IPB native Points System (IP.Subeconomies? IP.Points?)

[Sonya*]

5 hours ago, SammyS said:

And I see SM crushing forums, so may be we should learn from them.

It is not worth to try "beating" SM. Forums will never attract the majority of users from social media. Most people there do not create any useful content. They post:

• cat Giphys and co.
• repost content of other users
• spy others

This is not the behavior you wish in one forum, and you would not like to target those users. You can have 100000 Giphys posters or 10 content creators. The latter is what a good forum community need.

I would not say "SM crushing forums", I would say "search engines crushing forums". Many people do not really know there are other possibilities than SM or content sites. If you search for major keywords you would never find forums, but tons of (often useless) content sites that generates articles, steal and rewrite the content from each other and buy tons of links to get search rankings. Forums get long tail keywords. Something that pretty specific and goes into depth. I am sure one get more from search results using schema markup, like Question, Answer, QAPage. 

The era of "pure" forums is over. The era of forums with general content is over. But there is a large opportunity for subject-specific communities with rich content, events, reviews, directories, Q&A and so on. All these elements can become a beginning of the conversation, discussion, what forums are. 

[SammyS]

5 hours ago, Sonya* said:

 

I would not say "SM crushing forums", I would say "search engines crushing forums". Many people do not really know there are other possibilities than SM or content sites

Really?
I see all the people I meet in forums no using them anymore since many years ago. All of them are now on SM. And you now what? all of them now create better content tha before because they cant hide behind an username, they have to use their real name.
Search engines penalices forums for their low quality content. 
We should drop that elitist way of thinking that "people using SM are retarded, all the good people use forums". That may be conforting but simply no true.
We should learn from them in terms of simplicity, UI design.
Reading some books is a nice way to start: "contagious. Why things catch on" and "hooked: how to build habit-forming products" are masterpieces and can really help to be a better admin
 

[Sonya*]

1 hour ago, SammyS said:

all of them now create better content tha before because they cant hide behind an username, they have to use their real name.

It is not true for all projects. I have some communities where people are BECAUSE they do not want to use their real names. Think of medical content, psychological and other vulnerable issues that people do not eager to share with the whole world. 

1 hour ago, SammyS said:

Search engines penalices forums for their low quality content. 

Sure, there are forums with low-quality content, they should be penalized. The same way the content sites are penalized. I think forum structure in generally is the reason why search engines cannot pick valuable content properly (if there is any).

1 hour ago, SammyS said:

We should drop that elitist way of thinking that "people using SM are retarded, all the good people use forums". That may be conforting but simply no true.

We should stop to think that all SM users can be somehow converted to forum users. 😜 

1 hour ago, SammyS said:

We should learn from them in terms of simplicity, UI design.

Agree. Poor usability, complicated forms, and overloaded interface - these are real points where communities can gain many improvements. 

[Jordan Miller]

13 hours ago, SammyS said:

So, forums "pays". I agree with you. But SM doesn´t, thats the reality. And I see SM crushing forums, so may be we should learn from them. I´ve never seen people complaining because FB, TW, doesnt give them badges, ranks, titles... and that´s because people doesn´t care about them. They want a clean, modern interface. Filling their screens with medals, badges looks really old and annoying. They dont want to see badges, or how many posts, or likes, has a member every time they read a comment. 
Maybe Im wrong, but that´s my opinion, we all are trying to learn here and be better admins for the good of ours comunities so I like to read yours opinions even if we dont agree.

I disagree 😇 I agree with @Joel R's point. And also, think of something like Robinhood. They've made trading stocks feel like a game. Yotta Bank has also gamified their business model - you earn points by saving money with them and using their bank. They also raffle off huge prizes each month to their users. Social Media does some gamification - for instance if you post a lot on a Facebook page, Facebook gives you a "badge" of sorts. You have the title "Top Poster" on your posts on that page moving forward. 🙏 

[Jordan Miller]

17 hours ago, Christopher Scott Grigg said:

I thank you for at least acknowledging our requests.

