4.5. Slay It Forward

The DoD guild forums, displaying the karma leaderboard

Your Name In Lights

Along the top of the forums were a list of names, each paired with a conspicuous number. Every day the numbers changed and the names shifted positions. The first few weeks saw the greatest fluctuation as the guild gradually dipped their toe in the karma pool. As one traversed a forum topic, each entry displayed two new buttons: one labelled +, the other, -. Clicking them produced a message, "Here you can explain, or write a reason why you are increasing or decreasing this user's karma". Most important of all was the public record: clicking a user's name allowed you to access their karma changelog, an audit trail of goodness. All the info you needed to battle your way on to the leaderboard was to see what others were doing, then take the initiative yourself.

I scanned through the list of recent adjustments:

Goldenrod » Dalans: "Because this linked me to the Mega Man hoodie, which I will be buying." 

Jemb » Randyflagg: "Made a very lovely CSI image of me, props to him :D" 

Kedavra » Omaric: "Mad rapping skills"

Klocker » Bheer: "Dear lord cat is funny." 

It was good to see them taking to the tool, playing with it, experimenting in trading karma for cat pictures. But there was so much more potential buried there. The course of action I knew best was to lead by example, so I joined the karma pool party.

I issued my first karma reward on the 8th of July:

Hanzo » Kizmet: "for filling an empty spot in the raid."

In a not-completely-hardcore, not-quite-casual guild, roster backfill was a weekly necessity. A slow, deliberate re-education brought the guild to a point where Raiders just knew to be online at invite time. Standby was their best shot at getting into a raid they couldn't commit to. And while my Elites' competitive drive was the fundamental force in our raids, it was the Raiders that were the unsung heroes of progression. They were the battle tested, loyal members of our guild who waited patiently at the sidelines to fill, not always gaining a spot, nor proclaiming to be entitled to one. Thanks to karma, I was now able to issue a public thank you to those who helped make it possible...and the public record helped remind others of its importance.

The guild wasn't often privy to the level of effort necessary to maintain itself. People gave up their time slaying internet dragons (or the Alliance, depending on your preference) to sit down and work out the kinks with me...and these weren't always officers. Cheeseus and Bheer both spent a hefty amount of time testing the forum karma implementation, coming back with display issues that needed fixing, numbers that needed tweaking, and suggestions that polished off the rough edges. For this work, I issued out karma as well:

Hanzo » Cheeseus: "For contributing QA to me on the Karma implementation."

...and received karma in return:

Bheer » Hanzo: "Yup, the post box and + - buttons all look perfect now. Well done sir!

And... How am I the first person to have given you karma? :p"

It was only a matter of time before those investigating the leaderboard began to get ideas of their own on how to make contributions of value.

The administrative view of forum karma

How Do I Love Thee?

The first signs warmed the cockles of my heart. I found guild members thanking those who gave of their extra time to provide more raiding options to the guild:

t@t » Mangetsu: "for doing the alt run."

There were examples of selflessness between players with regards to loot:

Helmeron » Deathonwing: "For the great action of passing loot on when he could've had it!"

Officers thanked non-officers for officer-like behavior:

Jungard » Joredin: "Doing a good job keeping our 10-man raid information organized here on the forums."

Fellow raiders thanked one another for insight into the wonderful world of theorycrafting...

Bheer » Jemb: "Useful posts are useful."

...as well as acknowledgement of expertise at the wheel:

Drecca » Blain: "For being Blain, a rogue that actually knows how to use tricks of the trade"

This exchange of make-believe points for qualified effort soon reached beyond the confines of the guild. DoD took karma a step further, and used it to thank people for helping with concerns not bound to the guild or even World of Warcraft:

Goldenrod » Omaric: "Help with my computer"

Random acts of support and encouragement:

Riskers » Lexxii: "Good luck with the grant!"

People that had otherwise never met each other before in real life offered their beds up for BlizzCon:

Moo » Goldenrod: "Um, that is such a nice gesture. I have accommodations but i just think it's really nice of you and your girlfriend to be so generous. I look forward to meeting you both!"

The members of DoD laid their feelings bare like never before:

Borken » Larada: "Because I love you."

Jokes aside, it was encouraging to see the guild treating each other with that kindness and respect I had hammered home for so many years. I resisted considering forum karma anything more that a fun toy, but watching those initial exchanges gave me hope that the guild really did consider itself an extended family. It was the bond of family that was going to have to carry us through an approaching storm.

