I'd like to start the discussion from first(er?) principles, even: if "the purpose of reputation is to encourage participation and interaction with members," do we even need a reputation system? Aren't there other ways we could encourage and reward interaction between members without trying to distill all those complex interactions into a single global, visible number? Do we even need a silly numeric ranking system with potentially complex rules about weights and caps and costs to do this?

I'd vote for a world without it.

I like numbers and seeing how they change over time. Always have.

There have been times where knowing that a answer will likely yield some points have contributed to me "bothering" to reply or give input. This was especially true when reputation was always visible at the top of the page, without having to expand various stuff to see it. Partly, this was due to it being easier for me to track when reputation changes happened -- with multiple tabs open and swapping between them, I often miss the notifications that pop up in the lower right of the window.

So, in response to Josh, I personally do like some kind of value to keep track of, even if it's just for my own number-fixated self (and it doesn't even have to be visible to others).

In regards to the listed questions:

1) I like being able to see a sort of "progress". I like that helpful answers can be recognized. I like that I can vote people up instead of having to quote them and say "This", or similar. I don't need to clutter threads in order to show appreciation of a post. I like how you can generally spot trolls and people seemingly more interested in provoking others than asking/discussing things -- although this isn't a sure-fire way in any sense, I find it works in a lot of cases. Similarly, I like how it allows me to put specific answers to a given topic into context. If there's something I don't know a lot about, and there's 2 replies - one with +8 and the other with -8 -- chances are I should consider the first one to be more factual or at least commonly accepted.

2) I dislike several things. For one, votes are given for a variety of reasons. The main one is probably that disagreeing with someone often leads to negative votes. A well thought out post, even if I don't necessarily agree with it, does not mean that the poster is less reputable, in my eyes. There's no distinction between "you are just trolling and I think you are a silly person" and "No I hate that language/feature so I will vote you down". Similarly, there is no distinction between "insightful post, I learned something", "that's totally irrelevant, but funny" and "yeah tell that troll where they should stick their head (where the sun doth not shine)". Related, it's kinda impossible to know why a vote was given. Was I down-voted because what I said was wrong or unfunny, or was it because someone just disagrees with the approach, or because someone dislikes me due to earlier posts?

3) Like Josh, I have to wonder... if participation and interaction is the goal, why not just base it on pure participation? I.e. 1 point per post, potentially with thumbs up/down you give worth 1/10th or something.

1 - I'm quite ok with the OP getting points or good answers getting points. At least we know those people are adding to the knowledge base of GDN and the points can indicate that.

2 - I never liked getting points for logging in or upvoting.

3 - However, users should be rewarded, quite visibly, for actual contributions to the site. Blogs (arguably), articles, content for the Store, creating tutorials, hosting Yearly Events (ex: WoA). If those rewards come in the form of (major) points, icons, and/or titles, then that's visible and should be well-received. However, we can provide something a bit more tangible. Books, [x] amount of time of free membership, a ticket to a conference (ex: CppCon, E3, PAX East), Steam Keys, etc. Either heavily discounted or free. (Or if you really wanna get crazy, pull a string and get someone's game published by a AAA studio). I think that would spark some activity or at least motivation for some more, if not better, content to be added by the users.

4 - It still would be nice if there were some place to hosted or publish games. (But I know that a different subject for a different day.)

To answer your actual questions (please exclude me from the GDNet+ running, naturally):


1. I guess the thing I like the most about the current system is that it is a mechanism for providing feedback on how well an individual post contributes to the overall thread. But to be clear I don’t think that’s a huge advantage. I’d rather see such feedback articulated with actual words, especially when that feedback is negative.


2. I dislike that it reduces the problem space to a simple, constantly-inflating, dimensionless number. I dislike that that context-free number is given such prominence in the site’s UI, that the system encourages quantity over quality, and that there’s no point to increasing it except to increase it. I feel like most people either don’t care about the number much at all and just post what they want to, or they do and just post to game the system.