Appreciate you saying that. That is a big goal of mine with this position. Your guys' ideas deserve to be heard and taken more seriously. Of course we can't do everything, but as these conversations continue we can see what may need to become a priority (or not). 🙏 

[Jordan Miller]

14 hours ago, liquidfractal said:

That's great news.  I think one could also argue that this could transform the potential of the IP platform as much as Clubs in some ways.  I mean, are there any other CMS which have points economies as baked-in features?  Is this new ground Invision would be breaking in doing this?

Yea this would certainly be a game changer for clubs as well 👏 

[SammyS]

53 minutes ago, Sonya* said:

It is not true for all projects. I have some communities where people are BECAUSE they do not want to use their real names. Think of medical content, psychological and other vulnerable issues that people do not eager to share with the whole world. 

I agree on this. In fact Im working on a new project: a community for investors and entrepreneurs and I wont require real names because these people wants privacy to relax and share experiences, ideas, problems, etc. Less privacy = less content. But I showed invision to some of my partners and they begged me to use only discord. They see forum UI as really old and over complicated. 

There are priorities, as resources are scarse. I´d prefer invision fellas to expend their valuable time trying to improve UI, mobile UX rather than creating something already exists and will demand lot more of bugs fixes and support. My 2 cents : )

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by SammyS

[Jordan Miller]

1 minute ago, SammyS said:

I´d prefer invision fellas to expend their valuable time trying to improve UI, mobile UX rather than creating something already exists and will demand lot more of bugs fixes and support. My 2 cents : )

Better UX is always a priority 🙏 Not to derail the topic, but do any ideas/suggestions come to mind? 

[LiquidFractal]

On 2/6/2021 at 3:49 AM, SammyS said:

rather than creating something already exists and will demand lot more of bugs fixes and support.

If by this you mean my original reference to a points economy system, you lost me - I don't see how this already exists apart from the mentioned 3rd-party app, which I think is limited in its applicability for reasons I've mentioned.  I also think that perhaps this is comparing apples and oranges - I'm not saying mobile UX isn't important, but a points economy could not only fundamentally change the structure of one's community, but also expand one's business model.  Put differently, I don't see it as a zero-sum game where one necessarily has to occur at the expense of the other.

Edited February 9, 2021 by liquidfractal

[Jordan Miller]

On 2/5/2021 at 5:18 PM, liquidfractal said:

If by this you mean my original reference to a points economy system, you lost me - I don't see how this already exists apart from the mentioned 3rd-party app, which I think is limited in its applicability for reasons I've mentioned.  I also think that perhaps this is comparing apples and oranges - I'm not saying mobile UX isn't important, but a points economy could fundamentally change not only the structure of one's community, but also expand one's business model.  Put differently, I don't see it as a zero-sum game where one necessarily has to occur at the expense of the other.

100% agree. I am spending some time this week organizing initiatives like these so that when I take it to the team it's thoughtfully laid out. Points is priority for me. It may not be the right time for us, but I do personally find a ton of value in it and imagine it would be an amazing addition to Invision as well as an incentive for more people to join our Invision family. 🙏 

[LiquidFractal]

23 hours ago, Jordan Invision said:

100% agree. I am spending some time this week organizing initiatives like these so that when I take it to the team it's thoughtfully laid out. Points is priority for me. It may not be the right time for us, but I do personally find a ton of value in it and imagine it would be an amazing addition to Invision as well as an incentive for more people to join our Invision family. 🙏 

Thanks @Jordan Invision.  I realise this would be a major addition to the suite and would take some time to develop, but it would be well worth the effort.  Not to eat anyone's lunch or anything, but If I can help schematise this let me know. 🙂 And btw, congrats on the position and welcome!

