Moderation!
while this is a casual discussion, sinse it does reflect the site I'll move it to site and forum feedback.
Okay, now that's out of the way, I'm glad people like the ranks.
As Sid said, the ranks used to be of the sort audiogamer, advanced audiogamer, super hyper advanced audiogamer, right up to super guru uba hyper advanced audiogamer, they also occurred at random times if I remember rightly.
When i became admin of this forum in 2012, I decided to do something about this. The puns on old games was something I saw on retroremakes forums, who had names like wumpus hunter so I thought it'd be fun to do our own, plus I like puns .
I'm afraid there's no real secret about what games got ranks or why, it was just what I happened to randomly think of at the time and what made a good pun, though I did try to include something of a selection across times and platforms, ---- I was rather proud of knight of parasite and paladin in disguise though .
I've put together a list of ranks and what game's they're from which you can Read here
At the moment the ranks go up to eight thousand. I originally only wrote them up to six thousand, but people were getting close to that so I stuck in some more. if other users look like getting over the limit I'll write in some more.
I also wanted ranks to be regular sinse I always think it's a bit depressing when the numbers of posts you need for a rank continue to get larger, and the point here is to have fun and give people some sort of semi unique status achievement thingy, which wouldn't happen if everyone was stuck on the rank you got at a thousand posts and weren't going to get another until five thousand .
As to the user karma, yes we did have something of a karma drama, it was quite alarmer, like a fox being chased by a farmer , lucky we all had armour so were able to stand up until things got calmer .
Seriously, I always thought the karma was a nice thing, like public recognition and a way of saying "hay I liked that post to someone" the system was tried in I believe 2010, but the thumbs down button seemed to bring out the worst in people. When i looked at the admin settings though and the thumbs down was turnoffable, that provided a nice solution and the system works out well, indeed i was extremely pleased to see Pragma has got quite a bit of karma for the awesome new crazy party game (some from me as well), which is just the sort of thing it's intended for.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)