Question... (Not about Coldstone)

I just want to know how you gain and lose karma.
I didn't know where else to ask, so...

Sorry if this seems like a useless question, but I don't even know what karma is used for.
Anyone that knows, just tell me on the board or e-mail me at cygnet@kos.net.

I tried looking around but couldn't really find anything.

From what I can discern:

Karma is (intended to be) an indicator of how valuable a member is. On any of your posts, a mod can click on the yin-yang symbol and adjust your karma up or down by one depending on whether they feel you're contributing well or spamming/being abusive. Karma can only be adjusted once per post; ie., if, say, sanehatter decides to ding me for this post, none of the mods can use this post ding me again for it, or nudge me back up to zero (my karma as of this writing).

If your karma hits -10, you're banned. There appears to be some way to "heal" a lethally negative karma over time, because the source I remember reading (and which, of course, I can't find a link to now) seems to imply that it's possible to reappear some time after you've been banned and redeem yourself (or get banned again). Take that with the appropriate amount of salt until I (or someone else) digs up a link, or a mod says otherwise.

Mods have a special karma of 'Blessed', which is effectively infinite: It can't be added to or subtracted from.

Just out of curiosity, why isn't this in the FAQ? I know from lurking here for a while that it comes up every so often. It's not a feature on the UBB I help moderate, I know that...

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James