What should we do about Rep ?

[Redrobes]

Hi Everyone,

I need your help - or at least your opinion, and I would hope that a lot of people would use the poll on this thread to let us know how you feel about the Rep system on this site.

The Rep is for reputation and shows up as the green bar and your little tag when you hover the mouse cursor over it showing how well your doing. It was added a long time ago - when I was a normal member like most people on the site. I recall the time it started and we could all dish out just our 1 rep boost to someones score for a map we liked.

The forum implements an increase to the amount that you give out based on your rep score. So if you have 1000 rep then you might give out 10 points each time. Also, for every year you have been on the site you have another point on to that score.

We have a bit of a problem which was first acknowledged many years ago when people had boosts of +13 or +20. Time has gone by and now we have some members who have multi 10,000 rep scores where they dish out > 100 pts per hit. Our highest member is about 800 at a time. For even those members they have said that they have reigned in and not given out so many hits of rep because each time they do it then it boosts that members rep score by too much in one go. I think we have the situation where one hit will take somebody up several levels at once.

We have noticed that in recent times we have members with rep scores approaching 10,000 where they have made only a few posts. No doubt they have produced some amazing maps and art in their first few months on the forum.

So we have rampant rep inflation going on now.

So I thought that it would be a good idea to gauge just how people felt about the rep system by running a couple of polls.

The first one is just to see what the sentiment is like out there for rep and how you feel about it. Then I might do another one regarding what to do about it given the limitations of the forum.

So please vote on the poll and I would like for both the established members and also the newer members to make their voices heard. Do comment on this thread and express in words how you find it working for you and whether its important or whether you feel alienated by the amounts of rep being dished out or your ability to express how much you like other peoples work using the rep system.

[Jerron]

Oh, I never bothered to think about how the rep system actually works and I also never bothered about how much rep I'm receiving or distributing. So yeah, the whole system is in dire need of some transparency.

[Redrobes]

Oh, I never bothered to think about how the rep system actually works and I also never bothered about how much rep I'm receiving or distributing. So yeah, the whole system is in dire need of some transparency.

Hi Jerron, you are a good example of a person with > 10,000 rep and 89 posts as of writing. I have seen your maps and they are truly excellent but let me explain the rep scoring system in detail for you and we can analyze how it breaks down:

You start with 1 point of rep power. You get get another 1 for being a member for more than a year. You get an extra 1 more for every 1000 posts you make so you dont qualify for that at the moment. And you are at +2 now. Then you also get +1 per 100 rep that you have attained yourself - so you get an extra +100 ! So you are giving out +102 rep per hit when you add to someones reputation. Its that +100 bit that is a bit of a skew to the system and where I think I must do something about it.

[Yrda]

As a new member, this kind of system was kind of new for me. At first I didn't know that when I was giving rep to someone, it was worth nothing at first.
I was feeling sorry then, because I gave someone rep with a value of zero, and I didn't want to insult that member by "giving zero points". And since then I didn't give rep to anyone anymore because I was a bit uneasy about it (and I just had to check again where that rep feature was hidden anyway).

I'm also not sure if I should say thank you to everyone who gave rep to me. Of course I was happy that people did it each time (because it felt like a warm and positive welcome to me, just like the friendly comments), but I didn't know if people might "expect" a written thank you like I've seen later on some other reps for other members.

I guess it would be easier to understand if rating a certain posting/thread worked the same as giving rep.
For example: if I rate this thread "excellent", you get 10 rep. If I rate it "terrible" (who would do that, anyway?), you'd get -1 rep or something? But I guess there is a reason why it doesn't work like that.

It's just that it would focus more on the work than on the person, at least to me. Who is using the whole rating system anyway? The "+" or "-" system works on platforms like reddit, I guess (although I don't really use that). Like "+" this is helpful or great, "-" for "that might be a troll".
And if a "-" isn't wanted at all, just a simple "+" (counting as 1 for everyone) might do?

edit: about the inflation:
Yes, to me it also felt as if my rep got up "a little" quickly, at least visually, not telling anything about my time or amount of activity here.

