I was perusing my stats as you do and spotted the karma figure again and pondered over the figure and what it really means and does it reflect an imbalance.
I was told some time ago that to be a good cacher you have to have a high karma value. That simply means you have to have many more cachers log finds on your caches than you have finds of your own
Well - my karma figure is only 0.47 and I am not too bothered by that - I have just under 100 caches out there all in a rural area (so not a tremendous footfall compared to places like capital cities) - all have FPs and the FP count I have on mine gives the FP index figure of 23.9% of premium logs meaning nearly 1 in 4 PM cachers give an FP on one or other of my caches - I am quite chuffed with that - as a CO that is my karma figure.
So going back to the imbalance I mentioned - I took a look at two other cachers specifically because of what they have out there, to show what I mean
1) CO 'A' who has over 3000 caches owned - has a karma figure of 6.69 - over 14 times my figure - well no wonder, with that many caches he is potentially going to get 30 times the number of find logs than I have - though his FP index is only 4.3%
2) CO 'B' who has just over 100 caches but a few of these (around 6) are in a big city - these 6 between them account for half the find logs he has got - unsurprising in the big city they will attract the far greater footfall particularly from foreign visitors. His Karma is 8.11 and because of where they are they attract FPs and his index is 25.3%
So not belittleing the effort put into any of this - for the cacher who places fewer caches in a rural area the footfall will be much lower and as an active finder this will mean the karma will always be low - pushing out so many caches will always push the number of finders up and the CO could be just as active if not more in finding caches but the balance with the karma is so different. Seems to suggest to push your karma up you should either pump out a load of caches (which to be honest will also mean poor quality) to get the 'find of your caches' rate up more - or you just don't go out finding any caches which will slowly push the karma up as cachers find your caches.
Equally the cacher who puts out caches in a rural location will get so much less footfall than even a single cache in a big city and despite the appreciation through FPs for those rural caches - the karma balance is still weighed towards the COs caches in big cities simply because of the footfall.
So what is that figure really for, and what do folk strive for if at the end of the day it doesn't really matter that you have a very low score yet your contribution is really appreciated. I guess what I am saying is that karma figure is not really required as it can muddy the waters when other folk look at them (and they do) and then compare them
