We've got a major problem...

Guybrush · 08-17-2013, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Smeenus

A question I've been wanting to ask since the day I joined here. As a former mod of a vBulletin forum, I've been curious why the vBulletin "thank this poster" feature isn't used here...

Possibly the feature wasn't implemented in this version of vbulletin. It may date back to 2003 for all I know

edit :

Quote:

Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

Yes. It will turn into what the shoutbox shout counts did - One person making it their mission to get the highest number and a mad rush from a few people to compete for that until one clear winner emerges and lords that over everyone else.

Karma systems on forums do NOT encourage anything other than vain competition for internet points - They never have, and I remember having this same discussion with people as far back as 2006 on other forums - The consensus was pretty clear. They're a bad idea.

But people would only +1 a post if they thought it was good, right? So if someone does a mad rush to get the most points, wouldn't that be a mad rush to make posts that other people like and thus reward with a +1?

It is certainly sounds better to me than post count which only rewards posting, no matter what the content is!

GuitarBizarre · 08-17-2013, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

Possibly the feature wasn't implemented in this version of vbulletin. It may date back to 2003 for all I know

edit :

But people would only +1 a post if they thought it was good, right? So if someone does a mad rush to get the most points, wouldn't that be a mad rush to make posts that other people like and thus reward with a +1?

It is certainly sounds better to me than post count which only rewards posting, no matter what the content is!

"Hey guys I want karma go +1 my posts".

oh look, people destroying your system.

tore, it doesn't work. it never has worked, in the entire history of online forums it probably hasn't worked, and I've seen it fail a whole ton of times the same way. it just becomes a pissing contest. hell, reddit is a site devoted to the idea of making something very similar work...and it just doesn't.

Guybrush · 08-17-2013, 07:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

"Hey guys I want karma go +1 my posts".

oh look, people destroying your system.

tore, it doesn't work. it never has worked, in the entire history of online forums it probably hasn't worked, and I've seen it fail a whole ton of times the same way. it just becomes a pissing contest. hell, reddit is a site devoted to the idea of making something very similar work...and it just doesn't.

In your example, other people would still get +1s for good posts, even if one person somehow cheats. I agree that it is possible to abuse karma systems, but I don't want to categorically dismiss them all. I have heard of such systems working and so I assume it is possible.

But regardless, it was just an example of a possible way one could reward good behaviour. It is not one which can be implemented here and so it is a bit off-topic, but I would like to discuss its implementation if we were to have a new site. If only for a test run .. removing it if it didn't work as intended would be a simple matter.

Neapolitan · 08-17-2013, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sopsych

I said that to Trollheart after he attacked me, which wasn't the first time. I do appreciate some of his music posts when I read them (but until this week, I had never read a journal here). And I stand by my incendiary comment about people patting themselves on the back for making more music posts, as though that does much to prevent drama. (Yeah, I'm a glass-half-empty kind of person. That won't get me friends, but it shouldn't negate my ideas.)

Tore has said enough in my defense, I agree. It's time to move on to specific, non-technical solutions.

I am at a lost... I thought you were going on about this site not being friendly?

Zer0 · 08-18-2013, 12:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

But people would only +1 a post if they thought it was good, right? So if someone does a mad rush to get the most points, wouldn't that be a mad rush to make posts that other people like and thus reward with a +1?

It is certainly sounds better to me than post count which only rewards posting, no matter what the content is!

I post and mod on a forum which has a thanks system in place and I think it does more harm than good. Basically what it encourages people to do is thanks-whore by trying to make the wittiest posts they can so they can massage their e-dick. This often leads to completely pointless and counter-productive replies to serious and potentially interesting threads and can often derail a thread before it even gets off the ground. There seems to be a common habit in some threads to try to be the first to reply with a witty remark and receive loads of thanks from everybody, even if the reply adds nothing to the original post and in quite a lot of cases it doesn't. Some people will even just thank posts and not contribute anything at all just like the way people vote in polls here and not add anything in the thread itself.

It does have it's benefits such as posts which actually deserve thanks getting just that. This can be useful when you're skimming through a non-debate thread with quite a lot of posts and you only want to find the posts worth viewing. It also discourages people from replying to posts with just '+1' or 'I agree' which is a complete waste of a post if you ask me.

I think MB is just fine without a thanks or rep system in place and a simple statistic such as a post count doesn't even mean that much to me.