What is a few points going to matter in the long term? Feel free to be generous.

I am very generous with the points I give out... but it's not generosity when I don't get to choose whether I give it or not.

On the other hand, do you really want to yield to the pressures in the world, being as it is turning into "meritocracy" more each day, to systematically discourage personal generosity? The +100 for signing and +1 for logging is systematic whereas the +5 for following is more personal.
A strong leader who has the final say could agree with me and say that personal generosity will be encouraged here in the +5 for following a topic and long term members are being asked to consider it a matter of benevolence and not merit.

Nothing is personal if I don't personally choose to give it.

I don't mind giving people +5. I give people +4 very frequently. It's not a matter of "deserving" - the points I give are frequent and offered as encouragement to people trying to be friendly and helpful (which is the whole point of the rating system). But I do not want to give +5 to encourage the OP of a thread when the OP is engaging in behavior that is counter-productive to the long-term health of the community.

The rating system is about users being able to decide (since algorithms and AI cannot) what attitudes and interactions benefits the community as a whole, and to present a psychological "thumbs up" thank-you to the posters that we feel strengthen the community.

When a rating feature is *broken* however, is when I don't get to decide who gets to be "thanked", and my name is attached to it. "Servant of the Lord followed your topic. +5". The GameDev.net system is sending "thank yous" with my name attached to it, to users who I am not thanking or encouraging.

I'm fine with users getting points for logging in. I wouldn't be fine with it saying, "Servant of the Lord thanks you for visiting GameDev.net. +1 point".
If every time I logged in, 10 random private messages were sent to people saying, "Servant of the Lord says thanks for being awesome!" - that may make the ten random people feel good, and it may seem personal, but it's be a flat out lie (I wasn't thanking anyone, and it wasn't personal), with my name attached to it.

I wish it *did* say, "Servant of the Lord upvoted your post. +3" when I upvote something, because that'd make my upvotes more personal (Instead it only shows a thread title without the name of the user who upvoted).
But I only want people to be benefited from me when I choose to have them benefited by me, and I certainly don't want my name attached to it if it wasn't sent by me explicitly.

When a rating feature is *broken* however, is when I don't get to decide who gets to be "thanked", and my name is attached to it. "Servant of the Lord followed your topic. +5". The GameDev.net system is sending "thank yous" with my name attached to it, to users who I am not thanking or encouraging.

I would like the keep the system and atmosphere positive as much as we can so that's why I err on the side of positive personal interactions with people. In my mind if you see "Michael Tanczos followed your topic" that just means.. well, that I followed your topic. Following a topic gets a fixed point value reward. Does following a topic equal thanking a person? Is it better if I take the name off the event? Or.. do you also think it's more common that members are getting points they shouldn't than members are getting points they deserve?

[quote name='Servant of the Lord' timestamp='1352956777' post='5001114']
When a rating feature is *broken* however, is when I don't get to decide who gets to be "thanked", and my name is attached to it. "Servant of the Lord followed your topic. +5". The GameDev.net system is sending "thank yous" with my name attached to it, to users who I am not thanking or encouraging.

I would like the keep the system and atmosphere positive as much as we can so that's why I err on the side of positive personal interactions with people. In my mind if you see "Michael Tanczos followed your topic" that just means.. well, that I followed your topic. Following a topic gets a fixed point value reward. Does following a topic equal thanking a person? [/quote]
Upvoting equals thanking, following does not equal thanking - but following gives upvotes, and upvotes equals thanking.
If it has my name attached, and you get points, then it implies that I gave those points. If you said, "Servant of the Lord followed your topic" but didn't give any points, it wouldn't be thanking, and wouldn't be a problem - even with my name attached. It's name attached + points attached together that means I explicitly thanked you. My name on its own just means I explicitly followed you.

I would be happy for explicit post upvotes to have my name attached (which it doesn't currently): "Servant of the Lord upvoted [your post]. +3". It'd make upvotes even more impactful psychologically and much more personal.

It's definitely not a big deal, and if the +5 is left as it is it won't be catastrophic. It's just been a (very minor) personal annoyance that I've noticed multiple times over the past several months that finally I had to comment on. Whether the system actually changes or not, I don't particularly care (I'm sure GameDev.net has more important things to work on) - just as long as I've voiced my opinion about it so the staff is aware of it and have the opportunity to fix it if they choose to (you can't address unvoiced complaints if you wanted to).

Is it better if I take the name off the event?[/quote]

I'm fine with the name if you add a checkbox when following giving me the option to back out of the +5.



I don't care if it's checked by default (and it probably should be checked by default since the average user doesn't bother rating). Maybe in your user control panel, have an option to check/uncheck it by default - but I wouldn't care either way, just as long as I can uncheck it when I need to manually follow.

Also, if I could explicitly uprate the OP +5 for a valuable thread, even after auto-following, that would be nice also. Sure, I could +3 the OP's post, but I'd forget to do that (and other users won't know they should do that) unless there was a "Mark thread as valuable" next to the "Follow this topic" button.

Or.. do you also think it's more common that members are getting points they shouldn't than members are getting points they deserve?[/quote]
Is this thread above-average in value compared to the rest of the site, that the OP should receive +5 for it? You gave him that +5.
The average value of threads on this forum is amazingly high. +5 points should go to above average.

Sometimes a user should get the +5, but in my personal usage, I follow threads that aren't yet valuable, but have the potential to later be. This one didn't meet that potential. He got +5 anyway. Threads that are already valuable, I usually post in, which auto-follows, which doesn't get the OP anything.

So I suppose it varies from how a user uses following. But why should auto-following be different? Maybe a user should get an automatic +5 for every 10 posts a thread receives. Non-lounge threads probably don't go much beyond 15 unless they are valuable and interesting (I'm guessing).
An OP should get +5 * ((postsInThread - 5) / 10). So +5 at 15 posts, another +5 at 25 posts, another +5 at 35 posts, and so on.

We've only had 32 members respond to the poll thus far, but the votes cast seem to suggest this is the case.

Well in that poll 4 of the 7 choices are implications that there is something meaningful about the topic worth revisiting. That was the point of voting up the topic, to imply that the author created a thread that is somehow interesting or worthwhile. For a person to follow it even to reply later has meaning. You don't do that with threads you don't care about being involved with. Now if people used it more for moderation that would be totally different.

Also it's +3 now.. which is equal to one upvote (but isn't an upvote). The points count towards the "Author" category as well, which isn't based out of their knowledge of anything but their contributions to the community. By comparison, you can earn up to 150 points for writing articles vs 3 points for creating a post that gets followers.

I guess what we are looking for is implicit ways of rating vs purely explicit.. I know we have upvotes, but following with an upvote box available to me is the same as just simply upvoting the topic.