3. The simplest possible thing I’d like to do that involves mostly keeping the existing system is to stop calling it “reputation,” to remove the display from every post, and to label it in a user’s profile what it is: X posts voted helpful, Y posts voted unhelpful. Also, detach the other mechanisms for ticking the value up (logging in, flagging, et cetera). Reduce it to and treat it like what it mostly is: a count of helpful/unhelpful posts. I’d still vote to axe the system entirely though.

If the point of the system is to award participation, I’d definitely like to hear from others what they’d consider a compelling reward for such participation. Is it really “points?” I find that uninteresting, but maybe that’s just me.

I tend to vote for the posts of people I find to repeatedly post interesting, helpful or educational stuff. What I’d like to see is a system whereby I can find or follow the content from these users more easily, while also hiding the content from users I find unhelpful or problematic. To that end, one reputation-like system I’d like to see in place is a way for me to give a thumbs up or down to an individual user, once, and for the software to indicate to me when threads have posts by people I like in them, highlight those posts in some fashion, and similarly de-emphasis (but not hide entirely) posts from users I’ve “thumbed-down.” Sort of like a follower system, without all the silly social network connotations.

I also see the value in a system where individual posts are rated helpful or not; I’m probably being idealistic in thinking that if we remove per-post votes, people will use their words. Realistically they’ll still just not post anything and move on. So, if such a system ends up being in place I’d like it simply stay on the posts and perhaps not show up until there is a net threshold crossed, sort of like how we implement the post badges: +5 score or more, it gets a little star or whatever. -4 score or lower, it gets de-emphasized.

I don’t think we need to reflect these values publicly. Maybe a user could see, on their profile, that X people have found them interesting and Y of their posts were helpful, or whatever, but I don’t really see the need to expose that so obviously in public and turn it into a contest.

Yeah, I agree. I never cared for getting upvoted for logging in. I'm not really participating (In the strictest sense) more so just scanning the forums to see if there is something I can contribute to, and maybe looking over new articles. Maybe instead of us having points; when someone get's an answer with +5 upvotes (Or even just +2) that question get's marked with a sticker conveying relevance.

This upvote counter would only be visible to moderators. (Similar to how it's done now, but +5 is a pretty high metric when not everyone feels compelled to upvote, but the OP is completely satisfied with the answer, and it solves their problem, and the op is the one to give the feedback.)

In the context of having something, as a user, to tally up what you've contributed, you could view your profile, and see all the posts you've made that were marked as relevant under a special heading. Maybe, after a number of relevant postings you earn a MVP sticker on your profile. But if that is tiered, than it's simply a contrived way of circling back to a point metric.

But, yeah. Even just axing the upvote feedback +1, and logging in would make the contribution value much more concise, and relevant for what it's intended to measure.

Edit:

Of course this isn't set in stone. As an inexperienced OP might give a +1 for relevance just as a way to incentivize people to keep contributing to their thread (I done seen it O_o), or might just run with an answer given despite it being incorrect, or having a VERY unwieldy side effect of using, though it solves their immediate problem

I don't see anything wrong with a numeric upvote/downvote system, if anything it is a quiet way for other experts validate a response to a thread.

An OP may not even know which of the answers (posts) is the correct (or best) until validated by other experts in the field, not only by postings, but also by upvotes. And over some time an OP is more likely to trust responses given by someone who has accumulated many of such upvotes for giving accurate useful and helpful responses in a particular field.

How can that be a wrong system?

Lets be honest here, we have varying degrees of expertise, skills and time to response to threads. And I think that should be reflected one way or another

Which is the more reason why the visibility of upvotes and a kind of cumulative reputation is correct. I will always like to be aware of those with the reputation of giving helpful answers and a numeric system is a good summarised way of doing this

It will also motivate and encourage people to put more care and attentions to their responses to posts,

Also rude and trolling members/posts unfortunately also need to be recognised for who they are. Most people don't like that public stigma so negative numeric reputation could also be a deterrent

Maybe the system needs to be perfected rather than discarded all together.

