On 2/9/11 1:28 PM, Miguelinito wrote:
Hello again, Brandon.
Very nice ideas. There's only one of them that I'm not sure if it'll improve the social relations or just the opposite thing:
A reputation system is a form of soft "social currency." Helpfulindividuals (those with high "helpful" marks) are called out and those with low-value are de-emphasized. New users would be able to recognize individuals that the community has determined to be high-value. This helps to encourage trust, which promotes community health and vibrancy.
This could be (it certainly would be) used by some (male) users as a weapon of vengeance against others, and there could be a real war in the discussion pages. You know, reputation is very close to ego, and ego is very close to dispute. And such a system would tear apart people with no possibility to improve their reputation, because, once your reputation goes down, nobody will want to vote for you. It's discriminatory, in my opinion, unless you have something else in mind I don't know...
Right. This is a delicate line.
As I mentioned before, we have many ways to indicate *displeasure* but very few ways to encourage.
My initial thoughts included both a "Helpful" and a "Not Helpful" system. Upon reflection, however, I have come to think that including a negative position ("Not Helpful") would actually be, uh, not helpful. We don't need additional ways to call people jerks.
So I have come to think in a more "optimistic" mode, focusing on reward alone. The problem with that, however, comes with newbie biting by trolls.
My current thinking is to not include a "down vote" system but rather add in a "flagging" system. Flagging something would be less obvious and would not be "gameable" - especially if a posting could be marked "patrolled" or otherwise considered acceptable and immune to flagging.
To be sure, this is very shaky ground and requires a great deal of thought. It may come to pass that this is just another ghost of an idea, consigned to a graveyard. But I think it's worth talking about.