I can see the good and bad of using a reputation system, and can not decide if it is worth it to put it on my own forum, so I come to you all for your opinions on the matter. What are your experiences with it? What are the signs of abuse, and what can be done to stop them? Has it changed the flow of your board? (for better or worse) Have you tweaked the system out through template changes, code, or mods? (if so, what/how?) Can you add anything else, like your opinions overall? I figure if I can get more minds on this, I can make a more informed decision as to whether or not a rep system would work for my board. (NOTE: I use vBulletin) Thanks in advance for your input, Q
Pros- Easy way for other members to know the reputation of another member. Cons -Can be abused and members generally get pissy about that. So you have to decide if you're going to police/moderate reps. Take DP for example...I don't believe they ever remove reps no matter how egregious they are. DP adjusted the abuse here by chargin one rep for giving a negative. Funny they did this a couple years ago and did it retroactively. I had about 7-8 green bars. I would red rep all the idiots and scammers. Then one day DP says.."wait, we're gonna fix the rep system" and I end up with all my own rep points GONE. Overnight I went from sensation to loser. At namepros they have simply removed negative reputations...any negative rep is simply counted as a neutral. I think that's more fair imho. At many sites it's simply disabled as admins don't want to deal with the complaints associated. I have it enabled on most of my mybb forums which has a rep system built in as well. It's a hassle if you don't create good policies.
I've heard rumors of "rep gangs" here that could take away hundreds of greens overnight... That said, yeah, I do plan on "policing" reps on at least some level. Though, I would love to hear more opinions/examples from the various board members here. Q
1st: Stay out of Politics & Religion... 2nd: Brown nose the post whores 3rd (and most important): Post something worthy of reading/repping
I had to turn the reputation system on my site off. Simple because of the immature reputations that were being given. More to the point - abuse. If you have a mature audience, then sure, it should benefit the whole community. But if you have a bunch of kids posting rude comments to other peoples profiles, then it causes problems. It only took about 5 people to make me shut down the reputation system - but that was back when my site was small. The system also causes a few extra queries to the database. The people that were abusing the rep system on my site would give reps to each other, then team up on people that they did not like. A couple of the people knew each other in real life and would coordinate their attacks against the board members. Looking through the reputations system records, they -rep 3 or 4 people, then +rep their buddies, -rep 3 or 4 people, +rep their buddies. All they were doing was building each other up. It was also causing a lot of problems with the members that did not understand "why" someone would give them a -rep on a good post. Also, on my site I have the "Thanks" modification installed - people seem to like it better then the reputation system. In the end I think it worked out better in the long run.
Yup Kev...that's the way it is. You either shut it off or you simply tell members it's not moderated. To attempt to moderate Reps is insanity.
I think the "Thanks" add-on is better than the reputation system for most forums. Unless your site is a place where people like to argue and you like for them to argue, I'd recommend NOT activating the rep system.
I'm not fond of either the "thanks" or "rep" feature, although if you want to have members show some appreciation towards each other thank the thanks add-on might do the trick better in terms of less abuse. But keep in mind that those small cliches that form inside the forum will still thank the hell out of each other just to boost their image, but you don't have to worry about them bad repping members who might not be doing anything wrong and simply challenge the actions of those who are abusing it. With that being said, I had the rep. on in the early stages of one my forums but then shut it off as I wasn't too fond of it and hardly anyone used it to begin with. In a marketplace type forum it might be useful but for plain discussions not that worthwhile IMO.
I'd like to get you started on it... I'd also like to know what you guys (and gals) thinks needs fixing with the rep system? If I can find a hack/mod for it I'd be more then willing to look it up...as I've read both sides of the issue and can see both sides pros and cons. So if I can find something better, then so much the better.
Hmm..there isn't much you can do to improve a rep system. Again it boils down to policy. It's human attitude that's the bug not the system. People abuse reputations no matter what you setup. You can either have a policy of moderating them or you can just leave it as is and tell people to just deal with it. I prefer the hands off approach because playing reputation moderator sucks. You get a PM on just about every negative rep with complaints. I just tell people to deal with it. If you must have it...fine you must have it. Like I said it's enabled on most of my forums but members know that I am not going to delete negative reps.
I had one site where Rep was used to give rewards/prizes (actually $$ worth)...on that site...I removed the Rep images so no one knew what they had, or what anyone else had....and people could give 1 rep per day to someone, and take 1 rep per day away from someone....worked really good (though it was also a generally mature bunch of peope). Had another site where the rep was just another thing to flaunt your epeen...similar to post count. That site I simply said Rep is Rep...do with it what you will...complain all you want...but I don't care. That worked out well too, because everyone expected it to just 'be there' it was fun if they wanted it to be...or they ignored it...whatever...