Now suggestion on how this can be perfected? Hmm... very good question. The ideal system that I have in mind would be too tasking for mods and staff so I will go for a more watered down second-tier system.

In addition to keeping the current system, add a bronze, silver and gold badge expertise reputation to the current system. This means that people like me who accumulated their reputation merely by logging in and voting up others would never have an expert contributor's badge medal even if I have a high numeric reputation. On the other hand others who have accumulated most of their reputation by actually giving valuable insightful and helpful answers to threads would gradually move up the badge system

Late Edit: If visible cumulative voting up/down is scrapped, the fun and edge would be taken off this site, I for one would find it a very boring site. Most people would like to see a kind of dynamism for their participation even if it is (as Bregma calls it) fake internet points. Its a psychological necessity and its also a bit of fun. And with badge medal added on top of the current one, I can't see any weaknesses

I live for fake internet points.

I think the statement that just logging in and reading is not participating in the community is incorrect. It's passive participation, and the most comfortable form of participation for many introverted programmers. Taking away the barest minimum of reward just because you're not a extroverted social butterfly hardly seems fair.

I seldom upvote and I don't think I've ever downvoted anything, but it's a rush when an idea you've expressed gets upvoted by someone. And yeah, it's frustrating when you get a downvote, especially when it's obviously for idiological reasons. Then again, they're only fake internet points.

The only proposal I'd have is to just nix the downvotes. Good comments will be indicated by more votes, plain and simple. Give good answers, get more fake internet points. Elegant.

1. What do you like about the current reputation system?

The current reputation system encourages me to visit the site more than just once a day.

The system is very game-like, which has be returning or even when my day is fill thinking about login to see what other's are doing.

2. What do you dislike about the current reputation system?

The current reputation system could value actions a bit better. Like you stated there are activities on the site that reward actions with low impact, which I think should remain, but fails to reward some actions.

3. Do you have any proposals to improve the existing system?

If there was a +3 for posting a Journal entry, sorry Blog, I would be more pushed to post one at least once a week. Maybe that could be a thing, +3 rep for blog entries up to 3 times a week. Similar things could be done for comments or forum post.

Maybe have thread creators select an "answer" to their question and that user receive additional points.

Think if there was a way to grant points for retweeting or drawing in more people/traffic.

If the community can contribute a minimum of 25 answers to these questions (i.e. 25 comments answering these 3 questions) I'll randomly select a winner from the comments to receive 3 free months of GDNet+ (or 3 months added to your existing subscription).

Wow! This is an awesome offer, and maybe it should be expanded. Like have a monthly reward giveaway.

Short Answer:

I wouldn't cut the system. When there were different options in a thread on a topic I referred to the rep value to see whom was a more trusted/active member. I think that it has worth, reddit has their Krama system and it has shown some power.

In addition to keeping the current system, add a bronze, silver and gold badge expertise reputation to the current system. This means that people like me who accumulated their reputation merely by logging and voting up others would never have an expert contributor's badge medal even if I have a high numeric reputation. On the other hand others who have accumulated most of their reputation by actually giving valuable insightful and helpful answers to threads would gradually move up the badge system

I can see the bronze, silver and gold badge expertise reputation. It would be in a similar fashion to the way there were shoutouts, on the Developer Journal Weekly Summary, to the people that did commenting while not posting themselves.

Side Note:

My Quote from selected text system is not working :(

Albeit not perfect, upvoting is widely understood and sorta working.

I would however get away with the idea of scoring as numbers: whatever you keep them serverside it's a thing but I don't think they should be presented to user.

Everything that matters is to bubble up valuable insights. What I care: understand if something/someone is valuable/reliable. In general the specific number isn't relevant to me but I know if it's in the thousands he's probably been around a bit. Perhaps I will re-read. Sometimes I also check 'member since'.

