In considering Jeremy's post on Karma and the health of communities, I would like to balance my semi-satirical post with another that seriously considers the Karma (sic) of individuals and their communities.

In think that Karma can be linked to credibility, but they are not the same. I will not speak about the latter in this case, either. The Digital Karma of an individual could be considered as the result of their actions toward others. There are credible entities online that continually spew polemics, like Brad Brace, Max Herman, J. Zeidner, Kandinskii, and so on, and I think it can be said that there is a great deal of mixed karma in regards to how they are regarded by the online community.

Conversely, communities like Rhizome have a difficult responsibility to balance the needs of survival with the generation of karma to its participants. This is linked to the credibility and the institutional standing of an online community, and relates to the perception of benevolence of the community's administrators towards the community against the potentially alienating forces of institutional legitimacy.

This is more than a PR battle, as such cannot be maintained across such a multifaceted social space as Rhizome or Thingist. It has to be cultural, as the community relies upon its constituents for survival, and conversely the administrators relyupon institutional and community support for its survival.

This provides (for me) a pretty clear diagram of the Karmic circuit and the dangerous walk that communities have to adhere to in order to stay on the path.

I've gone on enough, but will end that I could have discussed the exploitation issues mentioned in the opening statement, but in under the rubric of karma it's pretty clear that this sort of manipulation of communities would result in terribly bad karma if it were to be overtly known, causing much damage to the reputation of the administrators and the community.