I understand what karma is but why do I get it & what can I do with it?
You get it if your questions and answers are voted up, and you lose it if they’re voted down. You can use it to be reincarnated into a better life after you die. Either that, or if you get enough karma, you get more powers, such as being able to edit and close things. Exactly what you can do and how much karma you need is a mystery. It was clear under StackExchange, but not at all clear under Qato.
OK, here’s what I think the boundaries are for power…
15 points - You can upvote (and add comments I think).
100 points - You can downvote (and flag maybe)
400 points - You can edit other people’s stuff (so I could copy Eric’s answer, deface his one, and get the karma myself). Also you can retag questions.
1000 points - You can close questions.
This says:
Here’s how it works: if you post a good question or helpful answer, it will be voted up by your peers: you gain 15 reputation points. If you post something that’s off topic or incorrect, it will be voted down: you lose 5 reputation points.
Amass enough reputation points and Unity Answers will allow you to go beyond simply asking and answering questions:
15 Have questions and answers submitted to site
15 Vote up
50 Flag offensive, close own question
100 Vote down (costs 2 rep), edit community wiki posts
500 Redirect questions
1000 View moderation queue and approve contributions
2000 Edit other people's posts
5000 Close any questions
10000 Delete any post, convert answers to comments and vice versa
At the high end of this reputation spectrum there is little difference between users with high reputation and moderators. That is very much intentional. We don’t run Unity Answers. The community does.
The page, however, does not seem to have been updated since UDN had come out.
The simplest advice is just to be a good citizen. We should ignore the mechanics used to measure that, since otherwise we risk gaming the system, which just makes extra work for qato (who then need to modify it to filter out misbehaviour).
Who knows, maybe they’ll later add the important metric of subtracting 2000 from anyone who mentions Karma or Elephant (except if they also use the safeword Shazzam).
Long Answer:
You get Karma if people like you. If you get enough karma, you can do cool things like edit posts, and up/down vote answers/questions. Basically, If you are voted up by the members of the community, Unity trusts you.
Short Answer:
This is all you need to know.
function Update() { if(Karma > infinity){ Matrix.CanFly = true; } }