Also, should we allow stories to be -1 kicked too?

I like the idea - both karma and the -1 kick.

Thanks for going open source with the code. I cracked open a beer in your/dnk honor yesterday:)

I think karma maybe useful but not as useful as a -1 kick.

And if someone had a lot of good karma banked up would their kicks count more? That could be a good feature, but you would have to find an ideal multiplier so they "good" kickers do not overwhelm the rest of the kickers with only their links.

I don't know about a -1 kick, but it'd be nice to un-kick a story you've already kicked.

"it'd be nice to un-kick a story you've already kicked."

You can, it is a switch ;)

http://code.google.com/p/dotnetkicks/issues/detail?id=23

Sites may differ in what they want. I think the -1 adds to the game effect but some sites may not want that. Is there a way to make it a configuration option?

Please, no fucked up non-intuitive karma system. And no negative kicks, either. All that shit does is spur douchebags to game the system. Have you seen Digg lately? Its full of douche fucks who spend their whole day digging their friends and burying their enemies. Please, not here.

-1 for yesthatmcgurk (kidding, kidding)

I'm not convinced of the need for a -1 kick for stories, although I would like to see both a +1 and -1 for comments. I'll do whatever the consensus here is.

I think a -1 kick is necessary because some posts are just inaccurate and should not make the main page. Somehow it should be possible rank the links with some sort of level of credibility because it only takes about 5 kicks to get onto the main page. A little while back there was a link on DNK that was basically a rant about website projects versus web application projects. The rant was full of misleading statements yet someone who read it may now be misinformed. I read DNK to get the best links that I hope inform me better than reading the Technology section Digg.com.

I also think that Digg.com is a pop culture website while DNK is very focused on the .NET community. I do not think we are in danger of teenagers coming in here and posting a bunch of links about LOL Cats. Consider how it works over at wikipedia. They do not allow you to edit a page until your account has been active for a short time. That seems to have kept the problems to a minimum. If we had a rating (karma) system which could indicate who the regular contributors are to the website then we would be able to keep the focus of the website on .NET and hold the contributors to that focus, otherwise their rating would go down.

I do link the idea of kicking/burying comments. On Digg.com you generally have to page through the comments to find something worthwhile. It is easier with their revised system, but generally it is just the funniest comments that kicked up. Here it would be useful to borrow from Slashdot and kick with a criteria like funny, interesting or informative. Then I would like to sort the comments based on those criteria, or just show the informative comments.

I agree with yesthatmcqurk. I like how dnk is rather anonymous. There's little ego inflating or reputation building going on, just good article submissions.

I do not like the idea of a karma system; to some folks, a good karma score can become more important than actually posting useful items and thus leads to abuse. Currently I decide which links on DNK to follow based first upon user comments (if any) then by the description and number of kicks....but I don't see karma improving my particular method.

As for a -1 kick -- I'm all in favor of that. Such an ability would knock spam down in the (relatively short) period of time it remains on DNK (the 'report spam' function works well). Additionally, it would provide a balance to kick abuse (i.e. a user coming in under multiple accounts and kicking a clearly useless article).

I'm quite happy with DNK as it is, but if you have to add something...make it the -1 kick. Avoid the karma system at all costs.

So there are lots of differing opinions here.

My current preference is still to have a karma points system and thumbs up/down for comments. One of the areas lacking on this site is the number of comments per story. The lack of a quality commenting system takes a lot of blame here, but I think that thumbs up/down will help too.

I don't want to impose my own feature wishes on the site now that it is open source, the community should guide what get it and what doesn't. Perhaps we will have a vote on this later in the week?

Who really cares..the most important thing is the information that we get here....hoping it will always be that informative as it is now...

I think we're talking about two issues here - the DNK site and the DNK platform. It may make sense to not include as much of the gaming aspect on this site since it is truly a resource for the .net community but as a platform there may be developers who want to create sites that cater to an audience that is looking for the gaming aspect. You're not going to get the religious I'm right/you're wrong back and forth arguments on on this site (unless you're talking about orm vs sprocs) but there may be sites that can potentially use the DNK platform to create various communities that thrive on using the game type features. A configuration option would allow this flexibility and add value to the platform.

If we allowed thumbs up/down for comments, we could have a vote right here.

Wow, was I drinking when I wrote that? I gotta get rid of my F, K, S and K keys. Jeez.

Anyhow, I'm still down on karma and voting. They suck.

Maybe it isn't necessary being able to vote comments up, rather voting a comment down is may suffice.
Perhaps, if one of your comments falls below a quality threshold your karma should decrease a point or two. I just hope we won't witness a new "Bury Brigade" if comment voting is implemented here on DNK.