Some messages also have 'tags'. I recall the 'popular' tag on the Vulkan/API discussion. I'm pretty sure those could help. Then, how do we enable people to distribute them?

I second what Bregma thinks.

My own experience with Reputation on this site is it's kinda like a drug, I look forward to seeing my rep go up, and I'm in a tough camp because I know that I don't have too much technical expertise to offer given my limited skill set. I rely more on the creative side of the forums for my rep. I think a lot of other community members are employed within an industry related to computers, I am not.

I judge a person by their rep, someone below 300 I think they may not stick around too long and I should caution how much time I invest, once someone is in the 1000's I know they're more serious and anyone in the +10000's knows their stuff and I trust their advice and answers.

Thank you all for the comments and input. There's a lot here, but I see a few common themes.

We'll continue with some kind of reputation system, so I hope I didn't give the impression that we're considering killing it. We also don't intend to reset everyone's reputation, but there will need to be some kind of normalization with the new system, whatever it may be.

A few issues with the current system were also brought up that I might go ahead and fix.. like no points for Blogs. :)

Few other thoughts:

• Reputation or some form of acknowledging a member's value to the community is important to keep
• All actions need to be reviewed to ensure valuable contributions are rewarded
• A member's value can be judged by the a) quality of contributions, b) number of contributions, and c) membership duration

I'll make another post on the ideas under consideration, but I'll give this post and comment thread a few more days to gather feedback before sharing those thoughts.

Thanks again!

Looking back to when I was just a lurker on the site in 2001-2003, the reputation system has helped cut down on the problems, and with each evolution has helped reduce the number of bad postings.

Having a visible marker to say "the community approves/agrees" or "the community disapproves/disagrees" tends to strongly encourage positive and useful replies, tends to discourage negative and unhelpful replies. The switch from a per-user basis to per-post basis had an enormous boost to the quality of posts. That type of feedback should be kept even if there is a programming cost.

Upvote points are limited in a day, and upvotes are nearly always given on positive feedback. If someone's only contribution to the site are upvoting content they find useful, that's fine. They may be occasional visitors who don't feel the need to post but do find useful answers. Even though they are more consumers than contributors, by voting the are contributing something. I think that should continue if reasonably possible.

I like the small penalty for downvotes since it discourages downvote sprees. There have been times over the years where that has been a problem, people doing upvote and downvote attacks, but since upward points are limited and downward points are penalized it has become a rare event. Rogue accounts (or sockpuppet accounts) that downvote every post against a user for all time, or upvote every post for all time, have mostly vanished, and on those rare instances are quickly identified by moderators and staff.

Some of the other points are less valuable to the community, except they encourage people to participate in things the normally might not. It encourages the submission of articles, encourages reporting spam or other problems, encourages other contributions. Without those reputation boosts there is less visible benefit to users of the site and they may contribute less. That is speculation about what might motivate people, no idea if it is true.

Since points are meaningless beyond a certain level --- over a thousand or so -- perhaps it would be good to shift from numbers to words at a certain point, or at least hide the numbers on forum posts. That is probably more custom programming that you want to avoid, but it does reduce some of the bias. There is some pretty clear deference in the discussions for Hodgman (50K), me (45K), SotL(33K), the four people in the 20K range, and the 27 others who exceed 10,000 points. Sadly it is sometimes discussion killing. Having visible points replaced with words rather than numbers on forum posts could improve the site, although it would be good to still see your exact numbers in your own profile.

Just a note on the reputation gain for logging in. I think it's useful for new member up to a certain point, it helps encourage people to come back to the site and gets their initial reputation up. But once you get above a certain point (arbitrarily picking 1000 points), it probably shouldn't count anymore.

@Khawk - poor blogs. :D Is this to promote more articles or because of the random nature of blogs? Just curious.

