Disappointed of latest hacks...

Well I just wanted to point out my disappointment regarding the addition of the belt hack and the reputation thingie...

Since both those components have been added, I have noticed an important increase of pointless posts and arguing definitively aiming to increase post count... Also, the reputation have led a lot of people to ask for it, falsing the results of the reputation...

My first though about it was that we will be able to identify who's advices were trustable the most, but experienced prooved it wrong...

I think the rep makes sense. As for asking for it, if you are reffering to people's signatures, I think these are just there to tell people who don't know how to add rep how to do so.

I'm also not a big fan of the belts. Not many people (other than the admins) are. But I don't think this is the cause for people are looking for postcount++. Most trolls do that anyway. I know I would.

You mean you don't trust ME? Dec 1999, bitch...

I don't trust you because you wear a black belt or because you colleted rep...

I do trust people because I saw how they answered in the past and when I know nothing about a subject, i refer to the other posts I saw from those users. I first though that reputation will help in that, but it had just come to be a race to greater reputation and pointless comments. I personnaly got more positive comments from people using this option wrongly than from people I really helped.

Management is my daily job, and there is nothing more important than good numbers, but definitively, the belt and rep hacks provide false numbers and generate a bad "pointless" post effect.

Following my experience on devshed, i even removed post counts from all the forums I'm managing...

Oh, and Sepodati, the fact that you have been around since December 1999 doesn't make you wise on all the subjects available on devshed, and I know peeps who joined few weeks ago and which have a professional background on some subjects that I will and I would bet that you will either never reach...

The amount of post, the joining date, none have any meaning regarding *trustability*. Reputation would have a meaning if it was more commonly understood and if it was subject related (IE reputation toward Oracle knowledge, reputation toward PHP)...

Maldor,

I find your statement on "Forum Join Time" a little disingenuous, as wasters don't hang around that long, and contributing members from December 1999, still around today must have some credibility, especially with moderator status - this means the administrators have decided that the individual is trustworthy to represent their vision, and ensure quality of service in the forums.


Do we accept this as quality reportage? You're making a statement of assumption without qualification, as a manager, you are no doubt aware that this is grossly misleading, and unfair, and without knowing the individual or their qualifications grossly unfair. Allowances have been made for English not being your first language, if this is not the case ... it can be revisited

As a manager you are aware of only getting what you pay for. As for the forums you manage, imho, you are doing a disservice to your members, by arbitrarily removing post counts. If your members are unaware of trolling, and post count++, then post count isn't necessarily a metric for the quality of response from a specific member, but it can provide intangible direction as to the quality of the individual, rather than the response

A number of people were against the belts, and if they really bug you that much you can adblock them (assuming you're on FireFox)

Just my €0.02

BTW Sep hasn't so much collected rep, not that he has a choice, but it's given as per the FAQ's on amount of time since joining, and also mod status, and getting points for being helpful

Well, I should probably jump in here since I currently have the highest reputation, for what that's worth.

In my experience there are two ways of getting up-reps. 1) Insightful posts*, 2) Joke / Troll answers. These are usually given when I crack a funny or give a sarcastic response.

Now, to see if the reputation system is purely some social thing where posts in the lounge gained rep points, we need to split (1) into insightful lounge posts and insightful non-lounge posts (these are the important ones, right?).

* Note, I'm not saying my posts are insightful, etc, just that someone else thought they were.

Of the last 20 of my reputation changes (that I can see), 19 have been positive. Of these 19:
11 are for insightful non-lounge posts
6 are lounge insightful
2 are trolling joke type posts

(See screenshot if you don't believe me).

On average, I think my up-reps have been:
~40% non-lounge insightful posts
~30% insightful lounge posts
~30% for joke/troll responses

(Maybe one of the admins can assess the lot and give us real figures?)

Now, I think it is settling down and people are being more sensible in their repping than they have been. There is still some abuse - this one comes to mind (Although DrGroove does deserve it), but it seems to be averaging out.

Personally, I try to give out my 10/day to people who've given a good answer, or asked an interesting question, regardless of what forum it's in.

I just wanted to point out that my statement was not aimed to Sep in particular but I wanted to show how wrong those metrics are. I guess that all you want is to trust people as invidual and then, joining date and post count might be valuable. I'm hanging around here to help with my knowledge and to learn a bit more and in my case those metrics are just bringing confusion...

Now this thread was my €0.02. I didn't planned to argue about it, I just wanted to give my point.

I was just joking around when I wrote the above, anyhow. I actually agree with you for the most part. Post count, belt, rep, etc. don't mean much and don't really contribute anything to the forums. Not our decision, though, so we learn to like them.

To a newbie, these may be a quick way to learn who to listen to, but after they stick around a bit, they'll learn who the experts are (and learn it's not always the people that have been here forever or are popular).

I've done my fair share of helping people around here, trust me. Still do, but mainly just in the PHP forum, anymore.

---John Holmes...

Listen

Since we have instituted the belt and reputation hacks page turns and posts have gone up pretty decently. People in general like to be rewarded for their efforts and belts and reputation help to do that. There are business reasons behind a lot of what we do, and the recent hacks installed are no exception to that - and they appear to be working very well (for all of our forums, we run 5 of them)

I hear ya, but also you should note that it can be annoying and perhaps demoralising or even upsetting for some people to get negative rep. For instance, I get quite annoyed when Sep depreps me every chance he gets (:rolleyes. I often only get rep++ from people with one or two rep power which takes a while to build up, and is annoying then to lose 16 or whatever in one go.

Perhaps an addition to the hack to only allow you to derep someone less times than you can plus rep people to avoid the 'demoralising hatred upsettedness'.

Just a thought.