possible change to forum ranking... looking for feedback

[glo]

Ranking systems on boards tend to make people think they are better then others. One of the great things about this forum (other then the 1 wack job) everyone seems to realize we are just a bunch of nerds playing video games ;)

I vote no on elitism.

[Effex]

Have to agree please no elitism / voting. this forum is my haven away from all of that

i can understand why you would want to do somthing like this but if you are going implement it just let the mods vote, we have a small community with decent mods sure they wouldnt mind.

[Til Eulenspiegel]

Ya thats a brillient idea to not let people give advise on something until they do it.

If you can't talk about leveling until you reach 80 then;

If you can't box 20 or more characters then don't talk about multi-boxing.

Hey if you havn't talked to GoD don't give advice about religion, and if you havn't been to the moon don't talk about space exploration. Oh and if yur not the President don't talk about how to run the country.

I think it's more like, "If you haven't walked on the moon, don't talk about what it is like to walk on the moon." If you've never stepped in an arena or a battleground, then you cannot comment on what it is like to play an arena match or a battleground. If you have never stepped foot in a high level dungeon or raid instance, then you have absolutely no words of wisdom on the subject. No matter what words are spoken, even if they would be "correct" if someone else spoke them, the fact is that if someone with absolutely no experience is giving advice, then everything they say may as well be a lie.

[Moorea]

I don't mind having a sub forum reserved for 20+ boxers; as long as the people posting there don't post in the 2-19 boxer forums...

Not sure an honor system would work... or maybe if in the rules it's clear that lying == permanent "liar" tag added

But maybe this is all too complicated and just removing the title associated with the post count # is enough ?

[Svpernova09]

I don't mind having a sub forum reserved for 20+ boxers; as long as the people posting there don't post in the 2-19 boxer forums...

Not sure an honor system would work... or maybe if in the rules it's clear that lying == permanent "liar" tag added

But maybe this is all too complicated and just removing the title associated with the post count # is enough ?

The new forum software that we'll be migrating to has the option to enable users to set their own user titles. So this could be an interesting feature to enable.

[Moorea]

sigh... can't wait to see what some people will pick if allowed to pick their own title...

[Zub]

I think giving ratings to people instead of posts is the wrong idea.

People having ratings, stats, titles (or anything really) WILL lead to an epeen contest of some sorts.
On top of that, (as was said above somewhere) trolls CAN write some good posts, and Forums heroes CAN write some stupid posts sometimes too.

The information we should rate is the POST, not the poster.


Now, i kinda like the wowhead method where every post gets a rating.
Say it starts at 0 (neutral) and users get to vote Plus or Minus if they want (one vote max per post)

If the post goes lower than -10 (for example) the text appears in gray. if it's lower than -20, the post is folded and you need to click some link to actually view it.
Other way round, if the post gets a rating of +10, then the text appears in whatever color that makes it stand out.

to be able to vote, you need to be registered (of course) and have posted more than 10 posts for example. (10 non-folded, non-gray posts)
This way it prevents someone just systematically killing all of a members posts, as it takes the community to rate up or down significally.

Now if you still want an opinion about the poster you can go to that poster's profile page and see the list all the latests posts from that person.
If most are gray or folded you know what to conclude.


Threads that have alot of positive posts can then show 5 stars or whatever. or maybe one star per highlighted post (maxxed at 5)


my 2c
-Zub


[Edit] Obviously people should not be able to vote on their own posts.

[Stealthy]

Now, i kinda like the wowhead method where every post gets a rating.
Say it starts at 0 (neutral) and users get to vote Plus or Minus if they want (one vote max per post)

If the post goes lower than -10 (for example) the text appears in gray. if it's lower than -20, the post is folded and you need to click some link to actually view it.
Other way round, if the post gets a rating of +10, then the text appears in whatever color that makes it stand out.

I like this system as well...simple, but works well and emcourages people to make their posts relevant and informative.

Cheers,
S.

[Bettysue]

Rating systems always seem to skew toward the popular kids, informational forum systems such as this one shouldn't be a popularity contest. It's about the posts you read not the posts you make in a lot of cases. I could ask questions all day instead of hitting the search button and I would eventually have thousands of posts that may never be voted upon. The voting system being there doesn't mean people use it every time, they may just view and move along leaving my rating somewhere near neutral and hard to adjust. The me being the malevolent question posting noob could vote down the replying person that simply says RTFM everytime i ask. Get a couple people that don't have the fan boy following and suddenly Sam Deathwalker's oddly guided posts disappear as he gets banned for not being "cool" enough to post. Every forum visited that has a ranking system I usually search around for the "display all posts" and make up my own mind about the posters. If I don't like someone I realize that that is my opinion and I let others make up their own mind.

So what I suggest is a personal per user type cool people list...friend list maybe. You could add people you find to be informative to your list, then filter threads based on people you want to see information from. Leaving the join date and removing the post count gives people an idea of who's been around for a while without immediatly scewing your view of them. I vote something other than a ranking system, though I found many of the suggested titles/ranks amusing.

[RobinGBrown]

I'd like to say that having experienced a forum with a poster popularity system I'd like NOT to see that sort of thing in this forum. If it's a popularity contest someone always metagames the system, and in a forum of metagamers thats just to likely for words.

Rating individual posts is a different matter however, I don't have any experience of that but it could be good.