My first smite I earned and accept, but the second came arguably from somebody who didn't like me speaking out some game truths.(I believe it was first post in the "how big are your ships" topic)
No idea where Mark or even Steve recently got their very first smite. Steve had a clean 79/0 record, then someone ruined it, and it was certainly not Steve being impolite or anything.
Then there are some relatively new or low active users (1-150 posts) who behave normally and just haven't gotten any specific applauds, but received a smite in some way nonetheless. This leads to them looking like the baddies with a 0/-1 record, despite actually being tame. In the past I sometimes balanced a couple of those out with random "thumb ups" when I saw this, even though there was nothing noteworthy at the moment to applaud. Their karmatic record was just not fairly representing them. (rule nr.3 of the internet: Even if you are really good, the negativity always outweighs the positive sites.)
I think the current system is really not that good or representative with everyone being able to shift the record easily. I would say it doesn't really matter much anyway, but you often can't help to see this record under the avatar and still have a quick mental note about it. Even knowing that the system is no good, I need a conscious thought to reject the implication seen there, so it is not really ignorable either.
If pluses and minuses would only manifest once the same post has received applaud or smite
by multiple people, now I think that could take a lot of randomness out of this. At least single persons cannot use it anymore to unload their personal grudges, and good/bad becomes more of a democratic consent which should be closer reflecting the truth.
People here don't use it much anyway, so it is not very important for the good, but it pains me to see these unjustified Minuses so often, and at least that would be healthy to get barred through these or some other means.
All of my applause came from one single post. It was that good. It's been about 3 years since. It would appear that I was a one-hit wonder.
Now I am curious: Where what why? Did you make some useful tool or something? (I have only been around 2-2.5 years.)