Reputation system ideas

xanaftp

xanaftp

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Currently on The Lovinity Community+, there is no real reputation system. The only thing close to a reputation system is their level of activity, represented as a "STAR stat" (most active user within last 30 days gets 100%, every user after gets a percent based on how active they've been compared to the 100% user).

There is also private reputation among the staff and the users individually, represented as "demerits", but this is solely tied into rule violations and discipline by staff.

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I would like to know if it would be helpful for a community such as TLC+ to have a form of public reputation system... something that other users can look at to see how strongly valued a member is in the community in terms of their contributions and support.

I've been looking around at some examples of reputation systems, such as what a lot of forums do (eg. reputation actions on each user's post, positive or negative. All users can give reputation to other users positive or negative. Every user has a "power level", which determines how much effect the user has on other users' reputations. More established users have higher power levels. And there are limits, such as can't give the same user any more reputation until you give X users reputation... or can't give reputation any more than X times per day, etc.)

I'm not so sure on using the above mentioned system for reputation though as it solely relies on user feedback. I want to try something that hybrids between automatic means of determining reputation (eg. activity levels [STAR stat], length of time as a registered member, number of demerits against the account, number of piece of content featured by staff, and so on) and reputation influenced by user interaction (likes/dislikes, gift point giving, etc.).

What are your thoughts on an effective reputation system... or whether or not one should be used?
 
Are you trying to build a form of hybrid reputation system from scratch? Because no forum softwares poccess any module to implement the type of system that you mentioned (duration of activity, posts under spotlight, length of time). Atleast, as far as I know.
 
Santa Saru said:
Are you trying to build a form of hybrid reputation system from scratch? Because no forum softwares poccess any module to implement the type of system that you mentioned (duration of activity, posts under spotlight, length of time). Atleast, as far as I know.
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Yes. I'm a PHP developer, so for me it can easily be done. I just want to make sure what I make is fair and useful.
 
The idea you have in mind is perfect. But I dont think that the code should really concentrate on the duration of membership so much, but instead on the quality, niche specificness of the posts, reputation points recieved, amount of time spent on the forum as opposed to duration of membership and finally, on staff status and trophy points.
 
As I think of it, I do agree with you on that. If two users who have both been registered for 60 days exist on the website... one who made 100 posts and one who only made 2 posts... the one who made 100 posts should have much more reputation than the one who only made 2 (providing that not a huge majority of those posts are spam, of course).

So making a system in which someone can give reputation points for me will be a little too time consuming and perhaps bloated since there's already a like/dislike system, so I was thinking instead tying it into the like and dislike system. Anything, including posts, can be liked or disliked. So I could make it such that a like earns reputation points and a dislike loses points.

Now, in terms of reputation influence, do you think it would be an okay idea to base that off of another thing that already exists: STAR stats (these are measurements of how engaging a user was on the website within the last 30 days compared to the most active user, represented as a percent. Any form of content submission boosts someone's STAR stat, but certain things boost it more than others... eg. a post boosts it more than an instant message since a post is more engaging.). So in other words, the higher a user's STAR stat (the more engaging / active they were on the website within the last 30 days), the more influence they have on a user's reputation? STAR stats are also affected by the number of demerits a user has, and are also dynamically calculated. So if say someone spams to boost their STAT, demerits reduce their stat, and in addition when their spam content gets deleted, it gets removed from their STAT.

And then with that, I'll factor in the following additional criteria:
  • Points received from others for reasons other than contests etc. (aka. points given for being a good user) (more points received = more reputation)
  • Demerits (more demerits = lower reputation. Demerits would have a very high impact on reputation because you earn demerits by violating the rules)
  • Featured content (every time something gets featured by staff, the user earns reputation)
  • Maybe virtual gifts received (receiving gifts = higher reputation, but this would be a low-impact factor). I feel well reputable users would be more apt to receive virtual gifts from other users. Virtual gifts cost points, so it can't necessarily be abused.
So maybe in terms of reputation influence, I could do something like this:
  • A like or dislike on a user's content adds or subtracts reputation points. The number of points added or subtracted depends on the STAR stat of the user who made the like/dislike. A stat of less than 20% would do 1 point of influence. A STAT of 20-99.99% would do 2 points influence. And a STAT of 100% (most active user within last 30 days) would have 3 points influence.
  • Points received for being a good member would boost their reputation at a rate of 1 reputation point for every 25 points received.
  • Demerits would take away 1 reputation point per demerit. Typically, this would amount to 25 points lost for a minor rule violation, 50 for a moderate, 75 for a significant, and 100 for a severe. Reaching 100 demerits would result in a suspension [or ban the second time it happens].
  • Every time a piece of content gets featured by staff, the user would earn 10 reputation points.
  • Every time the user receives a virtual gift, they earn 1 reputation point.
Thoughts?

Edit: Made an edit to demerits and how they affect reputation points.
 
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I think its okay to drop the dislike idea. In a very engaging community, chances are that your members dislike each others posts just for the sake of ruining their potential reputation. Long time ago, this happened here at FP and that was one reason we dropped it back when we ran on phpBB. Maybe, you dont have to drop it but modify it to suit the needs of your community. If thy are laid back, then its fine I guess.
 
