can happen and in fact has to me but then the phone line has been hit by lightning and I lost the entire computer that time.
About everything that can be said about Mikes departure has been said. It looks to me like there were more issues than shown here involved but that is only speculation. his loss will be deeply felt but there are still lots of talented posters to learn from.

Karma: it sounds like you intend on changing it to closer match the results seen to the original concept that will be a good thing.
Karma was supposed to point to exceptional or really useful posts but mostly it seems to say off topic or under/over rated.
As a matter of interest is it possible to display karma statistics? Not who gave karma but how often each karma choice was used, the number of offsets etcetera. (IE 1 not useful plus 1 useful on the same post)
I often run a straw poll on the mailed list and am amused by the results. Terry