"karma", "applause/smite" button meaning and use

[MRMILSTAR]

What does the "karma" and "applause/smite" indicators under your name mean?

[oneKone]

My basic understanding is that it's like a thumbs up/down.
I guess if you ask a question you'd probably go with an answer of someone with a higher "like" over dislike, it seems shallow but this is my understanding. As Always I'm happy to be corrected.

[Mads Barnkob]

I was looking for a plugin similar to reddit style where a post gets rated for its value, this is not really possible to do in a classic forum setup like SMF.

So I tried out the karma system and it is just a global user bound system, so if someone liked your post and give you a karma+, it just shows your total everywhere, its not thread/post related.

It should be seen as a "quality" measure, so that post count is not a single measure of how much a person contributes.

It was put in a trial and I would gladly put up a poll to get some feedback on it