Credits

Tim Robbins

Hi,
Another Friday afternoon idea.
What about a credits system?
Everyone gets 100 credits. You are allowed to give other posters credits for answering your post or saying something very interesting.
It would be a way for posters to acknowledge some of the posters here who write good posts.
Cheers
tim

Karl Hungus

You mean Reputation? Go here.

Evil Phil

Oh god not again.

Rabies

How many credits does it take to get the top shelf teddy bear?

The rep system was fun while it lasted. Rep whoring for all. Served no point in the end. Can't really see it coming back.

Nevyn

Tim Robbins wrote:

Hi,
Another Friday afternoon idea.
What about a credits system?
Everyone gets 100 credits. You are allowed to give other posters credits for answering your post or saying something very interesting.
It would be a way for posters to acknowledge some of the posters here who write good posts.
Cheers
tim

Spot the Gaiaonline poster

Talliesin

I wonder. Should we consider this a bad idea because of the literature on the subject by the people who study social software, or because it didn't work when tried before?

Evil Phil

If memory serves its been tried twice on boards, not working either time.

That being said I'm not totally adverse to the idea and it would be interesting to see if there is a system that will work for boards.

ecksor

If it's what I *think* he means then I've looked into it before and I believe it's a good idea and would work fantastically well on some forums. Basically you can turn such a thing into a currency if you structure it well.

Tar.Aldarion

Then let's have it. Currency for all!

Talliesin

I've only seen it work well when there's a clear criteria for value.

Rep works on e-bay because it answers a single question "can I trust this person in a transaction?"

The value of posts in AH, PI, Mythology, Firefly, S&S and Events are all very different. Even the value of posts in different threads in the same forum can be very different. Someone having high or low credit/rep/whatever tells you very little.

The most suitable reputation system is the one already built into our brains.

tallaght01

There's a similiar system on www.doctors.net.uk

i think it's one of the reasons the forums work so well. They have a function whereby under each post there's a line that says " (insert number) of colleagues have voted this a quality post. To add my vote, click here".

It means that when an argument is rageing, you can see what the punters think. Because there's a lot of lurkers out there, so you don't always get a fair reflection of the general opinion within a given thread.

They also have a list on a sidebar, which lists the current highest scoring threads, so people can go straight to them.

It's a good system, and very popular with the punters

nesf

Talliesin wrote:

The value of posts in AH, PI, Mythology, Firefly, S&S and Events are all very different. Even the value of posts in different threads in the same forum can be very different. Someone having high or low credit/rep/whatever tells you very little.

The thing is that when taken within the context of the forum itself it'll make sense.

If you make it post orientated rather than user orientated it might work a bit better. If all you could see were the credits/votes for individual posts and user profiles showed nothing you might have a situation where there's no reason to rep whore. It could be open to abuse but it could work.

projectmayhem

i think boards should have a currency called "clouds" that has a real-world value a-la 2nd life.

...and mods get a million clouds per forum.

Talliesin

nesf wrote:

If you make it post orientated rather than user orientated it might work a bit better. If all you could see were the credits/votes for individual posts and user profiles showed nothing you might have a situation where there's no reason to rep whore. It could be open to abuse but it could work.

That works to some extent on /. However the format of /. is very much a matter of there being a starting article and then comments upon that article. The only forum here remotely close is PI (because people are meant to direct their comments to the problem mentioned in the opening post) and even that doesn't really follow.

So for the most part threads are the basic unit of correspondence here rather than posts - you might think a particular post is killer, but it's almost always working in the context of its thread, so you need to read the whole thread (even if skimming much of it) for the post to have it's full effect.

So what we'd really have here is a way to vote for threads.

Which we already have.

nesf

I agree pretty much. On some forums like PI, Work/Jobs or Long term illness etc where responses to the original post are important it could be useful. On AH it'd be of limited use really.