Loe! In the name of the minimoo, the cow and the holy
, I hereby commandeth that thou favorite forum's most excellent posts shall hereby resideth in thy Hall of Fame, forever to be looked up to and smiled upon. They shall serve as beacons of light to be admired and emulated. They shalt be examples to all who would enter our holy kingdom.
I also commandeth that thy worst posts shall suffer eternally in the Hall of Shame forever to be pointed at and scored, so that nobody may make the same, terrible woe-causing mistakes that they did.
Here endeth mine announcement.
May there be much rejoicing and stroking of kittens.
*Raccoon rejoices with with much stroking of kittens and snuggling of foxes*
As I said to Rance, "Well reasoned. I agree that the halls have possible downfalls, and the system needs tweaking; but I think the fundamental idea is sound and the halls are worth having."
Well done, Rance, Moo, Koko, Tsendo, and everyone else who posted to this thread. I had thought simply ranking and exposing posts by repcount was enough; one tends to fall in love with a working prototype, and it isn't until it gets road-tested (and reviewed by critics) that one sees where there is room for improvement.
How the halls are built should reflect what they are supposed to do. They should not be there to shower brickbats or accolades on members; personal repcount already does that. While I think a search function to find posts by repcount would still be a nice utility, in light of the discussion above, I would like to echo some of the proposals already made.
Many posts' rep is not for the post all by itself. Some are like this: essays or instructions. But many make no sense without a context; this context may be simply the previous 1 or 2 posts, like Rance's
http://www.adisc.org/forum/oldskool...ml?p=25138&highlight=Geeeeez,+well,#post25138
Others require seeing the whole thread to understand why they were so good or bad, like the punch-line to a joke with a long build-up.
I fully understand why it would be great to have Hall-posts anonymous: and this could (and maybe should) apply to the posts that stand alone: really good FAQ's, essays, and (especially) greeting posts. Of course, without too much research, it is pretty easy to discover who the original poster was, so it is fruitless to try to make them absolutely anonymous. But it would be nice to have the kind of posts mentioned anonymous-at-first-glance.
As to the posts that require a context, I would list the post, along with whatever length of preceding thread needed to understand what the post is saying, along with why it was so good/bad.
There is no need to have every +/-2 (say) post listed in the halls. I had envisioned posts with at least +/- 3: the posts that were very loved/hated. +/- low repcount doesn't have much significance as representing common attitudes.
All this having been said, and assuming the role of the halls is to show off what, according to our community standards, is a typically great/awful post, I have to agree that the halls consist of, say, 10 or 20 posts each, (along with their contexts,) and should be picked by the mods from a list of the highest-repped posts. The forum as a whole has already voted on what constitutes great or awful posts via rep. I also agree that the accompanying rep comments should be listed with the post to explain (further) why the post was so heavily repped. The comments' writers should absolutely be kept anonymous (even if they were signed.) Another reason for mod-based selection is this: I & others sometimes rep Moo or mods for executing their powers particularly well (and quite rightly too.) However, such posts (which really are just places to attach the rep, which was actually given for work behind the scenes) are not good examples for people to emulate, since they don't have sysadmin/mod powers. Moo may get +lots for adding a great feature, but this doesn't particularly help a newbie (or anyone else) learn how to write a good post.
Having the halls be administrative sub-forums or sticky threads in Administrative stuff makes sense.
I like that the halls will be a useful sampling tool to keep an eye on the rep system, how it is being used and whether it is working as it should, not to mention revealing if any persons are misusing the rep system. I disagree with removing any rep given to a post, however; whether the post was one of those mutant exceptional posts that got too much rep (+ or -) or was a regular post that was really deserving of its rep, this is the voice of the people.
I suggest this approach instead: if a post gets a certain amount of rep (3?) WITHIN A CERTAIN PERIOD (24 hours?) the post (not the poster) is automatically moderated - and temporarily rep-locked until a mod can get to it and decide whether to cap the rep it is allowed to get, or leave it open to further repping. Some posts cause very strong feelings but only in a few people. Others may raise moderately high feelings, but in many people, and these moderately good/bad posts may be over-repped compared to the much worse/better posts may be less-repped. This would also be a useful alert-tool for mods to spot drama, infighting, and other badnesses, as well as the occurrence of sudden and wonderful phenomena.
Many people think there is too much emphasis on rep. (I do not; I like the rep system.) But what I think many of them are driving at is that rep should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. As to this, I agree. I admire those who have had to carry a burden of -1 or -2 and choose to stay around, contributing on a regular basis and being part of the community. They are among the ones who obviously don't take their repcount overly seriously. I am almost inclined to wonder about amnesty: maybe after "x" period of time or "y" postcount negrep should to disappear, 1 by 1 back to neutral. But that would be fodder for a different thread.
As to "rep-chasing" let me point out that there are a few members with enormous rep/post, eg. Moo, Koko, but many such persons have a low overall repcount or postcount. I think these persons are to be admired and their posts looked to as worthy of emulation. I do not think they should be seen as not contributing (Moo not contributing???) and looked down on as going after rep for rep's sake. If there are any such people, they are indistinguishable from the Cows and Kitties. I have said it before and I will say it again: I think so-called rep-chasing is good, since it, by definition, means people are putting effort into making better posts. A post thought to be great by a few people is just as great as a post considered great by a majority, as measured using the rep system. This rankles with many; but please consider that there is no objective way to sort out which "great" posts are "greater than" posts of the same rep. Not all jokes are funny to all people. It is not humanly possible to read all posts - or even all forums; I don't read some forums but do not object to the rep given to their posts. So invariably a few people, not most people, and certainly not everybody together are relied on to rate any given post.
That all having been said, I don't think, on the whole, that very many people centre their activities or their identity around their rep. There are some high posters with relatively low rep. There are low posters with relatively high rep. And most of us chitchat, comment & converse below the rep-radar. I would love to see ADISC's overall rep/post count. I am guessing it is pretty low, but that does not mean the quality of posts is bad overall.