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[curtis Hovey <curtis.hovey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This post of something I just posted to my blog. I am not very
interested in a discussion as there is an 87% chance is will devolve
into a bike shed argument. I you are inspired to act on this, rather
than discuss it, I will get your branch released.

http://curtis.hovey.name/2011/11/14/karma-means-action/

I not only hack on Launchpad, I use it everyday for my personal projects
and for the 1100+ projects I maintain as a registry administrator. I see
hundreds of pages each week where my first question is “what has this
user or project done recently”? Launchpad cannot easily tell me that,
and what it does say requires interpretation. I am very disappointed. I
think the most important information I need to see on Launchpad pages is
an activity log.  I want to see something like a wall or stream
presentation to understand how a person contributes to projects, what
kinds of contributions are made, and is a project vital or dormant? My
disappointment is compounded by Launchpad’s karma mechanism. I happen to
know that “karma” is a Sanskrit word meaning “action”, which is not how
Launchpad users or engineers interpret it.

I not writing an argument to fix Launchpad’s karma. It is fundamentally
corrupt. Discussions about it become bike shed arguments. I like the
name “karma” because I know it’s essential meaning, and that is all that
I want to preserve.

For your edification, the value attributed to your action in Launchpad
was arbitrarily set by an engineer, then a mechanism “balanced” the
number against values in rarely used features.  These rules were created
to in an effort to bring fairness to actions. We know that some actions
help more people than other actions, but what is happening is that
someone was awarded a tremendous number of points for some action that
will never help someone else. For example, You can work for a year to
build and release an app to earn 10 points, then Launchpad slaps you in
the face when I register a blueprint that will never be
implemented…awarding me with 300 points. Launchpad is misinforming you
and everyone else about the value of your contributions. The numbers
will always be subjective. Stop reading those karma numbers, stop trying
to raise them; you will not win anything for having a high score.

* I want to stop recording values for action, at the very least, never
  show them.
* I want to stop expending valuable CPU time balancing karma.
* I want to stop expiring karma.

Once we stop talking about value and fairness, we are free to add new
kinds of actions that we want Launchpad to record. I hope to know that
someone has registered a project, set the branch used as development
focus, added a recipe to build it, and made an official release.

* I want to see a listing of all the things I register or change in
  Launchpad.
* I want to see a list of actions that someone has done today, this
  week, this month, this year, and maybe even last year.
* I want to filter the actions by to specific categories that pertain
  to bugs, code, or planning.
* I want see a link to the thing the action was about.

-- 
Curtis Hovey
http://launchpad.net/~sinzui

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