A slight beef with the reputation system...

[DimensionWarped]

Alright, SFGHQ's current board and reputation system... they've been up for around what, 5 years now? They've been pretty cool for the most part and I've enjoyed watching the rep roll in over the years. But there's the whole power scaling thing... you know, where reputation points determine how much a single repped comment is worth right?

Fast forward to today. A single reputation comment from me is currently worth 16 reputation points. With a single reputation note, I can bump someone's ability to give reputation points to others four-fold from starting out. I'm pretty wary about giving out reputation these days because it's worth more than participating in 5 spriting contests used to be.

And so that brings me to what I'm trying to say... thanks largely to frivolous use of the reputation system, the whole thing has become basically meaningless. Take Blazefire for example... he has a pretty mixed record lately of being helpful and being annoying, but mostly he's been being helpful to others and he's been earning rep for it. But he's only been around for half a year.

For reference, my current rep points are 314. Commander Keen's IQ, sure. Pie? I'd love some. It's also slightly above the highest alt text level. But anyway, the point is this was built up over the course of five years and somewhere in the neighborhood of 110 reputation comments, many of which were contests and collaborative efforts.

Blazefire currently has 227, which he earned in roughly 6 months, mostly due to Overbound's (no offense to Overbound, he does a good job at what he does and most of his reputation comments are actually deserved by Blazefire) comments being worth 12 points, and they got into a bit of mutual bumping (which I also have no problem with)... but anyway, suffice to say this is a problem with the reputation system. He basically shot from the bottom of the barrel (actually, I seem to recall mercifully resetting him to zero from the negatives) to 3rd place (yeah Overbound, he's ahead of you now) in no time because of mutual rep boosts.

So yeah, basically all contest credit has been rendered worthless by the fact that nearly every reputation boost now way outpaces it.

I'm currently thinking about whether or not it would be a good idea to kill the reputation system or starting it over and doing something a little more strict. I like that people can give eachother kudos for things like helpful comments, but the scale is just kind of insulting. And I'm saying this as someone who has the second highest reputation score of anyone on the forum (For the record, this game's winner is Lark). I don't know how much control we actually have over the reputation system or whether it's modular enough to replace it though. Generally speaking though, I think that there should be some more stringent rules on passing out reputation. I was wary about the scaling reputation thing way back when we were first talking about a rep system, and basically everything I thought could go wrong with it has.

Anyone have any thoughts? If no one really gives a damn about the rep system, I'd be perfectly fine just having us pull the plug on it. Contests are better represented by banners anyway I think, and I can't even begin to fathom the amount of angst that has been caused by people passing out negative reputation (usually due to some stupid grudge or some other trivial shit like that)... which I've never favored having in the first place. If on the other hand, people care about the reputation system, I think we can come up with some way to make it work better... but that's probably going to involve reviewing rep messages if we keep the current system in place and significantly limiting the rate of reputation power increase... or better yet doing away with the scaling all together. There's really no reason a 'post' should ever be worth more than one rep point anyway, and if you think someone has done something worthy of more credit, it'd be a good reason to call in a moderator or an admin to create a special reputation ticket.

[DJ espeed]

If you decide to pull the plug on the rep system, I'm cool with it. :|

[Jamie Bailey]

If I've ever given someone rep points, I don't remember doing it, I never use the rep system, although that's partly because I'm so inactive on the board these days and partly because I mostly view the board on my iPhone (don't use my PC much now), on which, as far as I know, I can't give rep points. Being mostly inactive, I've somehow still managed to get 29 points.

There is no need for rep from one person being higher than rep from someone else, it should be like a post count, increase by one each time someone gives rep. I do also like the idea of admins being able to award special images and things to anyone who does something extra special or has done a lot for the community over a period of time.

Maybe if the admins feel up to the task, they could also even award little achievement-style images, yes, like 360 and PS3 games or merit badges, for members to earn and collect either on their profile or attached to their posts somehow for achievements such as helping members with sprites, graphics, engines, music, sounds etc, good reputation for making good/useful/helpful forum topics, encouraging members to post more and/or get creative, good reputation for dealing with problems such as flame wars, helping with or running SAGE, submissions to the main site, including sprites, graphics and maybe even the rarest of the rare... a completed fangame (of acceptable quality of course).

Maybe too much effort for the admins, but just thought I'd throw the concept in there. Maybe members could nominate each other for achievement images when they feel it is deserved rather than admins having to keep track of everything everyone does.

[Strife]

I had no idea that Rep scaled like that. o_o That's definitely imbalanced. xD

I don't think it's bad enough to warrant a complete removal of the Rep system, though - just some tweaking. Would it easy enough to fix by simply removing the scaling effect? At that point, it'd be similar to Proboards' karma system.

[luksamuk]

Strife's idea makes justice. But

Maybe if the admins feel up to the task, they could also even award little achievement-style images, yes, like 360 and PS3 games or merit badges, for members to earn and collect either on their profile or attached to their posts somehow for achievements such as helping members with sprites, graphics, engines, music, sounds etc, good reputation for making good/useful/helpful forum topics, encouraging members to post more and/or get creative, good reputation for dealing with problems such as flame wars, helping with or running SAGE, submissions to the main site, including sprites, graphics and maybe even the rarest of the rare... a completed fangame (of acceptable quality of course).

^ I'm pretty much interested in this :I

Maybe even keep this rep system still active, remove the scale and hide it (and possibly, yeah reset it)... and for example, when someone gets 100 points, he'll earn some kind of "Achievement" too.

