2012-12-16, 15:59 | Link #181 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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I get the feeling my comment last night was lost in the mix. I was simply wondering if the rep software could be salvaged/rigged/crippled into a simple thank you system so that threads wouldn't be cluttered with "thank you" or "ditto" posts.
There would be no display of dots under the avatar, there would be no colors. In the User CP, there would be just a grey dot, the sender, and the comment field in the User CP. Syn mentioned this as well from other forums. Maybe even no comment field, just the sender's name. The advantage to it is to reduce the noise clutter of a thread by giving people an off-channel way of just saying thanks.
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2012-12-16, 16:03 | Link #182 | |||||
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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The fact that we constantly saw people whining about receiving negrep is to me a signal that a majority of people here did in fact treat the game too seriously. So much for having a bit of harmless fun, and so much for believing that people can be mature enough to take the brickbats along with the praise. Quote:
In other words, they're trolls, people who enjoy spouting rubbish online in full knowledge that there is little that can be done about them so long as they remain anonymous. Quote:
Honestly, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this issue, as we're clearly arguing over an ideological chasm. As I've already highlighted in my first post on this thread, the reputation system as it existed ended up being a popularity contest that people took too seriously. As a result, it also began to have a chilling effect in that it discouraged people from saying anything they knew was unpopular. If people couldn't handle such a system, despite how inconsequential the negreps were relative to posreps, I am not optimistic they can handle a "likes" system, which leads to the same kind of populism. So, let's just do away with it completely. I strongly believe it will be for the better. Quote:
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And, oh yeah, the point about "private flame wars"? It is about as likely to happen in the "likes" system as in the "neutral rep" one. They won't go away, with or without negreps. That's why I always felt people should just grow a thicker skin, because the root problem didn't lie in the neg-repping as it did with people who just felt like being a jerk. And such people are for the moderators to handle, and I find they've generally handled such trouble-makers quite well. |
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2012-12-16, 16:04 | Link #183 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Los Angeles, California
Age: 39
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Actually I agree 100%, the rep/nep system is really not needed. I have done the whole pm someone thing when I think what they said made a whole lot of since. . .and for the trolls. . .there's the ignore button on said troll's profile! I use that religiously on forums like these (I think I've only ignore three people here so far) on another forum that Triple R mentioned in which there was much more tolerance for bashing of other members, he forgot to mention that there. . .that site is pretty much the end result, of elitist, cliquey old members who bash on the new members, and/or bash on members who stress opinions that are different from what the cliques agree on. . .i.e. everything about naruto is bad, one piece is the god of all creativity, magi, claymore and shingeki no kyojin are flawless etc etc. and when someone says other wise, they get flamed, name called you name it. . .and everyone jumps in! Its really sad there and new members are pretty much driven away after a while. . . on that site I have about 70% of the posters on my ignore list because of their abusive behavior. . .to the point that I saw no point in going there anymore. the only system they have is the title system from being a long time member/frequent poster . . .and that was abused like crazy to the point that I mentioned above. I think no system is needed, these forums arent a popularity contest. . .they're just forums! If someone wants to be "popular" they can go run for office! and there are a lot of ways to combat trolls. . .the ignore feature is one of them. ..also the REPORT feature is a GREAT way to combat trolls, it helps the mods focus their attention on certain people that need to be looked at. All the tools the community needs are already needed, rep and nep are pretty much outdated, and redundant. so I actually welcome this for a change, it'll be a bummer for those who wanted to see their green bars go up and feel "better" than other posters but, they can handle it... or just go somewhere else, and leave the forum discussions to people who actually want to have a forum discussion for the sake of discussion, not to win a popularity contest. so yes, take the rep system down and DON'T replace it with anything. These are forums, not reddit. Also...this: Quote:
P.S. Personally, I think the bars should be removed as well. . .wipe everything clean. Last edited by CJ_Walker; 2012-12-16 at 16:16. |
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2012-12-16, 16:13 | Link #184 | ||
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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Do we have any examples of this? I've seen people who received a lot of negative rep and grew frustrated, but I can't think of any examples where they stopped participating in conversations. In a few cases they grew frustrated enough to switch off the rep indicator for their account, but that's fine - that's why it was optional. Again, the hypothetical situations are good and fine, but what actually happened?
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2012-12-16, 16:18 | Link #185 | ||
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
Graphic Designer
Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 37
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Also, some members were observed as forced to "follow" the bandwagon. Either way, we can safely drop the "hypothetical" approach, since the points brought to the table did occur (and some people still couldn't believe people would abuse posrep and negrep the way we described in this thread).
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2012-12-16, 16:21 | Link #186 |
廉頗
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Massachusetts
Age: 34
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It's theoretical. These assertions are difficult to back up with concrete facts (that doesn't mean it doesn't take place, just that we can't give a laundry list of examples). For instance, it would be very hard to 'prove' someone stopped discussing things due to the fear of negative rep, or 'prove' that low-rep posters were ignored in favor of higher-rep... it's just, in my opinion, a logical assumption to make, that some people will do that... based on nothing more than human nature.