@frob - It would be nice if somehow people could be given some sort of acknowledgement as a guru. Like if someone has a "C++" tag next to their name, then people know that user is knowledgeable in C++. The tag could be given by committee or number of articles (or something).

Just my thoughts. I don't like getting points for upvoting, but i do like losing points for downvoting

I think the idea of a reward for logging in daily is good for the site as it keeps people coming back daily

I like Alpheus' idea about a tag given to you by the community when you've shown that people can come to you for knowledge about something specific.

I pretty much just commented to second Alpheus' idea

The system is broken and sounds like it will continue to be, judging by reading the above. As my opinion seems the minority then it is meaningless to the issue: people upvote people rather than posts. It's a popularity contest again. I'm noticing that gems have a big fat zero next to them, how is that a good thing?

I'm going to rethink all of this during some long bike rides, but right now the system has pushed me away and I don't feel like contributing to ungrateful people who only upvote their mates, or something wrong.

Perhaps I shall return to answer the asked questions directly.

The system is broken and sounds like it will continue to be, judging by reading the above. As my opinion seems the minority then it is meaningless to the issue: people upvote people rather than posts. It's a popularity contest again. I'm noticing that gems have a big fat zero next to them, how is that a good thing?

I don't feel like contributing to ungrateful people who only upvote their mates, or something wrong.

Perhaps I shall return to answer the asked questions directly.

This is certainly a problem. I don't know if we can "fix" it, but we want to find a system that will mitigate the issue.

It would be nice if somehow people could be given some sort of acknowledgement as a guru.

Interesting idea..

Maybe that tag is given to you after you've accumulated a certain number of points on a specific forum, and only the the tag for the forum you've accumulated most points on shows up by your name (so there's not a big list of tags). Also a lot of people get tons of points on the beginners forum since you don't really need to know much to give suggestions and everyone upvotes you, so maybe that forum for example wouldn't give you a tag, or maybe a tag is ok for beginner? might be misleading though because people might see it an think "oh, he's a beginner", haha, i don't know, just some ideas

I'm not sure what jezham is talking about, i don't think it's broken, i think everyone just gets a bunch of free points by upvoting everyone and posting basically anything on the beginners forum. I haven't seen where people are upvoting their "mates" no matter what, but i haven't been able to see who upvotes who. I also don't come here for reputation so maybe i pay less attention to the system.

Anyway, i think removing that extra point for upvoting might help fix that

iedoc says:: I'm not sure what jezham is talking about, i don't think it's broken, i think everyone just gets a bunch of free points by upvoting everyone and posting basically anything on the beginners forum. I haven't seen where people are upvoting their "mates" no matter what,

^^^ Exactly, also I don't know why Khawk says its a problem and agreed with Jezham

Khawk says:: This is certainly a problem. I don't know if we can "fix" it, but we want to find a system that will mitigate the issue.

Jezham says (s)he hasn't been around the forum for years (in his CSI thread), so how does (s)he know people upvote people and not posts? Is that a guess? IMO that doesn't happen to any extent that is noticeable (if at all it happens)

iedoc says:: I'm not sure what jezham is talking about, i don't think it's broken, i think everyone just gets a bunch of free points by upvoting everyone and posting basically anything on the beginners forum. I haven't seen where people are upvoting their "mates" no matter what,

^^^ Exactly, also I don't know why Khawk says its a problem and agreed with Jezham

Khawk says:: This is certainly a problem. I don't know if we can "fix" it, but we want to find a system that will mitigate the issue.

Jezham says (s)he hasn't been around the forum for years (in CSI thread), so how does (s)he know people upvote people and not post? Is that a guess? IMO that doesn't happen to any extent that is noticeable (if at all it happens)

To clarify, it's a problem when it happens - and it has happened here in the past although less so these days. Any new system should consider it.

Go back several years and it was a common problem. People would upvote everyone who upvoted them, downvote everyone who downvoted them.

