What is it?

The Pinside was once created because its designers thought pinball is a great hobby and therefor should be more present on the Internet. And off course we want the pinball community to be as large and active as possible. For the new Pinside we would like to get you, the visitor, to get more involved. That's why we introduced a new concept: Pinball Karma.

First things first

This help text assumes that you've already created a Pinside account. Go here to read how you can create one.

How does it work?

The idea behind this concept is a simple one: the more you participate on the Pinside, the higher your Pinball Karma will be. This way people who are active will get credit for their contributions. Actions that contribute to your Karma are: Signing up and telling us something about yourself and your collection, writing news items, stories and reviews about an individual machine or about the pinball community in general, rating machines, making comments to posted stories and adding content like images to the archive.

What's in there for you?

So what good will a high Pinball Karma do you? Well, beside the warm and cosey feeling of being a highly valued member of a great community, once you gain more points, you will climb the rankings of the Pinside hall of fame that can be visited in the 'Community' section.

Great stuff! Now how do I start collecting Karma?

To get a great Pinball Karma, you'll first need a Pinside user account, so if you didn't register yet, start by
Screenshot: pinside karmasigning up. After signing up, you can tell the Pinside community something about yourself, about how you started playing pinball and why you like it so much. You can also fill out your profile and choose an avatar or tell us which machines you own or would like to own in the future. You can optionally choose to share this information with our community, so other pinheads can get in touch with you. If you finished completing your profile, you can participate more by rating machines you've played or uploading photo's of your own machines. Or if you have something interesting to share you can comment on the articles you read or write an great article yourself.

So how many Karma points do I get for a certain action?

We believe that the following distribution of Karma points is fair compared to the amount of time an certain action will cost you. Please note that because this feature is new, we can't be sure yet that this is a good reflection. So there might be minor changes to this distribution (which might cause your Karma to rise or drop a bit).

For now you will receive the following amount of points for a certain action:

• Signing up: 100
  
• Completing profile: 50
• Choosing an avatar: 100
• Writing a story about yourself: 100
• Writing an story / article: 100
• Writing an story / article that gets featured: 150
• Rating a machine: 15
• Making a comment to an article: 10
• Uploading an image: 5
• Suggesting a video: 10
  
• 'Starting' a collection: 50

Already signed up?

Off course we want to thank our existing users for all the hard work they did for the old Pinside site. After all, without your help we wouldn't have been able to create this new site in the first place. That's why we decided to grant Pinball Karma for all actions done by users in the past as if they were done at the new site. So, if you've been a longtime Pinside user, log in and check out how much Karma points you've already collected. The 100 points for signing up should be there as a bare minimum.