Any opportunity that arose to supply positive feedback, I jumped on it. If players advocated for DoD, I rewarded them for selling the guild. If officers moderated the forums, I thanked them for their work. If I messed up the raid rotations for the week, and players corrected me, their honesty would not be taken for granted. And if they invoked concerns of their class or upcoming changes in Cataclysm with care and insight, rather than blatant whines and complaining, I was certain to reward that good behavior.

Anyone was capable of good behavior, with just a touch of effort:

Hanzo » Ben: "For being passionate and vocal about the Shadow Priest situation. Now, go tell Blizzard."

---

Forum Karma was a great addition to the DoD boards. It was fun, inspired the guild to spend more time participating in discussions, and acted as self-perpetuating conduit of positive guild culture. But forum karma had one other unintended benefit buried in its use: it gave me a window into the guild's state of mind.

Lexxii and Immortalus prepare to run
 down Dirty, while Rainaterror looks on,
Dalaran

Cake and Eating It

When Bonechatters approached me with the option of bringing in Rainaterror's shaman for a solitary achievement, I hesitated. What was intended as a gesture of kindness could easily be perceived as selfishness by others. A loose set of attendance restrictions was already a courtesy DoD extended to Raiders that couldn't...or wouldn't...re-arrange their real-life schedules around our raid times. Fair enough, that was their choice. But to duck out of raids, yet still want help to wrap up an achievement felt very much like the proverbial cake, complete with a layer of entitlement-flavored icing. DoD's mission was to go above and beyond for one another, so this decision teetered dangerously between helping out a guildy and supporting lazy selfishness. I deliberated briefly, then told Bonechatters that I was fine with allowing it, but that there were no guarantees we could fit her in. Secretly, I suspected this wouldn't go over well.

I wasn't too far off.

Neps, an officer known for sardonic yet lighthearted wit, pulled no punches in his criticism of Bonechatters' request,

"Aight, I'll be the assholedickpieceofshit again. I love you, Bone, but there's no way in Hell you're bringing her toon. I hate being mean and shit, but we can't be carrying peeps to get drakes. I know a bunch of raiders will agree with this too. If people miss runs or are just bad and don't get to come again, then we shouldn't be going out of our way to get them some drakes that the rest of us put in a shit load of time to get. I just don't like giving peeps free stuff that we we're working so hard to get. Sorry."

Drecca was next to respond, "I don't really want to raid normal modes for people who were/are too busy to raid with us most of the time, or got rotated out for whatever reason. It's completely unfair to the people who've spent months, nonstop, in ICC and still continue to do so."

Pulling back the curtain mirrored these sentiments. A flow of karma issued to Neps reflected that same mentality:

Bheer » Neps: "Karma for this. Holy shit, you're always the nice guy Neps!"

Ben » Neps: "I think you know why."

Jungard » Neps: "Good point. We aren't exactly worried about the status of players like Raina and aether on drakes lol."

Randyflagg » Neps: "FATALITY!"

Klocker » Neps: "For bringing sexy back."

All doubt on which side of the fence this issue fell was obliterated in that moment. The reason why didn't come to me until I chatted with Jungard on the subject later.

"Yeah, I wasn't too keen on the idea, but I also felt the guild had a bit of an obligation to at least extend Boney the option. Seeing your response in Neps' karma history lumped in with everyone else helped set the record straight."

"Oh, that's public?"

"...uh, yeah. Didn't I show you this part? See, you can list Neps' entire history from his profile."

"Hm, I don't think so. This is a pretty cool feature. So...you can see all the karma changes and reasons and such?"

It appeared that some people still thought their karma exchanges were private.

In "public", out on the forums, guildies would be more inclined to edit themselves, or often just go with the flow. If they had a mechanism to keep their opinions private, however, they might be more inclined to speak the truth, without fear of repercussion. And if by chance, it wasn't entirely well known that every guildy's history was accessible, then taking the guild's temperature via karma carried a lot more weight.

I kept further announcements about the karma mod on the down-low, watching and waiting to see what they would do next, while I brainstormed other ways to take the guild's pulse. Knowing where their heads were at was vitally important to a decision I was giving serious consideration to: excising the 10-Man teams from the guild completely.

4.3. The Karma Initiative

Kaleu, DoD's hunter officer during Vanilla,
stands atop the bank for an evening pic,
Orgrimmar

A Most Appropriate Phobia

Waiting solved nothing. The greatest of intentions weren't enough of a guarantee that Blizzard would backpedal on their 10/25 decision as readily as they had with Real ID. I posted what I could, trying to keep my emotions in check, providing a rational explanation as to why dolling out the same rewards for two different levels of difficulty completely undermined the entire raid game, then put it behind me.

