BFP

++ What is karma?

Karma is a way to measure users' activity on Wikidot. Users with high karma are active in developing wikis and post frequently in wikidot forums.

++ How can I view someone's karma?

Karma level is shown as a bar next to your avatar. The more bars you have the higher karma you have.

||~ Number of bars ||~ Icon ||~ Textual description ||
|| 0 || [[image http://www.wikidot.com/common--theme/base/images/karma/karma_0.png]] || none ||
|| 1 || [[image http://www.wikidot.com/common--theme/base/images/karma/karma_1.png]] || low ||
|| 2 || [[image http://www.wikidot.com/common--theme/base/images/karma/karma_2.png]] || medium ||
|| 3 || [[image http://www.wikidot.com/common--theme/base/images/karma/karma_3.png]] || high ||
|| 4 || [[image http://www.wikidot.com/common--theme/base/images/karma/karma_4.png]] || very high ||
|| 5 || [[image http://www.wikidot.com/common--theme/base/images/karma/karma_5.png]] || guru ||

You can also see a member's karma by clicking on user's name. There you will find a users Karma along with the users standard profile.

You can easily reach medium to high level karma through normal activity. However, the guru level is reserved for most active members.

++ How can I raise my karma?

In general, the more active you are, the higher your karma is. You can get karma for various activities that include (but is not limited to):

* creating and editing wiki content (pages)
* participating in forum discussions
* participating in open community portals (like [http://community.wikidot.com Wikidot's community wiki])
* being wiki administrator/moderator/member
* inviting other people to join Wikidot
* having contacts and friends on Wikidot

++ What are benefits of having high karma?

The main benefit is that other users can instantly recognize you as an influential person and a wiki-expert.

We are also going to give some extra functionality for top-karma users. For example, very high and guru users were invited to participate in beta tests of our pro accounts and after finishing those tests, they could buy pro accounts with a significant discount.

++ How is karma calculated?

There are many factors in calculating a member's karma. Some of these are listed above. Only a 5-unit bar is displayed to make karma easy to see at a glance.[[footnote]] Guidelines for calculating karma have been included in the open source version. [[/footnote]]

++ Can someone vote for me so that I can get good karma?

No. Karma is a reflection of your expertise, skill, and how helpful you are in forums. It is not intended to show the popularity of a member.

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++ Why are the karma points not shown?

Karma points are not shown not to give users a possibility to predict how exactly the karma calculation works and to eliminate cheating. Also we would not like getting karma to become a competition among users.
--]

++ I'm very active but my karma is low? What can I do?

Editing pages is not the only factor taken to calculate karma. There are several factors that we take into account -- see above. If you want good karma, try helping members on the [http://community.wikidot.com/ community wiki]. This will raise your karma. [[footnote]] Karma is updated every few days and there might be a delay between your activity and your karma level. [[/footnote]]

++ I have high karma. Will it drop someday?

The karma levels are recalculated every few days and your karma can go up or down. There is one exception: if you achieved __guru karma__ it will not drop. It is really hard to get to this level and we do not see any point in taking karma back from the gurus.

++ Can people cheat the karma system?

We are constantly improving the algorithms to measure real activity of our members. We don't see any reason why anyone would cheat — even if someone could "cheat" to raise their karma, other members can easily verify his/her web activity and see if they are really active.