The maximum per-day points for many actions has helped curb that, both limiting the damage and reducing the amount a spree can benefit an account. These days it is quite rare to see, probably because those limits prevent people from seeing the desired effect.

I seem to remember that low-rep accounts can't see who voted for them, I think <1000 points can't see them, which also helps minimize the damage since people most likely to run that kind of attack are also typically low-rep people. That was a good change, too.

Again, it (prejudice voting) is only a problem to the minority effected. Yeah I could help that by sticking an avatar up, and having a name which doesn't confuse people / language barrier issue? But as any previous efforts were stripped then I don't want a logo next to what looks like a leech (200 points in like 10 years).

Yes what I say is purely based on vibe.

When I went for that sebatical to mobile, the one thing that stood out was the communities were nothing like as helpful and friendly as what I always remembered here as. Perhaps things just stepped down a notch since then (people in general / next generation / normal life).

I think there could be a request form for 'guru' tags. Then anyone small-minded can have their mind blown by seeing "200 monkey balls, [C guru] [OpenGL guru]" <- my request.

Id rather the "guru" tag be somehow automatically given, maybe for getting enough upvotes on a certain forum. I would never apply for a tag like that myself, but woukdNt mind if I was awarded one automatically. Think about it though, you can listen to any random person on the net about a subject, but if the community says a person is knowledgeable (by upvoting) about a certain subject, it would be nice to feel like you could trust their words a little more than a random person

Automatic is nice as long as the algorithm is doing the right thing. Though it could be that if an user is upvoted enough times, then they could be up for consideration and a select group of people can vote on whether or not they get the guru tag. Kinda like how we approve articles now.

I shall rep-hrase seeing as random guys words are going over heads; haters don't upvote everyone.

Now, I will die of old age time anyone takes me past the 200s so I give up talking to deaf ears. Unsubscribe / delete my account. Good bye.

jezham if you want more rep points then try posting useful contributions on the forums. I promise you if you have something to say that people like or found useful you will get points from upvotes. That's how every body else is doing it.

Even the way you say something can have an affect on how much people like your posts. Try sounding more optimistic instead of bringing the mood down

Dude I've been here for a decade, trying. I *don't* take and I sit here with very little. I don't care for the mood anymore because 'normal' people are joining the thinly disguised insults now, not funny after half-a-life.

I tried deleting accout, there is no option. So I edited a couple things for clarity. Now please brush me under your carpet, I could'nt try any harder to be positive (before this thread), I could create a new account and be 'some random guy', that was [the] point TEN YEARS earn shit. /out

Let's please get back to the topic. I'm looking for my 3 questions to be answered.

All input is under consideration to formulate the new reputation and feedback system.

1. What do you like about the current reputation system?
I've always thought of it sort of as an anti-troll system and a way to encourage people to make positive contributions to the community. If you see someone with -100 reputation, you can pretty much safely ignore anything they have to say.

2. What do you dislike about the current reputation system?
It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with "reputation". I get a point for logging in? 2 points for upvoting other people? Do I lose points for downvoting people? If I wanted to get lots of points, I could just upvote everything I see, and at the same time, probably downvote every post of a particular person. The "reputation points" of a person doesn't necessarily mean that person is recognized by the community as an outstanding member.

3. Do you have any proposals to improve the existing system?
Reputation should be considered a reputation based off of the contributions of people. I think we should be able to vote up forum responses which are most close to "correct". How does correctness get determined? A peer review system. The more existing reputation and expertise you have in an area, the more weight your peer review vote carries. If a forum reply gets enough peer consensus votes, it is deemed to be a "correct" answer and the poster receives expertise points. Likewise in reverse: If someone writes a programming question and you reply with an answer which is completely wrong, you lose reputation points. For forum posts, the point gain is somewhat small. But if you write a peer reviewed article and get peer consensus, you should get a lot of points.