Next came the hard part: finding ways to keep from hemorrhaging players.

I rewound the tape of our events and deeds, back to the very beginning, to see what it might reveal. We'd done things well in Wrath of the Lich King, perhaps buried somewhere in the recesses of my extraordinarily selective memory, a hint existed -- something to strengthen the bonds of the guild. When the tape of the mind came to a stop, I had just come face-to-face with one of my newest guildies.

---

"The infamous Kaleu!"

He gave a firm handshake while shielding his eyes from the sun. Behind him stood the Anaheim Convention Center, a grand building of never-ending glass. I twisted my neck to the side to take in the enormous banner draped above us: BlizzCon.

"Kerulak, right?"

"Kerulak, Hanzo, Shawn...whatever gets the job done."

He was a bit shorter than I, perhaps 5'9" or 5'10", but like nearly every person on the planet, had me beat in the weight dept. As the expression goes, I'm 140lbs soaking wet; any and all attempts to increase the load are met with abject failure. The side-effects of a gaming lifestyle are rarely observed when I enter the room, but I expect that I intimidate very few people as a result. When your qualifying metric is could he take me a fight?, you quickly learn your place -- and it isn't often at the front of the line.

"Are there any others?"

"I believe Kadrok said he'd be here as well. We'll keep a look out for him."

Kaleu came along as part of the package deal that was The Final Cut. Weeks earlier, one of Kaleu's partners-in-crime, a fellow by the name of Darange, emailed me. They had the 40-Man flu, they needed their drugs. At best, they were 12-15 strong. They were considering a merge with another top notch raiding guild, to push them over the hump and get into Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, etc. The meeting of the minds discussed everything from loot rules and ranks to guild ideologies. Both parties agreed to the terms and, with a virtual handshake, we absorbed The Final Cut. Part of those terms dictated a few promotions, and Kaleu was my new Hunter officer as a result.

We wandered through the convention center, meandering towards the massive lab of computers to the right of the entrance. The darkened room was easy on gamer eyes. Above us hung enormous posters from the roof, decorated with Blizzard's various franchisees. Podiums of artwork, books, and unrelated merchandise were a formidable distraction, but Kaleu and I would not be deterred. There was plenty of time for those trivialities; we were on a mission. We navigated through the crowd, circling around to the back of the computer lab. The entrance was roped off, a line of nerds quickly forming that wrapped around the lab's perimeter.

"God, where does this thing even start?"

"I see it now, back this way," Kaleu motioned to the side of the room back near the entrance. All other BlizzCon festivities would come later. For now, the #1 priority was to get our hands on a playable demo of the Blood Elf starting area in The Burning Crusade. It would be more than a year before we would see the next expansion.

We found the tail and joined the line, while I waited for the paranoia to set in.

BlizzCon: great for cosplayers, bad
for people with Cosplayophobia
(Source: Blizzcon.com)

Panic at the BlizzCon

The line moved slowly, so Kaleu and I got to know one another. He'd been a long time gamer, had known a good chunk of the folks in The Final Cut from before World of Warcraft, formed in a little game known as Star Wars Galaxies. He described the game as being innovative for its time, relying on customer created content. The casuals of the SWG crowd grew irritated at this design, and more vocal in their outrage. A patch eventually came to appease those casuals, but change was significant; the magic was gone. TFC exited. Kaleu also confirmed my suspicions as to the origin of their guild name: the Pink Floyd album that marked the end of Roger Waters' overzealous grip over the band's direction. Every song, every lyric, even the album's art bore Waters' name -- two years later, he walked away, leaving the band he created to fend for themselves.

"It's sort of a Catch 22 with the community aspect of running a guild. You want them to be on the forums, talking, chatting, but nobody wants to do that. They just want to play. The players you need the most participation from...those are the ones least likely to show up."

I agreed, commenting on the sad state of our guild's out-of-game activity, "Our forums could use a little stickiness."

"Forum involvement isn't going to make good players. It builds community, but it's not necessary."

We know what makes good players. Keep the tape rolling. What was it that he said about community?

"I've seen all kinds of gimmicks, too. Things like a certain amount of required reading over x amount of time. If you don't keep it up, you lose your posting privileges, and those are tied to your ability to sign up for guild events."

You’re already doing that now. Keep it rolling.

