vBulletin rep system...

[Uberfuhrer]

Is it possible to implement the reputation system as seen on other forums?

That's the part in one's post where other members are able to give rep points and the person's reputation is measured by little green bars on a user's side panel.

[Motor Jax]

ah, i've seen those...

[LionsPride]

I'm new to forums and I'm not familiar with reputation systems. What benefits do they offer? I always measure the reputation of a person based on their contribution within a thread and not by the weight other people assign to them. Is there another purpose for a reputation system besides that? Again, I know very little about how ratings are assigned or applied in other forums.

[Uberfuhrer]

If a fellow poster makes a good or bad post, you can click on a scale icon located on your user sidebar and give that poster a positive or negative reputation point. The more reputation points you have, the stronger influence you will have on others if you give them reputation points. So if you have a high reputation score, it will increase how the reputation points you give affect others' reputation points.

I probably should have clarified that good reputation would show up as green bars while bad reputation would show up as red bars.





Uberfuhrer added to this post, 4 minutes and 17 seconds later...

Additionally, this rep system can also be wired up as neutral rep, where a member can just leave another member comments about their posts.

[LionsPride]

What stops a 'clique' from giving each other reputation points over and over? I can see why this system works on something like ebay, where money is exchanging hands, but when the currency is opinion?... How would a newbie like me be able to establish a solid reputation alongside people that have been here for months? Is there a site I could read that talks about how these things work? I really have no experience with this to draw from.

[Uberfuhrer]

What stops a 'clique' from giving each other reputation points over and over? I can see why this system works on something like ebay, where money is exchanging hands, but when the currency is opinion?... How would a newbie like me be able to establish a solid reputation alongside people that have been here for months? Is there a site I could read that talks about how these things work? I really have no experience with this to draw from.

It depends on the quality of that person's post.

A n00b or veteran may post a high-quality post and other members can choose to give him/her rep points and perhaps send him/her a comment like "Good post" or something like that, which will show up in that user's control panel.

I don't see anything cliquish about that. It's just about acknowledging good posts by other members and making the forum experience more enjoyable, in my opinion.

[athenian200]

Is it possible to implement the reputation system as seen on other forums?

That's the part in one's post where other members are able to give rep points and the person's reputation is measured by little green bars on a user's side panel.

This is the same software, so of course it's possible. However, I'm not sure it's desirable. It usually only works out the way it's meant to on tech forums where there's less room for personal/subjective interpretation. It doesn't work as well on a general discussion forum. It can turn into a status indicator, and be used as an exchange of compliments rather than being used to assess the quality/relevance of the post as a contribution to the topic.

I don't think it would add anything meaningful to the forum, personally.

[Motor Jax]

i agree, not to a board such as this... where its just open opinions about open subjects...

i have seen it on history and science forums where the theme was on a specific area of expertise

but like the others; languages, math, psychology, sociology... where the knowledge is just too vast, there is no rep system



i have yet to see it on many MBTI type forums also

[Uberfuhrer]

Well, there are a number of things on forum sites, including this one (not a criticism, just an observation), that I wouldn't consider meaningful, per say, but rather a feature to just enhance the general forum experience. Take the friend application, for example. It's not really purposeful to most people, but it's a nice addition to make people feel closer to others in the community.





Uberfuhrer added to this post, 1 minutes and 18 seconds later...

i have yet to see it on many MBTI type forums also

It exists on certain MBTI forums.

[LionsPride]

Take the friend application, for example. It's not really purposeful to most people, but it's a nice addition to make people feel closer to others in the community.

It can also make people with a low friend count feel like outcasts. This would be really noticeable to me if it was shown as a statistic under a person's avatar on their posts like a reputation meter might be. Currently with the friend option, you don't have to participate if it's not your thing and no one would notice the difference until you visited the members' page. A reputation meter sounds like something that would be damaging to not participate in. Would you buy from a vendor on ebay that refused to participate in the feedback system?

I agree that it would be nice if there was a quick button on a post that you could push to send a person a thumbs up if it was a good comment. Sometimes there are people who post and their comments are so good I don't have anything to add. Rather then post again saying "ditto" and not adding to the thread, I could send a speedy message to them that references the post (so they know what I read) and acknowledge their contribution. It might reduce some of the feelings of 'posting to a void' where your comments go out there, but you don't get any feedback and the silence you get back could be everyone agreeing with you or no one listening. It's nice to know when it's the former rather then suspecting it's the latter. With that said, I don't like the idea of tracking and displaying these points on the forum. Then it becomes more of a status/popularity measure rather than one person reaching out to compliment another.

