possible change to forum ranking... looking for feedback

[keyclone]

i have seen a number of posts pinging the 'ranks' we receive in the forums. and i have a thought that might help improve the quality of the tags... here goes:

forget the tags given due to post counts.

maybe we can do a digg like concept where each member can 'digg' a poster up or down. this rating will allow users to gauge a users perception within the community. the same member could change their mind... but the up/down vote only counts as 1. if the member goes inactive for like 3-6 months, their votes go away (keeps the fake members from skewing the results too much... maybe also void their ability to thumb until they have 10 or so posts)

taking it one step further... we could have a couple of categories under the user's avatar, each one able to be given an thumb up or down by each member.
ie:

experience: --- (+/-)
mood: --- (+/-)
knowledgeable: --- (+/-)
troll: --- (+/-)

we could also make levels to each category.
ie:
experience: ultra noob, basic noob, L33t, godlike
knowledgeable: tool, no clue, noob, enlightened, supah smaht

i would put it on a sliding percentage scale and show the count.
ie:

Keyclone
[ pic ]
experience: godlike (+/-) (1,005)
mood: barely contained excitement (+/-) (1,005)
knowledgeable: supah smaht (+/-) (1,005)
troll: angelic (+/-) (1,005)

(and yes... i deliberately made that crap up)

thoughts? categories? levels for each?

[Smoooth]

I like but a troll category might have to be worded better. Do I give a thumbs up because yes, this guys is a troll or a thumbs up because he isn't one? The three other categories can be considered a good thing but troll is bad so I can see where there might be some confusion in rating that one.

[keyclone]

agreed. i didn't mean for those categories to be taken so literally or to be the basis for what we'd have. just some food for thought and i was hoping the community would chew on it a bit to come up with maybe 4 or 5 categories with 5 levels within each (3rd/middle level == nuetral with positive and negative going either way). maybe more levels would give a better idea of the person (2 levels negative or positive isn't much)

[mmcookies]

those categories sound a little too serious for my tastes

what if you used names that were a little more jocular

ie. troll => trollan

anyways, my point is they should be a bit more fun, kinda like the level names

and what's the reasoning for using levels instead of totals?
it's not like you'll be able to filter/hide posts by poster levels?
or is that under consideration?

[aboron]

Here's an idea for a raking system (assuming we are talking custom programming as a viable option):

For each post you make you gain a one rating action point, which doesn't affect your forum rank at all, but this keeps people who don't participate at all from getting votes.

Then with these earned points you can chose to act upon someone else's forum rating level Up or Down by one per person per day.

So if I always say useful/helpful things, more people will give me +1 rating points, esp. likely from the person who posted a question that I answered, since they got a rating point to give from creating their post already anyway.

And if I always flame or say dumb things, more people will -1 from my rating all the time and I'll end up going very negative.

Then just make up names for the scale from say -5000 to +5000 (weighted to more values in the proximity to 0 since most people probably won't go more than +/- 200 either direction.


And then give users the option to grey out replies from people below a negative value of their choosing between say -10 (no tolerance for any slips) and -infinity (the patience of Job).

[ElectronDF]

I don't mind rating people that have been here a while so you can tell who is helpful and who just posts 1,000 posts a day. But, I wouldn't want to vote on new people. Maybe after 20 posts or so. Imagine if you come in and ask a stupid question and everyone votes you down like 1000 times. I just want to give new people some leeway (word looks odd).

From what I see on here, I try to take 2-5 people's opinion and average them. That way, you don't accidentally listen to a hardcore PVPer that says, twitch as fast as you can. Or listen to a quest only, never fought an elite mob person that says, no need to control alts, just stand there and auto-attack, the mob will die. Sometimes, I am just looking for info on what other people did. Maybe they are screwed up and not even close to my playstyle, but they had a good idea that works for me.

I guess I am not worried about who to listen to or which people are idiots. I average them out of the equation anyway.

Two ideas that I would love. Let me see when any of the threads that I posted in have new comments in them. I have to go to my profile, select posts and then go to each one to see manually and it just takes time. The other is let me choose how many posts I see on the front page. I look at that about 100 times more than go to each forum. If there are 11 new posts, I miss one and am not likely to hunt it down. Maybe a scroll bar on the side that shows 10 normally, but if you scroll down, you can see 10 more or so.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Way I see it, there's only one way to do this. Have a plethora of post stats for everyone and just ignore rankings; leave it to people to make up their own mind what those stats mean. There's no way to have people "vote" on another person's rank without it becoming a tyranny of the (active) majority, especially when some folks have a correct but unpopular opinion. And I firmly detest pure democracies.

[Flekkie]

Here are some random ideas.

1.
Are you sure that you want to rate the user rather than their posts?
Rating posts has been proved to work very well on open 'comments' type forums.
I have no experience with rating users. However, can it be said that a troll never posts good info, or an expert never makes a mistake?

I guess this only matters if posts would be suppressed based on ratings. If it is pure stats, it wouldn't worry me I don't think.


2.
Instead of voting, could users emote at the author of each post? eg:

experience ------> /salute
mood -------------> /hug
knowledgeable --> /awe or /boggle or /listen?
troll --------------> /golfclap or /shoo or /bonk?

Then stats on how many of each emote in last 3 mths or lifetime or however else you do it can be provided.
**Should also give stats on emotes given as well as received.

Seems a bit less dry like that. Discourages constant /golfclaps since it will also reflect on the /golfclapper. Also, makes it clear that it is someone else's reaction to them, and not neccessarily fact. But it is a bit WoW oriented, don't know if that would be a problem.

[Zal]

knowledgeable: tool, no clue, noob, enlightened, supah smaht

i approve this awesome title

[Svpernova09]

I don't know the best way to handle this, but I don't think an intricate, overly complicated ranking / voting system is the answer. I hate reputation systems as they almost always turn into an elitist epeen contest, and frankly, if that's what you're into, you're in the wrong forum.

I'd be content hiding join dates / post counts from the general population. I don't have a high post count compared to others, but I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about content we discuss here. Post counts and Join Dates aren't always everything. Your credibility is about the only thing you have here, some have it, some don't. You're post history and your attitude goes a long, long way is the major factor in how people treat you. There's plenty of examples of this in locked threads.

Users should be allowed to make up their own mind about someone, but they should also be protected from the dangers that they may not be immediately aware of, and should be warned before taking any advice from someone who shouldn't be giving advice.

A lot of advice I see getting thrown around goes along with: Those who can, do. Those can't, Teach. It's kinda scary, but I usually let it go because people are trying to contribute and people should be encouraged to share info and experiment.