I've been giving this some thought. With the new requirement of 0 negative karma (curses) for becoming a moderator there should be a way for people to get rid of thier negative karma.
The first is center around the concept that people change. I believe that it is the most fair, but requires a lot more from the staff. Based on the number of negative karma the staff would be able to decide to clear some one's negative karma based on current actions rather than thier past actions.
Basic actions to clear negative karma:
- Earn more positve karma than negative
- Recruit new members
- Promote the team in positive ways
- Assist the staff by alerting them of rule breaking, notifing a post that needs to be moved, ect.
- Increased activity
Lets say JoeSmith joined up and got negative karma, left for a few weeks and came back. On his return he plays nice and doesn't get anymore negative karma and builds up positive karma. He also recruits a couple of new members and promotes the site in positive ways. In this hypothetical situation his negative karma should be wiped clean.
This would in theory mean that members would have to be reviewed every year. Every six months would be better.
Another option is yearly Karma adjustments. The staff can simply deduct a member's negative karma from thier positive. For example:
JohnQuincy Dark World Fortune +8/-3
8 - 3 = 5
JohnQuincy Dark World Fortune +5/-0
As long as the person has more positive karma than negative karma the result will always be a 0 negative karma. And if the two are equal than it's a complete reset. The only issue is when negative karma is more than positive. In which case I suppose a private discussion would be in order to address the member's actions.
I have also been giving some thought as to how both of these policies could be executed, but I want to know everyone's opinion on the core of the two policies I thought up. Keep in mind I think only one policy would be needed, I just happened to have come up with two.