e) creating a poster that is used for a marketing effort
f) running a public awareness session
g) writing a book
h) converting a school to Ubuntu

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

...

i) IRC help
j) Forums posts/help

There's a lot that people do outside of lp which isn't measured with karma. The only reason I have seen karma _used_ is when we (the membership boards) use it as a general indication of someone's work in the Ubuntu Community when they go for Ubuntu Membership. It isn't the only thing we look at but it's a good first indicator. We look into more than that which is why we ask people to update their wiki page with details of and links to pages showing their work in the community. If someone comes to us with a blank wiki page and lots of karma they'll likely be asked to come back when they have more detail on their wiki page, even if they have plenty of karma.

When someone comes to us for membership and they have some other community involvement and activity which isn't measured in karma, we look at it. We look at the forum posts they have done, the marketing materials they've made, their mailing list postings, and anything else they have to offer. If brainstorm posts was one of those, I'm sure that would be taken into consideration, but so far that I recall nobody has ever brought that up as a "here's why I should get membership" criteria - not in the EMEA Membership Board that I'm on, anyway.

Note that for some while I used to have more karma than anyone else on launchpad and I haven't written a single line of code :)

[Alan Bell (alanbell)]

launchpad is also bigger than Ubuntu, you can get launchpad karma from doing work on the OpenERP project for example. I think this bug is invalid as Karma is not an Ubuntu metric.

[Alan Bell (alanbell)]

original filer wants it left open

[Bernard Stafford (bernard010)]

Recently I have been translating language for Ubuntu 7 days a week. My Karma score keeps declining.
As well I have been Answering questions on Ubuntu.
The Karma Score has not reflected work done. These are trying times with the virus. Why are we declining the Karma Score for hard diligent work accomplished during these trying times. This is only a slap in the face more or less. These are only a few. This has been happening for years.
Very discouraging. This needs to be checked. Especially for the individuals that are uploading code for the next Ubuntu release. Karma should reflect the input of work being accomplished.