Hm, no - it's not the right place imo, but anyway - here's what can get you a negative karma rating (only devs, moderators, supporters and some other privileged groups can give karma btw.):
- PMing devs for support
- double-posting
- cross-posting
- thread-hijacking
- asking questions that show you haven't read the documentation nor searched the board
- posting stuff on boards that isn't meant to contain posts of that type (e.g. asking for support on the "feature requests" board or in "General discussion (no support!)" or asking a question on a support board that doesn't deal with your version)
- failing to read sticky threads before posting in a sub-baord
- not respecting the "one issue per thread" policy
- generally speaking: not respecting board rules and common sense
We use the karma system (that is available on SMF installs out-of-the-box for everyone and only restricted here on the coppermine board by using a custom hack) for internal purposes: to track users who constantly misbehave. Supporters are reluctant to help users with a high negative karma record, and a negative karma record may influence the decision to ban a user.
It's easy to receive negative karma (especially for newbies) and comparatively hard to receive positive karma - you get it for contributing in one way or the other (e.g. by giving support, contributing a mod, theme, translation or similar). For details how you can increase your karma, see
http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=14227.0Others have asked about negative karma as well, searching for it would have explained it as well and you wouldn't have risked receiving more negative karma for thread hijacking and posting as question that has been asked and answered already. I split your question and my reply from the
unrelated thread.
There's nothing to worry for you if you have a negative karma, as long as you try to respect board rules in the future; your positive karma would even increase if you contributed in one way or the other, making your overall karma increase on the way.
Joachim