One persons garbage is another persons treasure. What one person says may be meaningless to you but to someone else it expands their minds or opens their eyes or to something they never could have experienced.

Say you all work in the same company looking to move it to another level. Therefore those who do are caring for the message that allows for growth, while does who don’t care just don’t.

It is more important that the suggestions and recommendations we make help business owners, peers,superiors and co workers achieve their business objectives and achieve success. Supporting and contributing to success is its own reward along with the coin of the realm.

This might be your peers, your partners, your bosses, your family… And each in its own context.

Have a look at what drives cooperative behavior in the Open Source movement. Typically it’s peer recognition that matters the most, and it’s the most powerful force in that industry. But that doesn’t mean the individuals don’t have bosses or customers – they do.

In the Intellipedia example, the message is that it is sponsored by the Hierarchy, and hence that form of recognition is powerful. The same approach for, say, Wikipedia would fall flat on its face.

Karma amount is basically the dependent variable of a model where usage as well as the quality of the content are the independent variables. Regarding “quality of content”, users that read questions can reward each other by classifying particular answers as “Helpful? Y or N” and the questioner can determine which answer is the “Best Answer”.

Not to make this into a sales pitch, but what we have found with our customers and our own internal system is that many in the community self govern. For instance, if a user asks a question that receives plenty of quality feedback, he or she is expected to reward some of those who help answer her question by using the “Helpful” and/or “Best Answer” features. If not, the person usually is notified of this by someone in the community.

Actually it is at a point that some of the users who answer my questions will actually send me thank you notes/emails for selecting them as the “Best Answer”. I know that it sounds odd receiving thanks from the people who answered my question, but hey, it happens.

Its less “Who cares what you think?” and more “Who’s opinion do you most care about?” Once you’ve answered that question, you know where to start.