Santa Saru said:
I think its okay to drop the dislike idea. In a very engaging community, chances are that your members dislike each others posts just for the sake of ruining their potential reputation. Long time ago, this happened here at FP and that was one reason we dropped it back when we ran on phpBB. Maybe, you dont have to drop it but modify it to suit the needs of your community. If thy are laid back, then its fine I guess.
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I haven't had any issues actually with the dislike. In fact, I don't think it's ever been used yet to be honest. But you do have a point. Removing dislike though would be complicated as it's part of the core CMS. So instead, would it be suggested I just don't tie reputation into dislike, but only into like?
 
xanaftp said:
Santa Saru said:
I think its okay to drop the dislike idea. In a very engaging community, chances are that your members dislike each others posts just for the sake of ruining their potential reputation. Long time ago, this happened here at FP and that was one reason we dropped it back when we ran on phpBB. Maybe, you dont have to drop it but modify it to suit the needs of your community. If thy are laid back, then its fine I guess.
Click to expand...

I haven't had any issues actually with the dislike. In fact, I don't think it's ever been used yet to be honest. But you do have a point. Removing dislike though would be complicated as it's part of the core CMS. So instead, would it be suggested I just don't tie reputation into dislike, but only into like?
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Yes. That is a remarkable idea.
 
Oky. So basically that in turn means you're suggesting the loss of reputation should not be in the hands of users but only in staff (aka. demerits for example), correct?
 
Alright so I'm experimenting with a sophisticated credibility algorithm (decided to call it credibility instead of reputation).

The algorithm runs / recalculates every user's credibility every 15 minutes.
It starts by first assigning an influence power to every user. User earns 1 point influencing power for each of the following:
  • Having 5 or more total posts (under 5 posts and you will have no influence yet)
  • Having 200 or more posts
  • Having 500 or more posts
  • Being a member for 3 or more months (This is temporary until I find a better qualification to replace this and the next)
  • Being a member for 1 or more years
A user's influence power is reduced under these conditions:
  • If user has more than 1 point influence, but has 2 or more prosecutions (stage 2 discipline) on their record, they lose 1 point influence power.
  • If user has 4 or more prosecutions (stage 2 discipline) on their record, the MAXIMUM influence they can have is 1 point.
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A user earns credibility at a rate of 1 credibility point per point of influence for every rating or like/dislike someone made on their content. They earn credibility for likes and ratings 3 or more stars... and they lose credibility for dislikes and ratings below 3 stars.

A user earns credibility for earning gift points if the user who gave the gift points specified one of the 7 member leadership roles as the reason for the points. The higher the influencing power of the giving user, and the more points they gave, the more credibility the user earns.

A user earns credibility at a rate of 1 credibility point per point of influence for the gifter when someone gives them a virtual gift.

A user earns 10 credibility points for every piece of content that has been featured by staff.

A user loses 100 credibility points for every time staff have had to prosecute the user (stage 2 discipline).

Staff also keep tabs of a user's reputation and tendency to follow rules. This is measured in 15 categories on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being that user cannot be trusted with following that specific category of rule(s). The worse the user's reputations are, the more the total earned (not lost) credibility is reduced. If, say, a user scores the worst marks on all 15 rule categories, that would reduce their earned credibility by 75% (5% per category) (but usually a user would have been banned before that happens).

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Earning and losing credibility is divided into 4 categories: Earned credibility from staff (green), earned credibility from users (light green), lost credibility from users (light red), and lost credibility from staff (red). Combined, these give the user's credibility score, represented as a number. The score, alsong with these 4 categories, are represented as a small pie chart on the posts of the user:
9a12f976419bead69535df5affcd6aad.png

This allows others to make judgments on how much to trust a user. Since a pie graph is represented, they can easily distinguish between good/bad credibility influenced by users, and good/bad credibility influenced by staff.

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Right now, this is highly experimental, and I'll probably tweak it over time. Thoughts?

P.S. I decided for now to allow ability for users to negatively influence credibility via. dislikes and poor ratings since that system has not been abused on my site (and if a user abuses it, it can be undone since credibility is recalculated every 15 minutes), and since you can distinguish between user influence and staff influence in the pie graph.
 
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Do NOT add a rep system where members can give rep and take away rep.

Ehh sorry. I've been harassed due to this rep feature on forums. Yes, that type of rep can be used to harass. Even though it's just silly rep, It's not good in my opinion.
 
Winterfell ❄ said:
Do NOT add a rep system where members can give rep and take away rep.

Ehh sorry. I've been harassed due to this rep feature on forums. Yes, that type of rep can be used to harass. Even though it's just silly rep, It's not good in my opinion.
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I can understand your concern Winterfell. But I trust the users on my website since they've never abused the dislike system before (and again, dislikes can be removed and wiped off of people's credibility if it is abused). Plus I've made sure people can distinguish between credibility influenced by staff (darker colors) and that influenced by regular users (lighter colors).

TBH you have the highest credibility score of all the members on TLC+ right now.
 
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