Reputation Points

Underneath your username, you'll see a new category marked "Reputation". You can build up your own reputation through quality posts, for which others can award you reputation points.

To award reputation points:

In each post, you'll see small "+" and "-" symbols in the top right hand corner of the post. Simply click on the "+" symbol to award the post (and poster) a reputation point if the post impresses you in any way. This will add a reputation point to the poster's profile, while the award of the point will be highlighted by a small green bar in the top right hand corner of the post itself. The green bar also signifies the amount of "+" awards granted to the post.

Let me stress that this feature is not a competition. A bit of self-pride is all anybody should gain through this feature, solely through having made quality posts. Members cannot have points deducted through use of the "-" symbol, thus keeping this feature solely for use in praising quality posts, not trashing people we might not get along with.

Hopefully this feature can at the very least play a small part in encouraging more quality posts, of which there have certainly been plenty so far.

And please feel free to go back over old posts you may have appreciated if you'd like to award points to any of those posts. There are plenty of posts richly deserving of it, I'm sure.

Thanks,

M

Gotta hand it to you, M. You're always working to do little things to improve the site.

Ed Tom Kowalsky wrote:

Gotta hand it to you, M. You're always working to do little things to improve the site.

Thanks Ed. I'd known about the reputation feature from day one, but just didn't feel it to be necessary back then when every single member was really enthusiastic about the forums and getting involved. It's still not absolutely necessary now and I really hope it doesn't become competitive in any negative way, but on the plus side I'm hoping it will encourage people to make more posts and make those posts insightful or humourous with the incentive of enhancing their "reputation". It might work, it might not. But it seemed a more viable alternative than simply trying to provide posting motivation through the rank system alone.

Like you said, it's just a little thing which could improve the frequency and quality of posts. So I felt it was worth trying out. This forum has brilliant potential, so I've plenty of motivation to keep trying to improve it in any way possible. Anyway, we'll see how this goes and if it amounts to nothing I can always remove the feature.

I'm vetoing against it. It's a system that almost always results in cowardice and nepotism, as in Cb.n. Just go back to contribution points.

Sharky wrote:

I'm vetoing against it. It's a system that almost always results in

This: https://bondandbeyond.forumotion.com/t548p30-this-week-s-debate-naomie-harris-as-moneypenny-approve-or-not

I can see the intention behind the idea and it's potential if used correctly, but I can't see it lasting another minute once admin sees that thread.

Our "unaccounted for" members will have a field day with it too, as this feature is a sh*tstirrer's wet dream.

M wrote:

solely for use in praising quality posts, not trashing people

Best to lose it IMO.

I don't care much for the points. Just another number under your avatar that means nothing. Enjoyment of each other's company should be enough incentive to post, lol.

I don't think we need it, either.

I'd even go out on a limb and say we don't need post counts, also. However, I can see how they'd be useful for indicating contributions on a member-to-member basis, and to see how the overall numbers for the forum are holding out.

Always appreciate the offering of new features, though, M.

I've disabled the reputation feature in light of what seems to be happening with it, though I can understand why it's happened and agree with many of the comments above in respect of this.

Mr. Brown wrote:

Always appreciate the offering of new features, though, M.

Thanks Mr Brown, at the end of the day that's all this was, just a small feature we were trying out. I agree with everyone that it seems unworkable though. Thanks for people's patience with it and for not making the situation any worse than it threatened to become in a couple of threads.

What happened "in a couple of threads"? I rather enjoyed the rep points, but que sera sera.

Ed Tom Kowalsky wrote:

What happened "in a couple of threads"? I rather enjoyed the rep points, but que sera sera.

I thought it could be a decent idea too, but I didn't take into account the impact a couple of remaining rotten apples would have on it. The forum is obviously not as watertight as we'd hoped (there are still a small handful of unidentified members after all), so it's become clear that the reputation feature can't realistically work while that's the case. The guidelines clearly stated the purpose of the system (rewarding good posts), yet this clearly didn't prevent "minus" votes from appearing. It's not worth the risk of members becoming disgruntled with the forum when looking at their posts to find that other members have taken secret swipes at them via the "minus" vote. So, and also on the advice of several respected members, it seemed best to quell the problem before it resulted in any members becoming too unhappy with it. At the end of the day, the forum wasn't designed for pissing contests, so it's best to prevent any from starting wherever and however possible.

Apologies to anybody else who may have liked the reputation feature, but right now it just feels more unworkable than workable.

I'll re-implement contribution points instead (formerly the "kills" feature), as these are based solely on frequency of posting and topic starting, and see how that goes. It works on a +1 per message, +2 per topic basis, so it's basically just a slight variation on post count, with no capacity for members to vote down each other.