I think relentlessflame brings up a good point, too, that reputation was meant to be a factor on which one was judged. Judging on avatar/location/etc is possible, but likely to not be a widespread practice, whereas rep was meant to serve as some kind of measuring stick (of what, who knows, and that's why they are deciding to rid themselves of it). |
2012-12-16, 16:22 | Link #187 |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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I wish you could let us know more details about how it was being abused and about the specific cases. Call me uncreative, but I can't imagine what that scenario would look like. I'm curious about what was so egregious as to result in shutting down the entire system.
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2012-12-16, 16:25 | Link #188 | |
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
Graphic Designer
Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 37
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Others were seen as cycling their reputation by continuously posrep themselves, the so called clique as we stated before. Conversively, we noticed that some members were "bullied" by others who kept negrepped them every chance they could. At one point, I've seen a member neg repped 10 times within barely 1-2 months period, by merely 1-2 members alone. Such abuse aren't the only problems: underhanded way for insults and the likes, so many complaints of people having negrep, thinking they didn't "deserve" that, a lot of people keeping baiting people from negrep and so forth. As far as the reports went, we had vastly more issues with reputation in general than benefits. In fact, we had to dedicate a "rep abuse thread" in the mod section to deal and follow "special cases".
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2012-12-16, 16:29 | Link #189 | ||
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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This one is also pretty bad. If the member wanted to participate in the rep system, it seems there's nothing that could be done, save for making a new user account. But here, too, the abuse could easily be limited by disabling reputation and hiding the rep comments in the user control panel.
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2012-12-16, 16:33 | Link #190 | |||
Le fou, c'est moi
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA
Age: 34
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When I know exactly why I received the red, it was a lot easier to laugh it off or even contemplate my own bad behavior like TRL. Speculating is annoying. Also guilty as charged on the public thing, but for an entirely different reason suggested: whenever I fell to the temptation, it was a clumsy attempt to reach out to the anonymous neg-repper, and never to garner general public sympathy, which never even crossed my mind -- though that (both reaching out and "sympathy rep") never worked in my case anyway, as far as I recall. I hope this gives you a better feedback in return matching what you observed. It is, of course, the experience of one user among thousands. Quote:
Nonetheless, I'm also with KholdStare on a point: again, I'm speaking without data here, but it sounds like a problem of the tiny minority, the type that would find a way to troll anyway with or without an easily abused rep system. While you may or may not see a reduction of trollish behavior statistically, you all will still have to moderate the forum trolls. In fact, it may be a "fun" exercise to spend five minutes thinking like a troll on how someone can abuse the rest of the system to do exactly what the rep system allowed them to do. Quote:
As other users' feedback also seem to show, I agree that the rep system was easily the most convenient tool when a simple "I like your post" is what I wanted to deliver, or an appreciation of someone's thoughtful response to me which I may or may not be inclined to respond in kind. Barring all the moderation headache, it was useful, and scrapping it will not remove the urge to give a simple thanks -- it just makes it harder. I noticed just as much about the QFT type posts in some other forums, and let me tell you that they are much more annoying than rep by their sheer ability to pollute a thread and render conversation doubly difficult. However, and this may or may not be unique to my case (moreover it's a bit of a self-behavioral analysis, a practice fraught with...lulz), I found myself moderating my usage of the rep system dramatically once I realized, rather subconsciously, that rep inflation was giving me far more green power than I was comfortable with and therefore my simple "your post made me metaphorically roll on the floor laughing my lovely heart off" was giving people two green dots at a time. In hindsight, it may have been a gamebreaking "feature." From these two points, I conclude that I would indeed prefer a system that is: one, non-anonymous to the receiving poster, removing a key trolling potential and communication annoyance; two, include an ability to provide a short message explaining the "like"; three, is not cumulative on the user level, so as not to repeat the inflation quandary. The questions of whether the "likes" should be public -- "A and 17 other lemmings liked this" -- semi-public, like youtube, or private, like the current rep system, is something that may require some further thoughts. Per TRL's concern and my usage intentions, private is probably the best. The proposed neutral rep system therefore sounds like a decent platform going forward, with limited need to hack and design your own custom feature. Or, again, you could just not replace anything at all and let us make do with what we have. And of course, do your forum upgrade before designing any more features. In other words, "this is really not time-sensitive, and I mean it!" Edit: I forgot to mention, but Animesuki's thread system and the staff's general moderating behavior/guidelines is generally heavily anti-off topic. Please be aware of this, as -- and here I take the liberty to speculate -- users generally try to follow your guidelines and keep branching conversations to a minimum. When they want to be social, it seems they (and I) rely on the myriad of other communication lines to do that to avoid running into the off-topic wall too often. But like KholdStare I never quite assimilated myself to long PM or VM conversations. And like most of the user base, the Social Group is still an awkward compromise. Rep was simple enough to be useful for the specific social purpose mentioned above. Last edited by Irenicus; 2012-12-16 at 16:44. |
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2012-12-16, 16:38 | Link #191 |
ISML Technical Staff
Graphic Designer
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An easy fix could be to include a checkbox whether or not to "sign" that reputation. Of course, someone could just uncheck the box and manually sign as someone else. But if such a system exists, then everyone would be aware of it, so an empty username but signed in the text itself would be suspicious.
