Reputation

[Mark.B]

I just wanted to give my own experience of the reputation system, which with some reticence I decided to trial after upgrading from vb2 to vb3 a fortnight ago.

Now vB3 is a fantastic, amazing piece of software, but the reputation system is a brave but terrible idea. I have just had the most divisive, argumentative two weeks I have EVER had on my board, and that's saying something. I ended up hacking the code to enable, via a member group, a COMPLETE opt out, so that nothing rep-related was displayed in the postbit or PM. I tried all sorts, but had to put up with a daily barrage of abuse and criticism from the vast majority of posters.

After I made it entirely optional, within 48 hours 90% of posters had opted out, complete with a rude comment in the 'join usergroup' reason box. I had posting boycotts, posters with 'scrap the rep system' slogans in their sigs, and eventually even senior moderators refusing to support me and opting out of the system themselves. Give it another week, I'd have permanently lost at least half my members.

Total, total disaster, it needs either rethinking totally or scrapping in my opinion. It may work on teenage boards or something like that, but on a more grown up forum it's the most disruptive thing I have EVER done. I personally quite liked the idea, but members seem to loathe it, I have no idea particularly why.

Sorry for the negative post, I love vBulletin, I really do, and reps are a brave idea, but it's just totally unworkable on a busy board.

[TheRayden]

You claim to have a grown up forum, yet your members can not handle something as trivial as the reputation system?

[Mark.B]

You claim to have a grown up forum, yet your members can not handle something as trivial as the reputation system?

Well, it's grown up in so far as there aren't kids on it.

Yes, it's a pity most could not accept it, the problem was that it was an easy way to hit people with abuse that no one else could see.

I have tried virtually every permutation of settings, some of them coded by myself, but it was just anarchy. I've never known something inspire so much hatred, even among the more palcid posters on the board.

Just a personal experience, anyway. It was a disaster for me, I am sure it works for some.

[TheRayden]

Weird.. though I have to admit that I haven't installed VB3 yet since I'm waiting for the convertor.
So there might be a good chance I'll be here in a few days claiming the exact same thing.

I just hope our community is ready for it..

[Zachery]

Mark, speaking of my own accord and not repesnting anyone else, thats why we have the on off switch.

Personaly, the reputation system is awsome on my sites, we use it as an admin tool for warnings and such ^_^

[Schwarze Katze]

Personaly, the reputation system is awsome on my sites, we use it as an admin tool for warnings and such ^_^

How do you do this? I'd really like to know 'cause we where thinking of something like this as well.
Unfortunately some users don't like the system and cause trouble. I suppose the best way to shut them up is to make the reputation points viewable for the user who recieved it and the staff only.
I also miss an option to delete abusive reputations.

[Zachery]

We allow our users to give reputation to others, however as staff we all have much higher reputation. which when we feel a user is doing something bad, we give them bad reputation and since our setting is that much higher, it will usualy force them directly into our "Bad" users usergroup, which highly limits their ability to do the "Fun" stuff on our forums.

It would be more than possible to to hide the link to it to only staff, and only show a users karma in their post if their viewing it.

[Schwarze Katze]

The usergroup thing sounds interesting but:
Aren't you afraid that your users could band together and force someone who's didn't do anything except not sharing their opinion into this "Bad" user group?
May I ask what values you're using? Right now our default reputation is 10. A user will get 1 reputation point to start with (once he wrote more then 50 posts) and an additional 1 for each 365 days he's in our forum. He needs at least a reputation value of10 to be able to rate others.

Changing the view shouldn't be to hard but I'm rather busy these days and don't feel like "wasting my time" on stuff like this. But one day I'll do it.

[Zachery]

They dont get MORE reputation basied on thoughs values, they get more reputation power (power to give others reputation points)

No im not afaird it will happen, one member talked to me about it, and i confirmed him anyone doing so would be swiftly removed from the boards.

Were a group of HSR fans. we give out tons of good reputation for members who contribute good posts and dont spam. who actively particapate. weve only had 5-6 problematic members. and they have been banned right off.

[AlexanderT]

I also had some real trouble with members disliking the new reputation system. What I did is make sure that my members can only give positive repuration. Guess what... everyone was happy ever since

I released the template change/hack description here btw: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=62015

Greets
Alex

[dynamite]

Mark, speaking of my own accord and not repesnting anyone else, thats why we have the on off switch.

That's exactly what I was thinking!

[Schwarze Katze]

Actually I meant reputation power. I'm sorry, but as you may see English is not my first language therefore I sometimes lack the ability to make clear what I mean.
I had a look at your board and, well, you've got 205 members, we've got a bit more than 12.000. It's hard to herd those and even harder to go through and give credit for every good post that's been made.

[Zachery]

Yes good point, however you can use a template edit to remove normal users from REMOVING reputation which might be the best way to go

[Mark.B]

Here's what I have done for the time being to appease those few who wanted the system to remain....

I have made reputation an opt IN system. Users do NOT have it by default, and not only that but users who've opted out display NOTHING in the postbit where rep should be. They also have no 'scales' icon in their postbit either.

Such users cannot rep other users unless they opt in, if they opt in then full rep details display as normal, with the exception that the exact number of rep points displays next to the green blobs. Comments made are not anonymous.

Part of this depended on creating a new usergroup called 'rep', which is basically a duplicate of the default 'Registered' group, and then using the usergroup numbers to determine whether rep should display or not...but I'll not go into any more detail as it involved a couple of file hacks, so it's one for vb.org to discuss!

Opting in and out is currently a manual process, involving a simple move from one usergroup to another.

I'm completely crap at modifications so I daresay it could have been done much simpler than I have managed, but at least it works, or seems to!

The rest of it was just template mods.

This seems to have pacified those who wanted it scrapped, whilst preserving the facility for those who like it.

[Thunderfall]

Now vB3 is a fantastic, amazing piece of software, but the reputation system is a brave but terrible idea. I have just had the most divisive, argumentative two weeks I have EVER had on my board, and that's saying something.

I think most forums will choose to turn the reputation feature off. I haven't upgraded my forum to vB 3,0 yet, but in the past we had several discussions about implemenation of a reputation feature and very few people supported it. I would suggest the feature be turned off by default.