At the end of the day when I'm reading forum posts or articles, I'm always thinking, "Why should I believe anything this person says? What's their area of expertise? What is supporting their claim? Are they a reliable source of information?" I would hope that the reputation system becomes a system for identifying SME's.

A few issues with the current system were also brought up that I might go ahead and fix.. like no points for Blogs. :)

I don't know exactly what Gamedev is going to cook up for the new reputation system, but I'd like to make a case for blog reputation. I'll just say up front that admittedly if it wasn't for blog reputation I'd be at half of what I'm at now.

To me, when I think of Gamedev.net I think of a place where like minded people get together to create games. I can think of no better way to show the community what kind of game your making then through the blogging area. Unlike Indie showcase, which to me is a one time shot, the blogs offer developers an opportunity to cultivate lasting impression within the community, a form of advertisement and inspiration for those interested and the developers themselves. So far I've only used the forums to address technical questions and use them as more of a means to an end. The blogs to me are where I spend most of my time seeing what others are making and supporting where I can. I think that different community members come to Gamedev for different reasons, some to learn, some to showcase, some to help technically, some just to watch. Each valuing a different part of what this site has to offer.

Just some thoughts.

I would suggest something a bit different (sorry I didn't read all comments, so maybe someone else proposed something similar):

It can be valuable to measure two things: the activity of the user and the value of its participation. Mainly this would split the current system into two distinct measures.

The activity could be measured a bit like for example gaining points each times the user connects, and gain maybe more points every year or so. Each post will be rewarded by some points too.

The value will be measured by topic posters and readers to measure the value of an answer. For example, each people who reads your answer and appreciate it will give you one point. And the original poster could give you for example 3 points if he likes your answer.

By such a system, we could measure how strong/pertinent a person is toward its participation (answers) with the value marker as long as how "loyal" he is regarding the full community with the activity marker.

For about blogs, articles and so on, each new post will be given some amount of point for the activity. And readers could give value points if they like it.

I tried to post before, but the submitting process ate it, which is really
highly discouraging from posting such things :(
Cooled down enough to give it another try, although I am bit late to the party
now, it seems. On the other hand, it makes this post also smaller :p

1. What do you like about the current reputation system?

Points to individual posts I think are fair.

2. What do you dislike about the current reputation system?

Accumulated points to users.

3. Do you have any proposals to improve the existing system?

Yep :p

I think the discussion could benefit from splitting post-points from
user-points, and treat these as separate issues.

The problem with discussions here is that usually, discussions are about
technical details and issues that I either understand mostly, or I have no
clue about. (ie "learning" the basic stuff about a subject isn't a long period).

In the latter case, I can read the text, but I'd want some form of idea how
good this guy really is about this topic. In the former case, I can judge the
text myself, but the rating of the author should help me in deciding how
aligned my ideas are wrt others.

The only information you have are post ratings. There is also behavior of the
person. I have asked only a few questions in the technical sections, I think. On
the other hand, new users tend to ask lots questions and not much answer them.
(Likely, I am too conservative in exploring new technology :P )

That leads me to the idea to differentiate between threads with OP replying in
them (ie clarifying or discussing the question he/she has), and threads with other
persons replying (helping the OP, if it stays on-topic). Tags of threads
somewhat give a clue of the kind of approach that a member takes on a particular subject.
(I tend to answer C++ or Java questions, but not Unity or Unreal questions.)

The number of points on my posts gives an indication how much the answer is
appreciated. There is however a huge difference between different topics.
"my game engine", or "ecs" questions typically get a lot of attention
and discussion, my beginner code reviews typically have a handful of readers
at best. One direction is to compensate for that, eg divide points by number
of participating members (perhaps with some weight function, so very general
discussions don't get much points, while 1-to-1 discussions don't automatically
become more important).
Another option is to accept that some topics are much more generally discussed
than other topics (ie number of average points is then somewhat tag-related).