That is, if we bring back neg rep, which we shouldn't. Attaching the the username always in a pos rep only system is...well, I can't see much wrong with it. If you use the comments to say something bad, then obviously there's an incentive for you NOT to do so, since your name will be displayed. That takes care of 2 things.
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2012-12-16, 16:41 | Link #192 |
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
Graphic Designer
Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 37
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Unless I recall it wrong, bulletin board does allow the possibility to lift the anonymity of rep system. That being said, it has a side effect: people who give "genuine" negrep for sound reasons might be afraid of getting a "revenge negrep". This is actually why it was obvious that 99% of the negrep we have seen so far are not signed at all.
Regarding reputation grinding, from our perspective, it doesn't make sense to let people abuse a system that was "supposed to be for fun". It defeats the whole purpose of deserving the reputation points, and obviously will lead to snowball effects if some people guess it is the case (either by paranoia or valid reasons to think people do that), I wouldn't be surprised to see more of this kind of stuff. This is valid for both pos rep and neg rep: pos rep grind doesn't look like a problem at first, but if someone is that obsessed with reputation to begin with, it actually leads to a very vicious trend, as in grinding, attention "whoring" and the like. This goes past beyond what we considered as a "fun flavor" and such feature becomes more of a dead weight and liability than truly something we can let active without any worry.
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2012-12-16, 16:42 | Link #193 |
ISML Technical Staff
Graphic Designer
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Can I have a more detailed example? I mean, I know that because of the "10 different users" limit, you can't just circlejerk with 2 people easily. How do people get around this? If they create a new account, then they have 0 rep power.
EDIT: Adding to what Irenicus said, it would fun indeed to think like a troll, and see if we can build a system that makes their lives miserable.
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2012-12-16, 16:45 | Link #194 | |
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
Graphic Designer
Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 37
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The time limit for a rep (either pos or neg) was fairly shorter, so the "bully plan" was basically set as spreading more positive or neg rep among other members (sometimes even randomly) before focalising on the previously neg repped member. This practice was also done for rep grind, although much easier and less noticeable since the grinded member wouldn't report any abnormal rep, for obvious reason.
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2012-12-16, 16:45 | Link #195 |
Banned
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Hamburg
Age: 54
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And just one more observation, which kind of fits seamlessly in my current displeasure with the way Animesuki is led/moderated, if I may take the liberty to say so.
Instead of "We are considering altering or dropping the reputation system, what do you think about that?", we got an "We have decreed that the reputation system is to be abolished. Feedback here. Impact none." thread. Can't say that this particularly reinforces my impression of AS as a community from anime fans for anime fans. Instead it's "We know best what's good for you". |
2012-12-16, 16:51 | Link #196 | |
ISML Technical Staff
Graphic Designer
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However, what I'm more concerned of was relentlessflame keep pressing the point that no matter how much support we get for a new and well-thought out system, the staff may end up not implementing that. It seems to me that for some reason, the staff is already intent on not implementing a new system. In short, the staff getting rid of the old system is reasonable. But if a well-thought out system were to come up, it would be done considering the aftermath of the previous system, everyone would be involved in the discussion, and most things would be fleshed out. I don't know why this would be "veto'd" in any way by the staff.
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Last edited by KholdStare; 2012-12-16 at 16:58. Reason: Fixed the typo "In short, the staff getting rid of a new system is a reasonable" which made no sense |
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2012-12-16, 16:55 | Link #197 | |
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
Graphic Designer
Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 37
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Whenever you abolish something, more often than not, people expect a "compensation" for that, to which is something we won't promise, exactly because we may find issues in the alternative options given (either internally or by members). Which also means at the same time: there is no guarantee there won't be any replacement for the reputation system. Simply put, we are going to study alternative features should there is any that overcome the issues we have noticed for a while. But right now, the reputation system is scrapped.
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2012-12-16, 16:55 | Link #198 | |||||
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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But we've already established that people are not here specifically for the rep system. It was a fun add-on that many enjoyed, and that could always be opted out of. As such, I still don't see why "gaming positive rep" was a problem, particularly since "gaming" the system didn't influence other forum users' usage of the forum. I appreciate your taking the time to explain the staff's thoughts on the matter. Quote:
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2012-12-16, 16:56 | Link #199 | |
ISML Technical Staff
Graphic Designer
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2012-12-16, 17:05 | Link #200 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2008
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About time, I say. Even though reputation is not that important, I've always found reputation systems that allow for negative rep to be assigned (even worse, in an anonymous way) to be deeply flawed. They are exploitable in too many ways, too hard to moderate, and are generally simply a mean for grief.
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forum, reputation |
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