What is Karma?

It's a way of saying thanks.

It's what Annatar gets a huge amount of.

"Karma; the cosmic principle according to which each person is rewarded or punished in one incarnation according to that person's deeds in the previous incarnation."

Good enough for you?

Edit:

(Oh, and the value of karma is measured in cookies).

Cookies!

Thanks.  Cookies sound good.

You should think of it as a sort of cosmic penis. Consequently Annatar is the man to fear.    

Karma is a word, like love.

It's also something that makes some of us regularly uncomfortable for a range of reasions, e.g.:

• There's no decent etiquette for much of anything on the Internet, much less when and how often to give karma to folks on a public forum.
• Your mother raised you to believe pride is a sin.
• You don't believe in sin, but you still worry about being unreasonably arrogant.
• A really good thread can make you forget entirely about pretending to quantify your response to other people because you're too busy reading their words and maybe trying to respond.

I have a wee bit of 'extra karma gifting power' over at GC2, but I mostly ignored the stuff until Brad mentioned that scores there could factor into choices for the Elemental invitation-only alpha/pre-beta thing. I'm pretty sure I have no interest in that level of beta volunteer work, but because I'm both uncertain about my own interests and hosh-koshy about the karma thing, I've made a job of remembering to give karma regularly even though I still basically wish the 'feature' didn't exist.

Karma, as it is being implemented now on the Stardock forums, is simply a popularity contest. I could, if so inclined, start a thread titled "Hooray for Big Bouncy Boobies", and garner at least a half dozen karma in one fell swoop.

There are many members of the Stardock forums who have spent countless hours of their own time through the years trying to help other members. This effort has been mostly undocumented.