[Jordan Miller]

16 minutes ago, liquidfractal said:

Thanks @Jordan Invision.  I realise this would be a major addition to the suite and would take some time to develop, but it would be well worth the effort.  Not to eat anyone's lunch or anything, but If I can help schematise this let me know. 🙂 And btw, congrats on the position and welcome!

Thank you! Of course the more ideas / feedback the better. What are your thoughts beyond what you included in your OP? I'd like to make an outline to present to the team so it's taken seriously. It may still not end up happening, but there's a much better chance of it going through if we deliver it properly. Maybe we start an open doc that members can contribute to? 

[LiquidFractal]

1 hour ago, Jordan Invision said:

Thank you! Of course the more ideas / feedback the better. What are your thoughts beyond what you included in your OP? I'd like to make an outline to present to the team so it's taken seriously. It may still not end up happening, but there's a much better chance of it going through if we deliver it properly. Maybe we start an open doc that members can contribute to? 

Good idea, although I don't know how this open document would be structured on this website.  Or do you mean a discussion thread/poll?

[Jordan Miller]

44 minutes ago, liquidfractal said:

Good idea, although I don't know how this open document would be structured on this website.  Or do you mean a discussion thread/poll?

Well, I was thinking a Google doc

I created it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UtV93uN0Rs59vkEWNoa8V7OUevRR7ZjloQus7OJ6yW0/edit?usp=sharing

Anyone can edit/contribute to this doc.

Hopefully no one deletes anything or replaces someone else's work lol, but also it has a way to track the history regarding changes. So theoretically nothing can be lost for good. 

No clue if this is a good or bad idea lol, but I do think two heads are better than one. And if the community wants to see points implemented, we need to specifically show why it's important and all the ways it can/should be utilized. 

[CoffeeCake]

On it!

[Jordan Miller]

Just now, Paul E. said:

On it!

OHHH yeaaaa! I'll contribute to it too of course. Right now ya boy is working on a blog post that's going up on Friday 🤠

[CoffeeCake]

Clearly @Jordan Invision ++1'ed me assuming that my contributions would be stellar and on point.

[Jordan Miller]

4 minutes ago, Paul E. said:

Clearly @Jordan Invision ++1'ed me assuming that my contributions would be stellar and on point.

Lol yup! 

Love me a cat GIF 

[Jordan Miller]

17 hours ago, Paul E. said:

On it!

I was so excited! Then I checked the doc -_____- 

[annadaa]

It is interesting that when members have good ideas the shares here with the developers of IPS because they are not necessarily aware of all the latest developments that may exist in community systems, socials, ...

But before wanting to put together a file to present, and participate in long discussions on these subjects, it would be good for IPS to tell us at least what its future intentions are to avoid wasting our time.

They have decided to invest the developers' time in what type of improvement for this next year?

Once we know that, we can better decide to come up with certain things.

What are the problems of this community system today and what improvement can be proposed?

Lack of member participation? Yes, it's true.

But is this problem of concern to IPS?

If so, this point system proposal seems very useful and deserves to be presented.

Ideas ? we have to see what is being done elsewhere.

For example in a clothing shopping site like adidas, it's 100 points for registration, 10 points per euro spent, make a comment 50 points

And different level to reach depending on the number of points with each level giving right to certain privileges.

Today IPS has its fine-tuned reaction system (Like, thanks ..), and I think it prefers to keep things very simple and if you want something more pushing they invite you to go and see the marketplace.

I have doubts that IPS has any intentions of developing another point system.

I hope that one day we will make members participate more in the development of IPS, for example by offering them each month to vote on a minimal improvement among several, and each year a major improvement ...

to come back to the point system proposed here, we should basically start in the article by defining what there is and the meaning of it:

Point:

Badge:

Trophy:

Score:

Classification table :

Positive remark:

How to value the participation of each member and help them write a comment in blog posts, ...

[Jordan Miller]

1 hour ago, annadaa said:

But before wanting to put together a file to present, and participate in long discussions on these subjects, it would be good for IPS to tell us at least what its future intentions are to avoid wasting our time.

