It's than damn Karma Chameleon again.

You lose Karma due to piracy so make sure to use good DRM on it.

Seriously: they are just temporal fluctuations. (and maybe depends on which forum you are checking as Karma is localized to the forums in which you received it).

Karma can fluctuate wildly depending on the forum you visit, the amount of karma you've received, and when you receive karma.  I will eventually take the time to revamp the karma system and make it... better... but for now, you can always rely on your individual karma page to be accurate.

Bara

Two quibbles:

1) You can't "rely on your individual karma page" because it does not provide totals that reflect the listed entries and it limits listed entries by page length and/or timestamp on the entry. (Manual count attempts are also complicated by the fact that some users at some sites can give more than 1 karma per entry.)

2) Given the wild fluctuations, wouldn't it be better to hide all the karma UI stuff until you can "make it... better" or at least consistent?

My Nana would have objected to the karma thing on religious grounds because my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, but she died well before modems became consumer products. Me, I mostly want that forum clutter to go away, but I'm human, hence at least occasionally vain, and therefore ambivalent. Given my impression that Stardock wants it to stay and have 'value,' I wish that it wasn't quite so much like Florida weather. Around here, you can get pounded with serious hail and a big bucket of sudden rain while the neighbors two doors down didn't even get wet.

You might want it removed, but I'd probably get a hundred people telling me to put it back  The karma system works, it's just that the number calculations are wrong.  Once those are fixed, all of the karma people have received will be reflected accurately, so there's no reason to turn it off.

Also, I meant as far as seeing your karma, not getting a count.  Does the count really matter?  I may as well remove the count and just notify you when you get new karma.  But we'll see what happens.

Bara

I'm know that I'm an outlier in pretty much any collection of people, except perhaps Opinionated, Mouthy People. It's still theoretically 'public service' because the center can hold on better if it has some idea of what's going on at the fringes.

Re the count on the report page, I suppose it doesn't "really matter," but what passes for my professional background leaves me really vexed by 'blatant' UI errors. Also, when the report page counts are working, they can let you know that you got some appreciation from a ranked user at one of the sites where some people can give more than 1 karma at a time. If site karma is supposed to have a positive feedback role, it seems like the report should actually indicate which entries were >1 and by how much.

All that aside, if I read your last scrap rightly, I think it might be very good to strip the numbers out entirely and just get an analog to the PM notice every time your report page has updates. The reports would need to be able to run long or have multiple pages, though.

Indeed.