[Redrobes]

At first I didn't know that when I was giving rep to someone, it was worth nothing at first.
...
It's just that it would focus more on the work than on the person, at least to me. Who is using the whole rating system anyway? The "+" or "-" system works on platforms like reddit, I guess (although I don't really use that). Like "+" this is helpful or great, "-" for "that might be a troll".
And if a "-" isn't wanted at all, just a simple "+" (counting as 1 for everyone) might do?
...
Yes, to me it also felt as if my rep got up "a little" quickly, at least visually, not telling anything about my time or amount of activity here.

The forum software has many limitations but there are a number of options about what we could do about it. So all of these opinions and good for discussion. Certainly I don't like the initial thing where you have to have 30 rep yourself before your rep you dish out counts to others. I think its there so you cant open up 10 new forum accounts and dish out rep from each of them but in all fairness we have the initial 5 post anti spam measures now. I don't like the initial 30 rep start either.

If you think that having everyone on +1 no matter is best then ill make sure that is an option in the future poll about whats to be done about it.

We do currently have the option of giving -ve rep. I think its half of what your +ve rep would have been but not many people give -ve rep scores as it shows up on the your profile rep sheet. I think if you dont like something that much then its time to make a note to the CLs and ask them to do something. Perhaps fantasy map making is not something that calls for a much -ve rep.

[Falconius]

I basically use rep as a big kind of "like" button, other than communicating that "like" to a person rep doesn't matter to me. Also I was sad when the "like" buttons for posts got removed due to unavoidable circumstances.

[Greason Wolfe]

Perhaps changing it to +1 for every 1000 earned would help?

For my part, I like the basic idea of rep as a means of showing or receiving appreciation for the effort/work that is/has been done. However, I've never really concerned myself with how much I've earned over the years or how much I give out at a pop. To me the numbers don't matter all that much, so if we were all receiving/giving only 1 point at a time, I'd be as okay with that as I would be if it were 100 points.

Just my humble opinion.

[bkh1914]

I view the rep system as a pat on the back, and frankly I appreciate it.

I think lowering the post count is a good idea. I know I held off on giving rep until I had reached that minimum post level just so I wouldn't be giving empty rep.

The mushrooming rep power is a real issue. Would it be possible to do a sliding scale for the rep power based on your rep score? Something like the number of boxes in the rep bar? (i.e. a logarithmic scale)

If I remember correctly, you also get one point of rep power for each thousand posts. I like that idea. It tends to favor the chatty people, but they are the ones that give this forum life and I think that it is as important to recognize that contribution as it is to recognize the people that have gotten rep for wonderful maps.

I don't like the idea of negative rep. This forum is about encouragement and constructive criticism. Negative rep is not constructive.

[Tiana]

I don't like the idea of negative rep. This forum is about encouragement and constructive criticism. Negative rep is not constructive.

I would be very unhappy with the addition of negative karma points of any kind.

I don't like internet points at all. I rarely give rep and would rather receive a nice comment or PM.

If I like your map I will comment on it; I look at more than I comment on. I don't think the rep needs to be removed if people like it, though I will likely continue to ignore it all the same for the most part, even if it is corrected to what it should be which is +1 for +1 vote from any user.

[Eowyn Cwper]

I totally agree with Yrda and not just because I'm a new member as well. I don't really know how forums work but I would also simplify the system drastically – assuming that it's indeed simple to do. A basic +1 / -1 reputation system looks totally fine to me, that's what we have on the conlanging community ConWorkShop and people love it. You can see on my profile that I have received 2 748 upvotes and 108 downvotes.

There's a karma statistics page but I'm not sure it's accessible to users without an account so I'll just screenshot it (ignore the 255 downvotes given, it was a joke made with a bot :D ).

karma statistics.PNG

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There is a karma button on every post.

karma button1.PNG

karma button2.PNG

karma button3.PNG

But you can't downvote certain types of pages, like language homepages.

karma button4.PNG

This system is quite lovely. I never got bored of it and I'd be totally down to seeing it set up here if that was possible. ^^ I don't loathe downvotes, especially if we can forbid them on media pages for example – but an upvote-only system would work about the same. Besides, few people abuse it on CWS (they monitor it just in case) and I never found it to be a very warm community in the first place – unlike the CG as far as I can tell so far.

As for the vote, well, I'm too new to make up my mind rightly but I guess I'll hit the second option. :D