The problem with any sort of online gamification is you have winners, losers and cheaters. You also have dangerous unexpected consequences. I used to be part o

The problem with any sort of online gamification is you have winners, losers and cheaters. You also have dangerous unexpected consequences. I used to be part of a MUD (yes, go ahead, laugh) back in the 80s and 90s. It just so happened that quite a few of us in town were part of the same game. So we game'd the game. There was about 20 of us and we effectively created our own league. When you are dealing with a game with maybe 100 active people a league representing 20% of the total population was huge. Not only that but we were able to synchronize our events and became the most hated group in the entire system. They wound up banning all the ISPs in our city (but then they opened them back up when their game turned into a ghost town). Karma, badges, points, notoriety are all the same. Phbb and VBulletin (and muds for that matter) have been doing this kind of thing for twenty years. None of it really works all that great. The biggest killer tends to be when people organize (SRS). What happens when enough people organize on this system? A successful community is small, focused and diligent. The next -big- system that will replace reddit/et/al isn't going to be rehashing the karma system or increasing the complexity. Rather it will be smart enough to know who you like and who you dislike. It will deliver you the content and people that you want to engage in, not provide a battle to the bottom where only the most watered down high-school level content is going to pass through the masses.