"Most of the time, people just post shit. Trying to sift through that is a pain in the ass. So when quality posts finally show up, they're buried in a mess, and..." Kaleu added with a sigh, "you have a handful of people with all this knowledge, but you don't know who they are. Nobody has a reason to contribute."

Lovely.

Kaleu gave a single chuckle, arms folded across his chest, "Yeah, I don't envy you at all. Trying to come up with solutions is a full time job."

We inched towards the front of the line, and watched a Blizzard employee routing eight more players to machines. I glanced at the floor a moment, contemplating Kaleu's thoughts on community building, and caught a glimpse of fuzzy white feet. Behind us stood a female cosplayer, armored completely in The Earthfury. It was an impressive representation of its virtual counterpart, immaculately detailed from horns to hooves. Hooves. I glanced up at her face, obscured by paint and a prosthetic bovine snout.

First came the beads of sweat, that sudden coolness that rushes over you as hysteria sets in. Next was the rapid pounding from deep in the chest, the twitching of muscles as they tense for flight. I couldn't explain it, yet there it was, just as it had been my entire life: the irrational fear of being around adults in costumes and face paint. I was the missing verse in an Alanis Morissette song.

"Nice!" Kaleu said, glancing over his shoulder.

"Thanks!" came her reply.

...and just like that, the panic was gone. I stared back at Kaleu, stunned by the sudden absence of anxiety. He gave me a puzzled look.

"...what?"

An early design of Stack Overflow
(Source: StackOverflow.com)

The Gamification

I snapped out of the trip down mammary lane and focused on my monitor, while Kaleu's words faded away. Builds Community. No Reason to Contribute. Full-time job. How could I increase the guild's involvement on our forums? A better question: what was the right kind of involvement? And how could I do it without increasing my administrative load? Mangetsu had the right idea with his recent forum topic, U RAFF U RUSE, DoD version, a game encouraging the guild to withstand his 4chan-esque sense of humor, with the losers posting their own comedy in return. It was a self perpetuating machine of contribution, the likes of which couldn't compare to any other thread the DoD forums had seen since creation. His forum game knew no ranks or titles. Present or past guildies, elites, raiders, officers and n00bs, they all participated. How could I build on that? The mechanism eluded me until I zeroed in on the website staring back from the monitor.

Stack Overflow was now two years old. I scrolled down the list of programming questions on the homepage. "Why doesn't SetInterval work properly in JavaScript?" "OnMouseDown vs. OnMouseClick problems." "Can't align my image correctly within an embedded div...help!" Next to each question, numbers marked how many times each question had been viewed, how many answers had been offered up, and whether or not an official answer had been deemed 'correct'. It was a surprisingly addictive experiment fashioned to solve programming problems...and it was working. Complete strangers were coming together for a common good, and no money changed hands. Instead, answers buried in the minds of geeks around the globe came forth by challenging each other to rack up reputation points, like a Counter-Strike squad member racking up kills.

It was no surprise to me that this game-like website came from the mind of a gamer who once set his computer up in my home for a LAN party. If you get the chance, be sure to ask him about the guinea pig cage.

That gamer mentality. What better way to draw out the introverted hacker than by the lure of badges and awards? Those reputation points were like a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a trap, and programmers slowly emerged from their digital caves, expertly exchanging their knowledge for a rolling score. The real power of the system came from how these anonymous peers evaluated each other, decentralizing its own governance. The highest quality questions and answers floated to the top in a flurry of votes, as these nerds battled each other for supremacy of their trade. The result: a self-moderated community producing exceptional content as a result of their primal instincts to climb a virtual ladder.

That was it: the ladder. Stack Overflow's scoreboard was front-and-center. Where was ours?

I scoured the interwebs looking for such a thing, if it existed. My search ended on a page within the phpBB support forums; a plugin called "Karma MOD". It worked like this: users would be granted the option of issuing virtual points to one another, assigning comments for their reasoning. I began to see examples in my mind, "Great strategy guide!", "Thanks for filling in on last night's raid", and "Appreciate the help on adjusting my healing spec."

I read on. Karma could also be taken away, inspiring thoughts of long-term veterans assisting in the education of the newer recruits -- subtle hints to point new people in the right direction, keeping them from flying those red flags. The self-moderating capabilities of this tool appeared to have far reaching effects.

How exactly Karma would play into the grand scheme of my guild's administration in Cataclysm I wasn't quite sure...but I suspected it was a step in the right direction. I cracked open the phpBB code, reviewed the docs, and began to implement.