- Individual user posts can be rated up/down for their contribution to the community.
- Sufficiently highly rated posts are automatically nominated for "permanence" - addition to a long-term record of "classic posts" containing particularly informative/helpful/entertaining information.
- User ratings are normalized aggregations based on post ratings. Instead of unbounded numbers (how high can current ratings go?), they'll instead be a percentage which could be considered analogous to presidential approval ratings. [smile]
Proposed ratings mechanism modifications
Author
I'm proposing the following modifications to the rating system, and I'd like to get community feedback:
You mention percentage, what happens when a new user has just one "useful" post? Does he then have a "perfect" rating?
Author
Quote:Original post by sirob
You mention percentage, what happens when a new user has just one "useful" post? Does he then have a "perfect" rating?
We can set a "mediocre" baseline, like 50%.
Quote:Original post by OluseyiQuote:Original post by ajones
Any chance of a dedicated thread for this? Some people may not read Alpha's thread, or only read part of it.
Done.Quote:Original post by BeanDog
Yes! I'd also like to see people with, say, 50+ highly rated posts in a single forum be automatically nominated for a "forum expert" status, which status would be displayed on all their posts in that forum from then on.
Nope. Well, maybe, but certainly with something more appropriate than "forum expert." It requires human intervention to determine that a repeatedly, positively rated poster is actually an expert, and not just funny/innocuous. I'd prefer a tag like "Community Contributor" or something.
LOL. I'm in the top 50 but I'm certainly not an "expert". Plus that one poster may blow a fuse if we top 50 start calling ourselves "GDnet Experts" . Community Contributor is a decent enough name. Decent because I can't think of anything better.
#3 My understanding was that the current upper bound was somewhere above 2000. For example, Myopic Rhino has a rating of 2088.
If the switch to a percentage rating is made, existing members should start out with a rating based on their current rating, perhaps the percentage of their current rating relative to Myopic Rhino. As an example, that would give you a 95% rating (1987/2088) to start with.
If the switch to a percentage rating is made, existing members should start out with a rating based on their current rating, perhaps the percentage of their current rating relative to Myopic Rhino. As an example, that would give you a 95% rating (1987/2088) to start with.
Quote:Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Community Contributor is a decent enough name. Decent because I can't think of anything better.
Docent.
Can you please explain the motivation behind the rating system? I don't generally pay attention to ratings. This is really just a side effect of my browsing behavior: I don't generally pay attention to names, and I hold that the merit of a post (at least, in technical discussions) is due to the content of that specific post, not the amortized popularity of all posts made by the poster (especially considering that you can rate people in lounge posts). I think thread and post ratings would be more useful to the curious reader than user ratings are.
I don't generally take advantage of the rating system. I have, in the past, rated people both as helpful and unhelpful. All of the times I have rated people unhelpful/unfriendly (keep in mind this is rather infrequent) it has been based solely on my own superficial whims. I'm sure this holds true for many others; within a few hours of me making a snarky comment about Windows Vista I lost ~50 points of rating.
I don't generally take advantage of the rating system. I have, in the past, rated people both as helpful and unhelpful. All of the times I have rated people unhelpful/unfriendly (keep in mind this is rather infrequent) it has been based solely on my own superficial whims. I'm sure this holds true for many others; within a few hours of me making a snarky comment about Windows Vista I lost ~50 points of rating.
Author
Quote:Original post by The Reindeer Effect
Can you please explain the motivation behind the rating system?
Not really. Something along the lines of an impetus toward self-moderation in that the community can punish violating members without moderator/staff intervention (rating the erring user down), so users are more cautious about their behavior. Yes, it can be abused, but that's more of an edge case. It's here and our users, for the most part, embrace it, so it stays.
Since it's staying, I'm looking at ways to make it more useful. Thread ratings are a no; they require that a rater have examined the majority of the thread to be meaningful, and since the nature of a thread can change as posts are added, a thread rating can quickly become misleading or unrepresentative of the rater's opinion. Post ratings are a yes because they lack those problems. Want to rate up the initial concept of a thread (eg The Adventures of MS Paintman)? Rate up the Original Post.
The utility of the ratings system is not up for debate. This is a proposed modification or extension, so that it has tangible benefits for everyone.
Quote:Original post by The Reindeer Effect
Can you please explain the motivation behind the rating system? I don't generally pay attention to ratings.
I think the basic idea of it is to show appreciation/respect to those people that are active in helping the community, and a way to filter out posts from users who may be seen as generally not as helpful/unkind.
As for the possible changes: It doesn't bother me one way or another. I do like the idea of classic posts though. Would it only mark particular posts as classic, or would it include a link to the related thread as well? (Without a bit of context, it could be a little strange. How about a list of threads containing classic posts (along with the number of classic posts in the thread, with classic posts being marked in orange rather than the usual blue)?
I 100% agree with the rating of threads based on usefulness. Alot of nice threads are lost to the archives and the same questions are asked and asked. I also think that any threads that gain the permanence status could make it into a section that can be closely linked to For Beginners.
It would be good if there was an automatically generated topic at the top of every forum where 'permanence' qualifying threads are link in so that they can be preserved.
Dave
It would be good if there was an automatically generated topic at the top of every forum where 'permanence' qualifying threads are link in so that they can be preserved.
Dave
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