Member rating/reputation

[//Nathan]

I'm not a big fan of topic ratings, which was introduced in one of the beta builds (is it still there, or just disabled on the company forums? no matter...), but I always thought it would be neat to have member rating. If you post a question, and someone helps you, you add to their reputation. If they call you a stupid n00b and tell you where to take a flying leap, you subtract from it. As a community, after a couple months, a pecking order based on respect is established. You start with so many points, so you have some to lose without going into the negative numbers.

Each member can choose to auto-ignore anyone with reputation below a certain level (above the default, to ignore newbs; at the default, to ignore anyone who's lost more than they've gained; or at below the default, to do the same but be a bit more lenient), and even, as an extreme, someone could be auto-banned or auto-modqueued if their reputation falls to a certain level (that is, if you have a troll, they could be punished simply by the whole community contributing to their negative reputation).

As a precaution, you could set a minimum member age (have to be registered a month) or a minimum postcount to take away from someone's reputation. Another precaution could be preventing someone within the same ISP (e.g. everyone within 172.24.*.* to use a random wildcarded IP) or IP range from affecting someone else's reputation in the same range, so you know people who know each other IRL or duplicate accounts aren't pumping each other up.

I do see how something like this could be abused, particularly on a forum with immature members (see just about any music group forum), but on a more professional forum like the company forums here, it could be really cool.

[Why Two Kay]

I like this idea actually, and I agree that you need to meet some sort of standard to do subtractions. Also, I think that there should be an option for certain member groups to be able to add/subtract. Such as mods cant only minus, or the 'Advanced Member' group, can only add, or something like that. :thumbsup:

[cojo]

but on a more professional forum like the company forums here, it could be really cool.

This is not a feature for a company's forums unless it's part of their business model. The last thing most companies want is for customers to rate other customers. That's a great way to lose business.

Rating systems like this are childish. It's your right though to make such a suggestion just don't distort who the real audience this will make happy.

[Ipstenu]

It's useful for gaming mods and other things where you get special access if you're 'good', but it has to be heavily regulated.

All it takes is one dork marking everyone 'down' to hose it up for the rest (which is what happened on my old SMF boards :angry: )

[//Nathan]

This is not a feature for a company's forums unless it's part of their business model. The last thing most companies want is for customers to rate other customers. That's a great way to lose business.

Rating systems like this are childish. It's your right though to make such a suggestion just don't distort who the real audience this will make happy.

...I meant a forum like Tech/General chat, where people (generally) are more mature. I didn't mean specifically corporate forums. Yes, I know this place qualifies as both... I would expect this forum to have it disabled, like they've disabled the topic rating system.

I think it's you who have things distorted, as you seem to have taken something personal with this post. It's pretty shortsighted to assume that a community software like IPB would only have corporate uses. I've seen plenty of fan-based, tech, and general conversation forums using IPB, and these would benefit from a member-rating system (at least, more so than a topic rating system).

Customers rating other customers is a great way to lose business? What about customers flaming other customers? IPB has "allowed" that possibility since 1.0, since anyone can "say" anything. If a company wanted to be truly "sensitive" to their customers, they would set up two forums. One for announcements, and one where you can post, but not reply; only staff would be able to reply. Then you disable PMs, and customers can't affect one another in any way, only post messages for staff to reply to. But I see that being done very rarely. (The Disturbed board has a forum that works that way, as a matter of fact, "Ask the Band", where fans can only start new topics, and band members can (and do - occasionally) reply. It sucks.)

It's useful for gaming mods and other things where you get special access if you're 'good', but it has to be heavily regulated.

All it takes is one dork marking everyone 'down' to hose it up for the rest (which is what happened on my old SMF boards :angry: )

Another 'safeguard' could only give so many "credits" to each user per day, to increase the value of each plus or minus. Or maybe give each member X plusses and Y minusses. If you could only degrade one member a day but could compliment five members per day, you would put more thought into how you dealt them out.

Also... perhaps each user could see the "points" marked against him or her, and pull up a history. They wouldn't see "who" knocked them, but mods could... but they could see what post it was for... maybe for only one a day, you would have to give a reason... and if as a member you didn't think a knock against you was fair, you could appeal it. If a mod sees someone knocking people for the heck of it or otherwise unfairly... remove that member's ability to knock. Problem solved.

The idea is to get people more involved in your community... so if it sounds complicated, that's why... if you set up these complicated systems (money/point systems as well), it gives people another reason to want to participate. On some forums, people compete with the postcount (again, see the Disturbed board). I have a few ideas which would encourage users to push quality rather than quantity, and this is just one of them. :)

I like this idea actually, and I agree that you need to meet some sort of standard to do subtractions. Also, I think that there should be an option for certain member groups to be able to add/subtract. Such as mods cant only minus, or the 'Advanced Member' group, can only add, or something like that. :thumbsup:

Oh yeah, it would all be based on group permissions, but that's practically the backbone (or a backbone) of the IPB system... which groups can do what. That's one thing that's cool about IPB... I'm not sure if all forum platforms are this customizeable, as IPB is the only one I've ever ran... but yeah, that would be a given. ;)