[Motor Jax]

I agree that it would be nice if there was a quick button on a post that you could push to send a person a thumbs up if it was a good comment. Sometimes there are people who post and their comments are so good I don't have anything to add. Rather then post again saying "ditto" and not adding to the thread, I could send a speedy message to them that references the post (so they know what I read) and acknowledge their contribution. It might reduce some of the feelings of 'posting to a void' where your comments go out there, but you don't get any feedback and the silence you get back could be everyone agreeing with you or no one listening. It's nice to know when it's the former rather then suspecting it's the latter. With that said, I don't like the idea of tracking and displaying these points on the forum. Then it becomes more of a status/popularity measure rather than one person reaching out to compliment another.

lol, may be the narcissism i feel that all the time... usually when i post, it seems like 3 days before someone would quote or saying anything about it or something remotely related to what i had put...

heh personally, i'd really just stay 'in the void'... i kinda find pride that whatever i had posted had surely covered everything and no one had anything else further to say... but, that's just me...

[Danisty]

On the forums I run, we have the rep system enabled but negative rep disabled.

[Arcani]

I personally like Dansity's idea. Setting it up like that would perhaps be helpful for new members to see whose contributions on the forum are well taken and respected while not shunning people with less accepted views.

The main problem with the rep system, as I see it, on a forum like this are that it doesn't give an idea of what area of the forum the person is respected in. For example, someone could have very high rep in the science sections, but maybe not as much in religion or politics. With the rep system a post s/he makes in one of those sections would be given more value than it might be worth just on account of the rep from the science section.

I don't think rep would become cliquish on a forum like this one. If anyone could make it work based solely on the merit of the poster's post it would be INTJ's.

[stasis]

We aren't going to be implementing the rep system at all.

Adding some kind of in-thread personal reply functionality to the vBulletin profile comment box (currently disabled) or to the PM system itself, as LionsPride seems to suggest, is a possibility. But it sounds redundant to me.

[Danisty]

What I do like about the rep system is that sometimes you'd like to comment on a post, yet it would be frivolous or off-topic to comment in the thread itself and it doesn't warrant starting a PM conversation. Perhaps the system could be enabled so that people could leave the reputation comments, but the green bars do not show on the posts.

On other forums, I've found the reputation comments to be generally useful feedback, but I don't really care if anyone knows I have high reputation or anything. What's nice about the rep comments is that they are tied directly to the post that you made. It leaves the comments and a link to the post in your user cp. You can also set it to show who left the comment. We have it set that way so that people are less likely to abuse the system and leave nasty comments that are hard to trace. I don't really know that we would have that problem here though. I think having at least the comments aspect of reputation would be far more useful than the public messaging feature that vB has written for the user profile page because it's more specific and it's private.

[LionsPride]

What I do like about the rep system is that sometimes you'd like to comment on a post, yet it would be frivolous or off-topic to comment in the thread itself and it doesn't warrant starting a PM conversation. Perhaps the system could be enabled so that people could leave the reputation comments, but the green bars do not show on the posts.

On other forums, I've found the reputation comments to be generally useful feedback, but I don't really care if anyone knows I have high reputation or anything. What's nice about the rep comments is that they are tied directly to the post that you made. It leaves the comments and a link to the post in your user cp. You can also set it to show who left the comment. We have it set that way so that people are less likely to abuse the system and leave nasty comments that are hard to trace. I don't really know that we would have that problem here though. I think having at least the comments aspect of reputation would be far more useful than the public messaging feature that vB has written for the user profile page because it's more specific and it's private.

That was the way I saw the difference between using the PM and the possible rep/post button/whatever system. The direct tie to the post and knowing exactly what you wrote that gave the accolades. Having it displayed in the fashion Danisty said above sounds interesting, where you could see who sent you the feedback and the link to the post, but it would be private and not displayed to the forum at large. I'd use the feature to send quick comments that I don't expect a response for like "well spoken", "best laugh of the day" or "you took the words right out of my mouth".

[Danisty]

That was the way I saw the difference between using the PM and the possible rep/post button/whatever system. The direct tie to the post and knowing exactly what you wrote that gave the accolades. Having it displayed in the fashion Danisty said above sounds interesting, where you could see who sent you the feedback and the link to the post, but it would be private and not displayed to the forum at large. I'd use the feature to send quick comments that I don't expect a response for like "well spoken", "best laugh of the day" or "you took the words right out of my mouth".Really all it would take is a minor edit in the template to keep it from displaying on the posts.