An alternative to the reputation system?

[Spirit]

Here's a little story. I regularly visit and post on an Australian tech and broadband internet forum which has 300,000 members (that's 15% of our population!) and back in 2001, they had a problem: they wanted to give constructive people extra privileges and perks.

They had a "karma" system in place, I don't know how it worked, but it failed hard. Then someone had a brainwave, instead of karma or reputation points, what about aura?

Before I continue, let me explain why karma didn't work: The moderators and admins got too overwhelmed by this system because of all the work involved.

Now, what is this aura thing and how does it work?

It's fairly simple. Basically every member of this forum has four boxes under their name, they are labeled ":( :| :) :D", each one stands for "Irritating scum, typical user, constructive, top person".

Then in this person's profile, they would have their "aura status", which ranged from low to incandescent I believe. This was calculated by individual user votes, and on top of this, there were varying degrees of the aura, based on how many votes a user had, hence the accuracy of that aura.

If a user had been a member of the site for a considerable amount of time, had a considerable number of posts, and most importantly, had a high enough aura, they would be granted access to a special off-topic forum.

"Now why does this dictatorship require such loyalty and praise to be granted access to a lousy off-topic forum?" I hear you shout. Put simply, there are more than a quarter of a MILLION members, can you imagine how much crap there would be if the off-topic forum was public?

Anyway, I've had this idea swirling around in my head for a while that a similar thing could be done here, since a lot of people seem to complain of how unfair the reputation system is.

Personally, I'm not saying that there's anything explicitly "wrong" with our reputation system, but I have noticed some people scratching their heads in the past and recently about whether the reputation system we have really works well or not, and if it is fair.

So what do you guys think?

Have a look around!

The Smiley (four boxes) system explained
The Aura system explained

And of course, the website and it's forums.

EDIT: I ask you guys to be sensible browsing this site. It is a very, very serious forum and many ISP representatives and executives frequent them - basically established businessmen and technical support staff within these companies. Please don't just randomly sign up and say "hey guyz i liek shiity diapz and spirit from adiscussssss pointed uz here! lololol!!!1". I trust 99% of you are not that stupid, but the minority can translate into the large majority on the other side of the tracks.

[Martin]

While it sounds like a very good system I don't think it will work here. why?

2 reasons:
1. That system requires a LOT of members. Each person can vote on someone basically from -1 to +2. With a multiplication of X times depending on high you are yourself. ADISC has according to the stats, 1500 active members. (active as in has logged in recently, not even posting) But the real core of people posting is a lot smaller. I just don't think there are enough people to make the small votes add up to where it will be accurate as it apparently is on the site you mentioned.

2. I don't know if there is a plugin for vB that makes this work. So there is a (big) chance it'd have to be coded ourselves.

[Charlie F]

Kind of cool, but I think I still prefer rep.
There's something good in giving rep to somebody's post, rather than repping their entire presence on the forum.
Plus what would the rules about giving 'aura' be? Are you encouraged to rep those you contribute to the forum (as I think Moo would want), or simply rep those people who you feel good about (risking turning into a popularity contest), or are the two things not that far apart?

I think it's a cool idea, but not really needed.

[Spirit]

The system seems "scalable" to me, and it could even be complimentary to the reputation system. Who knows though? I suppose admin knows best. ;-)

[Takashi]

Sounds good, anything is worth a try once.

[Fire2box]

It seems like the same system to me, though with this one you don't need to give any reasons at all.

[WoodlandWanderer]

I think it could be a good idea in some places, but is unlikely to work well here. My view of the problem:

Martin has already pointed out how many users we have. Now for any kind of reputation system, there are always some who will seek to abuse it. With a user base of 300,000 the site you specified has enough normal, reasonable people to make the actions of a slight number negligible.
Here I fear that with a smaller number of regular users, just a few people could have a devastating impact if they ganged up on someone, which brings me onto another point - the principle of the system.

I don't like the fact that you can rate somebody without giving any reason for it (as I understood it.) If somebody on here is getting continually neg-rep ed with no reasons why, and being given no neutral rep beforehand, then you can be pretty sure it is someone trolling. If nobody has to give a reason for the rating, how can you tell which ones are genuine and which ones aren't? It's not linked to any particular post so you can't check if it was justified. I think a system that rewards someone's general behaviour would be great in an ideal world, unfortunately we don't live in one and the system could end up rather biased with favouritism and grudges.

Finally I think our rep system is good, in that it requires good points that are well laid out and constructive in a post, (or something else worthy) to get rep. While this may disadvantage a few who are consistently good but never outstanding, in general it encourages people to think about what they are writing and how it may be taken by people - a value that should be strived towards by all forums, but is unfortunately achieved by very few.

[h3g3l]

Originally Posted by WoodlandWanderer

Finally I think our rep system is good, in that it requires good points that are well laid out and constructive in a post, (or something else worthy) to get rep. While this may disadvantage a few who are consistently good but never outstanding, in general it encourages people to think about what they are writing and how it may be taken by people - a value that should be strived towards by all forums, but is unfortunately achieved by very few.

That is how it should work, yes, but there is no programmatic control over this.

Point being that the rep system isn't measuring what you may think it's measuring. We've been over this ground many times before (check out some of the other rep conversations), and the take-home point that I've made was this.

I personally prefer to lead by example, within my own real-life framework of, "not everyone will 'like' or 'get' me, and that's okay." In each of my posts--even the forcefully-written ones--I try to contribute to the conversation, clarify it, defuse a thread going off the rails with humor, or help someone. These are my aims when I post. Oh, and occasionally I'll be funny just to satisfy my own wit.

As far as the smiley system, it's a variant on what we've got--as Marty (I think it was) pointed out by assigning numerical values.

[Raccoon]

There have indeed been many many complaints (and compliments and proposals) over the rep system... Basically, while a different system (or no system) may please some people more, and more of the time, the system we have has been tried in many forms, and the version we have is simple in its use, simple to understand, neither too vague in what it indicates, nor allowing too much weight to be put on it (except for silly people who take offence at the slightest neg-rep, or value the pos over-highly.) - and is nicely transparent.

It is good to have rep attached to posts, along with comments on those posts. This has many advantages. For one thing it gives people with low rep a chance to redeem themselves. It lets mods keep an eye on club-repping, and any unfairness in general. The system must, of course, adapt to an increasingly large memberbase, but I am entirely certain Moo is familiar with which systems are manageable for a site with 5000 active members, or 50 000, even 500 000.

Certainly I think rep should be attached to a person through their posts and not directly.
As a support site, an emphasis on the system working for inexperienced and younger members is optimal; complaints, where they are valid, tend to be from experienced people (some with a possibly immature outlook) - who should be more ready to absorb the system's failures than the up-and-comers, where the system must choose which segment it serves best. Sadly, in the absence of a system that serves all members equally well (and is perceived by them to do so) the system must be chosen to serve the needs of some more than others.

I restate my well-worn point: how to make a rep system and conduct it depends on identifying what it is supposed to do, which is to serve the individual members by serving the needs of the forum as a whole; sometimes these two are at odds. After all, we want an emphasis on serving the future members and newer ones - because that is where veterans come from. Existing veterans who do complain seem to feel the system no longer serves them as well as it used to, not that it served them poorly all along.