One of the most requested features of the past few years has been for a reputation system and we've already announced that it will be included in IP.Board 3. We're very excited to finally be releasing the details of this new feature and hope that you will enjoy this new feature!
A user's reputation will be displayed on their profile and is based on the number of points that user has. You can configure 'Reputation Levels' in the Admin CP, a level includes text and/or an image, as well as the point value needed for that level. The point value can be either positive or negative, so you could create a level system like this:
- -50 Negative Level 2
- -25 Negative Level 1
- 0 Normal Level
- 25 Positive Level 1
- 50 Positive Level 2
A user receives or loses points when other users vote up or down the content they have submitted to your community. Forum posts, gallery images, blog posts, etc will all have +/- buttons that your members can use to vote on the associated content. This system is entirely modular, which means that modification authors can also include the reputation vote buttons in their mods and your members can vote on that content as well.
The forum includes filters to view or hide posts based on the number of points that post has received. So you can choose to hide all posts that fall below -25, or any other value that you set. This system works much like the ignore user feature, the post will be hidden with an option to view it anyway. It is also possible to set an upper threshold that will highlight posts that have more than X amount of points.
The system has several configuration options as well. You can choose to allow your members to only give positive votes, or only negative votes, or both positive and negative votes. You can choose at what level content becomes 'highlighted', you can exclude specific groups from the reputation system, choose if the reputation is displayed on profiles, and choose if the total point value is displayed on a post or other type of content. You can also limit the number of positive and negative votes that a user group is allowed to give in a 24 hour period.
We hope you enjoy this first look at the new reputation system, in the coming weeks we will be releasing more information on this system, including screenshots! As always, please let us know what you think of this feature, you're feedback is invaluable in finalizing all the new features in IP.Board 3.