81 replies to this topic

[Álvaro]

Hi,

I just saw that I get one reputation point for logging in. To the extent that reputation is worth anything, it is an indicator of how helpful a member is to the community. Whether I check the option to stay logged in or I enter my password every time is not interesting at all and is just polluting the score, making it less informative.

Can we please get rid of this unfortunate feature?

Edited by alvaro, 10 May 2012 - 07:22 AM.

[achild]

(Just tried it)
Wow yeah that is different! (not to mention it took me forever to remember my login credentials)

This was almost surely a mistake. If not, what's the reasoning behind it?

[Michael Tanczos]

I just saw that I get one reputation point for logging in. To the extent that reputation is worth anything, it is an indicator of how helpful a member is to the community. Whether I check the option to stay logged in or I enter my password every time is not interesting at all and is just polluting the score, making it less informative.

Can we please get rid of this unfortunate feature?

Good observation.. Logging in is +1. This is not an accident and is the result of a lot of discussion and months of planning and development. Logging in is considered "Participation" and it increments your overall reputation by 1. We have not rolled out the full extent of what reputation will entail just yet but to give you some insight, you also get +100 for signing up. A lot of these changes are going to allow you to directly impact your own reputation in a positive way, but some things you'll do are harder than others.

This will be a MAJOR change when it's fully rolled out.. the biggest way to earn points will be through authoring articles. This will bring potentially +150 points to your rep for a successfully peer-reviewed article. You also get bonus for everyone who likes your article. People who also choose to "Follow" your topics/articles/blog post will also give you a points boost.

Reputation is segmented into four categories: Scholar, Author, Moderator, and Participation
See the tabs at - http://www.gamedev.net/sm/

Right now we are making sure the system is functional and recording some minor transactions correctly without incident. Upvotes are going to be scaled in the future to give you more points if a high-rated user upvotes you. So +1 from logging in is going to be next to nothing in terms of its overall impact.

Here's the coolest aspect of the program.. the more points you get in a category it will unlock increased abilities within the site. This could even go as far as to allow you to edit people's posts, modify tags, approve content, etc.

Edited by Michael Tanczos, 10 May 2012 - 09:48 AM.

[SiCrane]

I would understand logging in as a reputation boost if staying logged in and visiting the site also did the reputation boost. It seems that it only kicks in if you explicitly log in.

[Michael Tanczos]

I would understand logging in as a reputation boost if staying logged in and visiting the site also did the reputation boost. It seems that it only kicks in if you explicitly log in.

Yeah, that's a bug that I noticed last night. The board software doesn't trigger the login event unless you explicitly log in.. so I'm going to adapt it to work like you describe. What will most likely happen is that we roll out ways to boost your rep a few at a time and watch the system for a few days so we don't have some ways that are too overpowered.

My first concern will be reintroducing weighted up/down votes.. where a person with a higher rating can make a bigger impact. I think it's capped at +8 max and -4 min at the moment.

Edited by Michael Tanczos, 10 May 2012 - 09:53 AM.

[Cornstalks]

I really hope these logging-in points truly are almost negligible in their overall impact. It seems weird to give reputation points to a crappy participant for participating (by logging in) (not that there are tons of crappy participants, but we all know we've got some) (and I know that's what down-votes are for, but still, the concept is... weird). Maybe at least only +1 people who have a certain minimum score? (maybe 100ish seeing as that's the starting default now?)

[SimonForsman]

I would understand logging in as a reputation boost if staying logged in and visiting the site also did the reputation boost. It seems that it only kicks in if you explicitly log in.

Yeah, that's a bug that I noticed last night. The board software doesn't trigger the login event unless you explicitly log in.. so I'm going to adapt it to work like you describe. What will most likely happen is that we roll out ways to boost your rep a few at a time and watch the system for a few days so we don't have some ways that are too overpowered.

My first concern will be reintroducing weighted up/down votes.. where a person with a higher rating can make a bigger impact. I think it's capped at +8 max and -4 min at the moment.

Is there a cap on the number of login points you can get per day ? (If not i can see some abuse of that feature on the horizon)

[Álvaro]

You can fix the issue of staying logged in versus explicitly logging in by counting as +1 the first page view of the day.

But I still don't want it. I was happy with getting +1 or -1 from the opinions of other forum members. If the formula gets more complicated, the reputation number gets harder to interpret. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

[Washu]

I honestly don't mind, I do think there should be a limited number of login points awarded per day though. Maybe 3 or 4. Other than that, I don't have any problems with people getting points for logging in.

[Michael Tanczos]

Most things will have caps to prevent too much reputation movement in a given day. Generally-speaking, for active members it all works out in the end since you stay on the same level as other members by staying active. Login points right now are limited to one per day max.

We're tweaking the responsibilities you can earn just yet but we also want to encourage more article authorship through monthly article competitions (with perhaps even a prize pool). Ideally we start putting together a much more comprehensive body of knowledge with google acting as the main interface for getting at that info for people outside the site.

We love what http://www.codeproject.com/ is doing, but we want something with a more game developer centric community. So we pulled ideas from both there, stackexchange, MSDN, and strangely enough.. our Pre-2011 GameDev.net.

Edited by Michael Tanczos, 10 May 2012 - 03:06 PM.

[Alpha_ProgDes]

If I'm getting rep points for logging in then I should get rep points for posting in the Lounge.

In any case, I think "participation points" should be separate from "Reputation points".

