The karma system is completely fair. Yes the starting karma is 1 and this raises issues for beginners. But that also prevents users to spam the discuss section by creating fake identities. You need to work a little on your account and prove that you are serious towards codechef. Its not difficult to raise karma, if you are kind and smart enough!
Yes, anyone must be allowed to ask questions but how would you check if the user is genuine? In your hypothesis, if all the students are allowed to ask, what if there are some mischievous children? People at codechef have to keep their forum clean so that at least the people with some karma get their answers correctly. If karma to ask question is decreased to 1, the quality of the questions and answers would take a hit too.
This karma system is full of flaws.
Let’s say I’m new to coding and i don’t have answers to many questions posted by people with “GOOD KARMA” points.
So, what should i do ?
I’ve so many questions to ask as I’m new to coding and about different stuff.
I understand this measure was taken to clean up the forum and avoid spam, but what i feel that blocking users with down voting system is better than the current karma system.
What I would suggest is : “allow everyone to post questions”. Keep a filter like ‘high karma’. On applying the filter only questions posted by ‘high karma’ people would be displayed. So, in that way, quality won’t be compromised and ‘low karma’ people would also be able to ask questions. Everyone will be happy. Consider this @admin.
It is very frustrating. I posted this possible flaw in the test cases for SEPT16 Long Challenge here But no one responded. I am a regular problem solver in codechef but don’t have enough points to ask a question.