Just summing all points doesn't work I think. People change, their knowledge
changes. I would say, a sum of the last X days (or last X posts) would be
better already. If the moderators consider articles or blogs important, I'd
split the big number into separate values (X post rating, Y articles
with Z rating, P blog posts).

[i][b]"1. What do you like about the current reputation system?"[/b][/i]
The lounge doesn't use the discrimination system, feels like you can walk in there without the music stopping (w/ all eyes staring at some fake value).

[i][b]"2. What do you dislike about the current reputation system?"[/b][/i]
Being accepted for helping someone should be easier than the automatic denial of acceptance. Some answers are clear-as-day correct, I've posted 1-liner solutions (allowing hardware to do the work) and people don't accept that? out-freekin-rageous.

[i][b]"3. Do you have any proposals to improve the existing system?"[/b][/i]
I did actually, all sorts of improvements. I tested out one and the response was frowned upon. Basically there is nothing wrong with _applying_ for tags which identify a posters strengths. I'm sure you could find "trusted" members (> 10 years apparently) who would voluntarily (like everything of course) have a little discussion on who to award them to this month.
Also rename "Reputation" to "Gift of The Gab".


So I'm also opting out of the GDN thing; it would be wasted on what has became a frustrated member, who can clearly see that people will _never_ accept him. Go ahead and ban me if you like, I've seen this type of [i]community[/i] activity all before from Hodapp and his minions.

1. What do you like about the current reputation system?

It's been pretty effective at disincentivising trolls.

2. What do you dislike about the current reputation system?

It creates a class system due to the exponential growth rate. Most users have no chance to ever catch up to the top 50 members, whereas in previous rating systems, it was entirely possible, by being knowledgable and helpful.

3. Do you have any proposals to improve the existing system?

Keep post ratings visible, but hide numeric user ratings. Instead display abstract stars or levels to indicate a 1-5 scale of helpfulness and correctness. Add badges for knowledge and correctness for specific disciplines.

One danger with badges can be that it becomes widely known you're good at topic X.

Now I just happen to have a problem with that topic. I am sure you can help me personally, right?

I have this kind of experience in a community where I have commit access for the program. Suddenly, as a dev, you know everything, and can solve every little problem for someone.

I thought the whole point of the move to IPB in the first place was so you didn't have to have all sorts of custom code for things like this. Seems a bit weird that you're now moving back in that direction for essentially fluff things after the upgrading issues you had then

I thought the whole point of the move to IPB in the first place was so you didn't have to have all sorts of custom code for things like this. Seems a bit weird that you're now moving back in that direction for essentially fluff things after the upgrading issues you had then

Still IPB, just used better. The current IPB implementation was poorly customized for this - meaning, custom code was written but in a way that is difficult to configure and maintain. Based on feedback so far, with the upgrade I'm not sure any code will be required to improve the reputation system. Or if any is required it'll be a straightforward plugin.. which is good.

Hoping for a bit more, but I'm working on a feedback summary that is starting to paint a pretty clear picture on reputation. I'll give everyone a few more days for input before outlining thoughts and possible implementation. So far, I think we have ~15 actual responses to the 3 questions with a lot of chatter mixed in.

1. What do you like about the current reputation system?
Helps identity helpful posts, easy way of interacting. Nice to get recognition, but that's less important to me.

2. What do you dislike about the current reputation system?
While easy to interact, there are many reasons to up or down vote and people will vote for their own reasons, which sometimes makes it unclear why someone got up or down voted.

Reputation gap between new and veteran members keeps rising, no hope for a newcomer to ever catch up.

The term reputation doesn't seem like a good fit.

3. Do you have any proposals to improve the existing system?

When voting, show a small fixed list of reasons for the user to choose from. E.g. answers the question, helpful, funny, other.

Show stars or something similar instead of points publicly, up to a max of 5 or so, where every 1000 rep amounts to one star or some other number you see fit. Privately the user could still see his actual amount of points and keep earning points.

Rename reputation to rank?