[Servant of the Lord]

Most things will have caps to prevent too much reputation movement in a given day. Generally-speaking, for active members it all works out in the end since you stay on the same level as other members by staying active. Login points right now are limited to one per day max.

But isn't the point of the rating system to differentiate between 'active members' and 'helpful members'?

The three metrics here, "activity", "helpfulness", and "knowledge", should be separate, not mixed together. Otherwise, it seems like it'd just encourage spam. You mentioned four categories (Scholar, Author, Moderator, and Participation), and it's good you separate them, but if you then mix them back together to present them as a single unified 'rating', it seems like it might mess up what you're trying to do, if all new users see is that "I post and the little number goes up", which is how other sites generally work anyway, making it likely they'll just tie 'rating' to 'post count'.

Edited by Servant of the Lord, 10 May 2012 - 03:54 PM.

[Stormynature]

A completely of the cuff idea and not even sure if it is feasible technically ( I really do need to learn website languages sigh!). Without actually removing any of the existing metrics but still establishing a way to determine someone's ability to be and effective advisor as well (and I think appropriate) recognising someone's consistent attendance/participation to the website, why not use colours.

For example:

A person whose reputation is mostly established via helpful posts to thread creating consumers might have their reputation shown in Blue.
A person whose reputation is mostly garnered through logging on each day might be shown as Green.

Admittedly certain reputation values might need to be weighted in order to reflect such an idea. Though I must admit given Michael's earlier comments in this thread it seems weighting has already been planned into the process. I know it might seem that people who log on each day and contribute nothing in the way of posts may not deserve any type of recognition...but if they are here each day then effectively they are an active member of GameDev and should receive some recognition for that status. I know that I am more likely to pay attention to a post made by someone who has a reputation of 812 all based from having logged in over the last 3 years or so because that amount of exposure to this website suggests that their post when they finally make it might have some unusual and creative insight's as well an historical ability to refer to old threads newer people may have missed. I do think that members who have been here for years should have a recognition over someone who signed up yesterday and has posted 8 times within the first hour. Don't forget people who post in stupidity tend to bury themselves quickly into oblivion.

One other aspect of this that I also find somewhat interesting is that those members who have entered the world of negative reputation do now have a way to resume a normal discourse into community as a whole. By offering redemption to those who have plummeted by their own misdeeds you do provide a slow way to reintegrate them back into the community and if they persist in their stupidity then thier redemption will obviously never succeed.

[Michael Tanczos]

But isn't the point of the rating system to differentiate between 'active members' and 'helpful members'?

Maybe. But we are putting a lot back into the hands of the individual member to give themselves an opportunity to drive up their own rating by getting involved with otherwise normal activities. These are activities that we need to have in play for the system to work. Members right now DON'T actively by and large take the time to recognize the people who are spending time helping them. So the reality is that we need to do something more to make recognition of others a core value of our site.

Also, reputation isn't tied to post count in any way.

And to be fair, the floor for new members is 100.. which is also why everyone has gone up 100 points over the past week.. so you all get that same courtesy that was extended to new members.

It's also important to note that 365 points a year from logging in will not compare to what you can earn by making good posts and writing articles. The categorization does give a chance to see how the reputation is constructed for a member. I do like the idea of representing rep in an disaggregated way for a user (showing each of the four categories separately), and that's something I definitely also want to explore.

Edited by Michael Tanczos, 10 May 2012 - 08:30 PM.

[swiftcoder]

But isn't the point of the rating system to differentiate between 'active members' and 'helpful members'?

That's partly assuaged by our having this handy-dandy little 'Participation Breakdown' graph, to identify the lounge lizards ;)

For example, take a look at your graph versus mine:

[GeneralQuery]

I'm sure you have your reasons for giving people 100 rep for signing up (!) but you may want to change the label accordingly. My rep has gone from -1 (neutral) to 99 (excellent) by virtue of the changes you have made. Is my rep really now excellent just because of some forum tweaking? I think not. Likewise, defaulting to 'excellent' on signup seems a bad idea.

[Dragonsoulj]

Slightly related, why isn't there a link to view the charts on members' profiles? I had to use the URL to find others based on mine.

Edited by Dragonsoulj, 10 May 2012 - 11:39 PM.

[Hodgman]

Slightly off-topic: being able to undo/correct votes would still be handy I just accidentally downvoted someone again

Dragonsoulj -- for now, you can most easily get to that page by clicking the rep numbers above people's posts.

Edited by Hodgman, 11 May 2012 - 12:33 AM.

[Wan]

This could even go as far as to allow you to edit people's posts

Wait... what? I'm not sure how this is a good idea. I know gamification is all the rage these days, but this sounds like you're essentially earning the right to troll.

On a technical note, when I visit my reputation page, Firefox throws a slow script warning after a few seconds:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

Script: http://www.gamedev.n...ighstock.js:196

I'm not sure what it's trying to load, but there's a large empty area right under the "total reputation" title. It does show everything from the "reputation earned" section down it seems. I'm using a netbook, and although it's relatively new, it's obviously not the fastest machine in the world. So as long as no one else is experiencing this issue, I'd guess it's not a critical bug.

Back to the Lounge.

[Alpha_ProgDes]

I don't think I want that particular feature (edit other people's posts) pulled from SO to GDNet. It's annoying enough as it is at SO. Plus that's what we have Moderators for. Plus there's a history button, so it's all good. I'm with the others Participation should not equal Reputation points. Also, what I meant by "I should points for posting in the Lounge" is that there's no need to disable the upvote and downvote in certain forums if you can get points just for logging in and similar activities.