IPS Achievement Point Rank System: Perfectly Balanced Feature with no Exploits at All!

[Tripp★]

I come bearing tidings of a jolly amusing discovery involving your splendid Achievements system. Sit back, relax, grab a cup of tea and brace yourselves, for I've stumbled upon a cheeky little exploit in the realm of points. Mind you, this jolly exploit isn't quite viable within the confines of IPS, owing to its automatic "Concurrent Posts" merge system. However, with a clever bot in tow, one could embark on a semi-automated adventure, if you catch my drift.

Here's the comical recipe for mischief:

1. Pen a private message to your own glorious self (earning a delightful 10 points, I say).
2. Engage in a spot of repartee, replying to said conversation (bagging another 5 points for your deviousness).
3. Rinse and repeat, my good friends! Rejoice as you partake in step 2 once more, adding a further 5 points to your ill-gotten bounty.

Alternatively, if you're feeling a tad existential, allow me to present an alternative path whilst ponder your life choices:

1. Commence a plethora of conversations with your magnificent self (yes, you are the most fascinating person you know). Each new exchange shall bestow upon you a sumptuous 10 points.
2. Take a moment to marvel at the enigma of existence, as you delete the evidence of these self-indulgent chats, while retaining the precious points acquired. Truly, a mind-boggling endeavour! By the way, this works on this site as well.

And there you have it! The IPS Achievement System is perfectly balanced with no exploits at all. Wishing you uproarious joy, and a great weekend.

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Yes, I had ChatGPT help with this post. I gave it what I wanted to say (Which was boring) and told it to give the 'Spiffing Brit' make over, which I daresay has done a wonderous job!

[Chris Anderson]

Also "liking" a post and immediately removing it gives you an extra point that doesn't seem to get taken back.

[Chris Anderson]

Also "following" a post and immediately removing it gives you an extra point that doesn't seem to get taken back.

[Randy Calvert]

These have been known since achievements have come out. Not sure anything is going to change with it in 4.X. 

[Tripp★]

9 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

These have been known since achievements have come out. Not sure anything is going to change with it in 4.X. 

Well that's depressing. It's unfortunate to see such longstanding issues persist.

I understand that addressing them might not be a priority in the current 4.X version, however, it's disheartening to learn that this matter has been lingering for quite some time without a resolution.

IPS Staff: It would be reassuring to know if there are any plans or considerations for addressing these concerns in future updates.

Kind regards.

[Randy Calvert]

As a suggestion, you might look at a way of automating rebuilding of achievements as a workaround.  

[Tripp★]

I appreciate the suggestion, but the last time I rebuilt the achievements it took days and drove the CPU at maximum until it finished.

There has been more content since then, won't it just take days-to-a-week every time I rebuild them? Or does it rebuild everything from the last time it was rebuilt?

[Randy Calvert]

I started rebuilding achievements on a site with 5.8M items.  It's so far around 2% after about 5 min.  

It will rebuild everything... or you could have it only award for content submitted since a specific date.

[Marc]

I have moved this to our feedback area, but its not something that is specifically an exploit. Its annoying, yes, however people like this would be very quickly exposed, and its really something that is a moderation issue.

[Matt]

I do not think that we should be awarding points to private messages at all, so I'll discuss that with the team.

Regarding the follow/unfollow - that is true but you can only do that once per content item/node. It is a design choice as we did not want to start removing points when content was deleted as it may drop people back down ranks.

You can design the system to reward follow/react much less than posting, etc so anyone that wants to spend hours clicking buttons doesn't get a lot from it.