I can tell you with 100% certainty now that the Invision team is putting efforts into gamification in general in a release this year. 🎉 

[Joel R]

If IPS is serious about gamification, here are some foundational points:

1. Entire suite -- Not just forums. Not just apps.  But the entirety and power of the full Invision suite: uploading a cover photo, filling out a profile custom field, writing a status update, making a blog post, RSVPing to a calendar event, getting a post marked as best answer, creating an album, renewing a subscription for the sixth time, winning second in the leaderboard, getting an item promoted.     
2. Weighted -- Writing an in-depth long-form blog is very different from uploading one image, but IPS weighs them the same as one content item.  They shouldn't count the same.  
3. Customizable -- I would like a gamification system to be customizable to exclude / include nodes, categories, and apps.  How I reward my users is very different than how you run your community or how Invision runs its community.  How we offer member journeys will be as diverse as our communities.  
4. Clubs -- I would like a gamification system to include clubs.  Not nearly at the same amount of customization, but each club deserves its own basic set.  
5. Meaningful -- The rewards should be: Immediate, Recognize the relative difficulty of the accomplishment, and Provide the steps needed to get to the next reward.  
   • Typical reward: "Congrats, you won a badge for making X posts."
   • Better reward: "Congrats, you won a badge for making X posts, an accomplishment that puts you into the top 10% of users.  Your next badge is at Y posts."
6. Attention Grabbing -- If a tree falls in a forest and no notification is sent out, does anybody care?  Gamification needs to have movement, to have excitement, to be dynamic, and offer a call to action.   

  What I'd like for gamification to address:

• Profile onboarding - I've logged in to the accounts of multiple users over the years, and every single one has totally ignored the Profile Completion.  I would love to actually see usage statistics on larger sites, but at least on my site, most users don't care about Profile Completion.  I'd rather deprecate Profile Completion in favor of Gamification.  
• New user activation - There needs to be multiple calls to action within the first X minutes, where X is the site's average session duration. I've seen first-hand how if I can talk live to a user when he first joins, his posting skyrockets at least over that session. There needs to be activity, excitement, and movement within that first session duration.     
• Member pathways - Users find fulfillment in many ways in our communities. We need to empower them to both progress along certain member pathways while encouraging them to also explore other pathways.  

[Moonbeam]

6 hours ago, Jordan Invision said:

I can tell you with 100% certainty now that the Invision team is putting efforts into gamification in general in a release this year. 🎉 

You should copy-paste Joel R's entire post above this one as a blueprint for that gamification effort.

Edited February 11, 2021 by Moonbeam

[LiquidFractal]

@Jordan Invision @Joel R

I agree with everything Joel says about gamification, and please forgive me if I speak naively as I'm not in-the-know with this stuff the way others are here, but here goes:

I don't at all mean to diss gamification and the development of an online community, but my initial focus was on a Points system which is more overtly "business-focused" instead of focused on community development (if that distinction makes sense).  To wit: geared toward clients who come to a website in search of a particular service they are set to pay for, and not necessarily or primarily bound together by common interests which would be more amenable to things like trophies, leaderboards, new user activation, profile completion and the like.  Hence my personal preference for being able, say, to simply buy blocks of hours in the Store and have those hours immediately credited to a defined "Bank" connected with all the other goodies like email drips, notifications, possible transferability, etc.  I'll be selfish for just a moment longer and say that this would be a HUGE selling point for me (and I'll bet some others here).

If I'm creating a distinction where none exists and the gamification we're talking about includes what I've mentioned, I'll just shut up 😄 .

Edited February 11, 2021 by liquidfractal

[Jordan Miller]

Loving all the activity and suggestions! Seriously awesome post @Joel R 🙌🥲🤯

I will circle back with you guys with some thoughts! Just didn’t want to leave ya hanging 🙏🙏🙏