Also, not saying this to pull things to my side, but it'd be also be cool if these people get "achievements" for contributing with Collaboration Projects such as SWLC or Sonic Zero.

[Apricity]

I like the Rep system but I understand you when you say it's getting unbalanced. I don't think resetting it is a good idea D;

Maybe cap how much rep goes up to something like 3? And it only moves up one with each emerald you get? Then if people want to give someone like 5 rep for doing something really good, the pm a Mod/Admin with a valid reason why.

You could always just eleminate the negative rep. If people have beef with each others posts they can sort it out over PM's or if someone breaks the rules they can contact a Mod/Admin, not start some petty de-rep war.

[DimensionWarped]

Strife's idea makes justice. But

^ I'm pretty much interested in this :I

Maybe even keep this rep system still active, remove the scale and hide it (and possibly, yeah reset it)... and for example, when someone gets 100 points, he'll earn some kind of "Achievement" too.

Also, not saying this to pull things to my side, but it'd be also be cool if these people get "achievements" for contributing with Collaboration Projects such as SWLC or Sonic Zero.

Implementing auto achievements is something that would require developing a plugin of some kind, and I'm not sure if anyone has the required skill set for that around here right now aside from Smidge, who probably has shit to do. (And I personally don't care to spend a day or two learning php or whatever unless the benefit is really worthwhile)

But yeah, we already have a system in place for dishing out badges. I figured out how to do that back when we were doing the concept storm board. We just haven't had enough images created to do anything with that.

For the time being, I'm going to go ahead and remove the ability for regular users to make rep, and possibly look at scaling the rep of anyone who has more than some number (probably 25 or 50) to have rep based on the number of positive rep comments they have received rather than having them be weighted.

[OverbounD]

I completely agree this needs to be fixed. I had no idea I was giving out that many rep points to BlazefireLP. Perhaps it should just be reset and the additional reputation points given for having high rep be removed.

[TailsSena]

Wai--wait, what? It scales? Seriously??

That's pretty stupid. And like you've all said, very unbalanced.

And I see that I can no longer +/-Rep. You move fast DW.

Now my only issue with that is I can no longer give Rep to people who help me on my two Advance Worlds threads... And considering just how much help I need/get, that's a pretty big con right now...

[DimensionWarped]

You'll get your rep buttons back once I kill the scaling.

[Apricity]

You'll get your rep buttons back once I kill the scaling.

*salutes*

[Sparks]

I honestly am surprised people use it regularly. I forget it exists a lot. :x

[TailsSena]

You'll get your rep buttons back once I kill the scaling.

I would imagine there's a setting for that somewhere... Just have to find it, right?

[Serephim]

I honestly am surprised people use it regularly. I forget it exists a lot. :x

This.

probably because everyone has hated me at one point or another

[Rawr]

Since I don't make fangames (I tried once ages ago but got too busy and all I have left are unfinished sprites to show for it lol) I tend to just rep up people who make awesome posts. But I am unable to rep those people up anymore because they make too many awesome posts >: (

Which somehow I've amassed myself quite a bit of rep for not doing anything notable. I never thought that if it scales I could potentially be spreading a buttload of rep around eventually haha. I think killing the scaling was the best decision!

[ShadowMasterX5]

I'm fine with whatever you guys decide =P, I don't really care about the rep system lol

Originally Posted by Serephim

This.

probably because everyone has hated me at one point or another

I never hated you

[Epon]

How about a like/dislike thing ala Facebook? Each LIKE is worth a point and you reach certain levels based on how many points you have. Gay RPG analogy but as the levels go up, they require more points.

This allows you to gain rank for multiple smart comments from multiple people in the same thread, so yes, people will 'rank up' quickly. So reserve the better perks for higher levels. This also will help people moderate each other because assholes like myself who may say something stupid will quickly demote. Maybe have it so that if you demote too quickly, it's an automatic temp-ban?

Yes, the first thing that came to my mind was "well than people will game the system for better and for worse" but then i realized that if people took the time to uprank someone so much, they are losers. If someone downranks quickly, they probably deserve it. I think once the "fad" of it initially wears off, it will slow down (also why having perks awarded for later levels makes sense)

Don't know if it exists (I'm sure some RPG forum has this)

[Serephim]

i stopped caring about forum status years ago.

In fact, i dont really think i can remember a point where i ever cared.

nobody should, TBH...But i think it'll be good to know who the useful, or just simply likable members are.

[tentril]

nobody should, TBH...But i think it'll be good to know who the useful, or just simply likable members are.

This. That's the only reason I would find rep to be helpful.

[GSF]

That "like" system would be like the "kudos" or "thanks" plugins that some forums use.

(Particularly, these "IN ORDER TO DOWNLOAD THIS FILE YOU MUST THANK AND POST" kinda forums. Hate these... so much.)

[BlazefireLP]

I agree DW. I say ditch the rep system. It's use and meaning has dwindled away now and it is getting out of hand. I'm cool with saying adios to it.

[TailsSena]

Sayonara, rep system! I'll miss you, mostly because I was just starting to figure you out, and reap the benefits of it....

[Strife]

I'll mostly miss the rep system because of the warm, fuzzy feelings I get from reading the rep comments every time I go to my User CP. xD They're not much, but they still give a pinch of inspiration.

[BlazefireLP]

Welp, at-least now we have more of a reason to emphasize our gratitude towards eachother when help is given right?

[DimensionWarped]

... Actually, I was on the side of wanting to keep it around and make it sensible, not ditching it entirely.