Grey reputation

[nickyboy]

Originally Posted by plo

In answer to your first question, push "User CP" on the menu bar at the top of this web page. You'll see a section called "Latest Reputation Received" and my comment as I added to your rep.

I'm not sure how many rep points an account starts with?

In answer to your last question, you decide what conditions to add to someone else's rep. Personally, I feel that people should add to others rep often until we all get use to using it. Your reasons are quite valid too, but in practice I'm sure groups of people have "love fests" where they add rep to everyone in their group. There's a mechanism in place to prevent this, because if you try to add to someone else's rep too often it won't take it.

ps - I got two more grey reps in the last few days. If folks don't mind, leave your name in the comment of the rep form because I'm not sure if grey rep comes from getting multiple reps from the same person.

Thanks Plo,

I did as you said and.......Lo! I got some comments. The interesting thing is I got two rep points today within minutes of each other.
Thanks for yours (plus another annoymous one from another thread).

It never occured to me to put my name in as I assumed it identified the sender, but I will in future.
As I said, I'm still quite new to all this, but learning. Actually, I feel so posative about modern technology now I think I'll go and programme the video, or perhaps not, probably it's best left to my kids!

Nick

[pam]

If I recall, every starts with a rep of 10 - don't ask me why.
Pam

[polo_pro]

I'm not sure how such large discrepancies between various SC member's rep points occured. Maybe admins stepped in and jacked them up? Maybe people abused it early on when it was just introduced (and since then protections have been put in place that result in grey rep points). Honestly, I really don't care how this ended up happening.

But what I did notice is watching my rep change over time has shown me a disturbing trend. Anyone with an extremely large number of rep points ends up contributing substantially more rep points to others than someone with less. So if you have less than 100 (which accounts for 99% of the members of SC members) rep points, when you give rep points to someone else, then their rep points only increase by 1 or so. But if you have an obscenely large number of rep points, when you give rep points to someone else, then their rep points jump by 10 or more.

At the moment less than 20 people have over 100 rep points. So until this small group of people start giving rep points, the overall rep point system isn't going to work well at all. Giving rep points will be limited to 1 (or 0 in the case of grey) rep ponts having little afffect even if we get 90% of the SC members using this feature. One solution is to bring the rep points of everyone more inline with each other rather than having a few outliers "hording" them (most likely inadvertantly).

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to blame anyone. I see this more as a situation that just "developed" over time. My main reason for continuing to focus on this topic is that I think this feature could be quite useful to the overall community. It just needs to be tuned and managed a bit more...and a certain amount of education so people are more comfortable using it.

[falves]

Steve,

This is such a small, tight-knit, community that I don't even think that we really need rep points. For those of us who come here a lot and read most posts, if not all, I think that we can pretty much figure out who is "reputable" and who is not -- and I mean that in the context of this site, not in life at large!

I happen to think that all the regulars here are reputable and demonstrate unique insight and perspective in their posts. Newbies have my "benefit of the doubt" until proven otherwise. I think that's pretty much it...

What do you guys and gals think?

-Fernando

[bystander]

Here's some interesting default info about halfway down this page:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=154551

Don't know if this board's settings are still at default, but it could explain a few things.

That vbulletin forum site is an interesting place if one is interested in figuring out what goes on behind the scenes.

[bystander]

Originally Posted by falves

Steve,

I happen to think that all the regulars here are reputable and demonstrate unique insight and perspective in their posts. Newbies have my "benefit of the doubt" until proven otherwise. I think that's pretty much it...

What do you guys and gals think?

-Fernando

I generally agree with you, the content of the posts is more important then a number.

However, a well run forum doesn't run by itself. What you don't always see is the moderators and administrators work of weeding out spam, keeping posters from flaming each other, and organizing things.

The rep system is just a tool to keep track of things. It can be used to help the moderators in their task.

Since the chat here started in a different message board format, then was ported to vbulletin, and vbulletin was already a mature application with many add-ons and features, things haven't quite settled out yet.

Some of the features like members not being able to send rep points seem strange here, but not in the hundreds of vbulletin message boards in the past where users would "game the system" to escalate each other's points to gain access to special features. Since we don't have too many "special features" here, a prohibition on concentrating rep points seems unneeded, but since it is a default setting, and the board seems to work, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies.

It may not be up to the users alone to decide whether the rep system seems fair. I think the decision rests with whoever funds a site and employs moderators and administrators to keep it running smoothly.

As non-paying users, we may have a say, (after all, the site organizer appreciates our attendance and time spent here), but we may not have the final say.

On the other hand, the recent interest in the "segchat awards" has proven that posters here don't particularly put much stock in the rep points system as it presently exists. If they did, a moderator could just print out a sorted rep-point list and email the appropriate congratulations.

[falves]

I'm not suggesting we do away with rep points, I'm sure they have their purpose for some. I'm just saying that for me, I'd rather rely on people's posts and personalities, as I perceive them, than on a consensus point system.

Carry on...

-Fernando

[Desert_Seg]

I too think that Steve (and maybe others) are placing too much emphasis on the rep point system and I, for one, don't really look at at the little green boxes.

Steven

[nickyboy]

Originally Posted by plo

I'm not sure how such large discrepancies between various SC member's rep points occured. Maybe admins stepped in and jacked them up? Maybe people abused it early on when it was just introduced (and since then protections have been put in place that result in grey rep points). Honestly, I really don't care how this ended up happening.

But what I did notice is watching my rep change over time has shown me a disturbing trend. Anyone with an extremely large number of rep points ends up contributing substantially more rep points to others than someone with less. So if you have less than 100 (which accounts for 99% of the members of SC members) rep points, when you give rep points to someone else, then their rep points only increase by 1 or so. But if you have an obscenely large number of rep points, when you give rep points to someone else, then their rep points jump by 10 or more.

At the moment less than 20 people have over 100 rep points. So until this small group of people start giving rep points, the overall rep point system isn't going to work well at all. Giving rep points will be limited to 1 (or 0 in the case of grey) rep ponts having little afffect even if we get 90% of the SC members using this feature. One solution is to bring the rep points of everyone more inline with each other rather than having a few outliers "hording" them (most likely inadvertantly).

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to blame anyone. I see this more as a situation that just "developed" over time. My main reason for continuing to focus on this topic is that I think this feature could be quite useful to the overall community. It just needs to be tuned and managed a bit more...and a certain amount of education so people are more comfortable using it.

Ahh, that would explain why I recieved 3 points from two rep submissions, if you see what I mean.

Nick

[pam]

I agree with Steve and Falves <G>. Rep points are fun, but on the whole, what matters is the day to day posts - what they contribute to the forum and to the forum members. Someone could have lots of rep points and go bonkers or suddenly turn negative because of a single experience combined with other stressors that are going on in their life which have pushed them over the edge, and then the rep points are - misleading.
Pam

Originally Posted by Desert_Seg

I too think that Steve (and maybe others) are placing too much emphasis on the rep point system and I, for one, don't really look at at the little green boxes.

Steven