User Reputations in vb.org ON or OFF?

[Logician]

Dear vB.org Members,

We like to hear your opinions about turning on user reputations here in vb.org. We haven't decided about this yet but we are considering the issue. There can be pros and cons of turning them on and we like you to discuss them. Good karma can be useful to encourage our expert users to release more hacks, give support for their hacks or answer the questions of newbie users in our forum. On the other hand we don't want this be abused like bad karmas becoming a discouregement for some of our members. (For example a member can give bad karma in a hack thread when hacker does not reply his question and this can discourage hacker about sharing his other hacks in vb.org etc.)

So we can leave them as they are (off) or we can turn them on and give it a shot. Please give your 2 cents and we appreciate if you :
a) Consider the issue by regarding the characteristic of vb.org
b) Give your reasons while voting.

Thank you.

[sabret00the]

i think the main thing is like when we install hacks or need help the reputations would enable us to go straight to the most helpful people and speed the process up completely.

[Zachery]

i think the main thing is like when we install hacks or need help the reputations would enable us to go straight to the most helpful people and speed the process up completely.
I think reputation works well for new forums, however long established forums usualy have a problem when its introduced. its usualy abused in some way.

:/

[Dean C]

i think the main thing is like when we install hacks or need help the reputations would enable us to go straight to the most helpful people and speed the process up completely.

Yep but just because someone is helpful around the forums doesn't mean they want to be contacted privately to offer support necessarily (if that's what your implying) :)

[sabret00the]

nah i'm not but for example you have two hacks, similar and one authros got high reputation, the others is really low, then it's gotta be because ones more helpful than the others?

[Dean C]

My arguement is against this because it's not a true representation of how helpful people really are. Also it promotes the idea of a social hiearchy which is open to bias from favoritism. What you said is true sabert00the in theory, but in practice I doubt it'll work that way. For example someone may not like someone and make it their mission to go rounding giving that user negative karma. See what I mean, it's so open to corruption and unjust karma in this case :)

[AlexanderT]

Perhaps turn it on but disable negative reputation?Yup that is what I did and it made everyone a lot friendlier :)

[Dan]

I think they should be on but they shouldn't be available to just people who are starting out within the community here. Maybe they could be used as a way to gauge a persons hacking abaility or helpfulness? Like Idea1 you could turn it on only for the hacking section and only for the first post in the thread. So we could gauge the hacker and how much people like the person. Another idea would be to give 'reputation' when a person is helpful maybe we could have a staff member dedicated to doing this for the forums and the rest of the staff could help out?

Well that's my two pence but I think it should be turned on :)

[Brad]

I think they should be on but they shouldn't be available to just people who are starting out within the community here. Maybe they could be used as a way to gauge a persons hacking abaility or helpfulness? Like Idea1 you could turn it on only for the hacking section and only for the first post in the thread. So we could gauge the hacker and how much people like the person. Another idea would be to give 'reputation' when a person is helpful maybe we could have a staff member dedicated to doing this for the forums and the rest of the staff could help out?

Well that's my two pence but I think it should be turned on :)
I voted for leave them off, I've seen what it can do to communitys before and I don't want to see it happen here to. At any rate if it dose get turned on I'll just disable it in my profile :)

[twoseven]

leave it off unless you revamp the system just a waste of precious eye space as it is

[Gary King]

I voted ON :)

[Tony G]

I'm voting no on this. I don't think it will really help the community at all, just cause alot of potential trouble and abuse.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

I personally don't care either way, but I voted yes.

[Logician]

Enable it but only for moderators and perhaps major hack releasers. Leave negative reputations in. Hopefully this will encourage mods to be a little more helpfull and cut down on poor replies. From what I have seen at vb.com most questions, no matter how silly they may seem to be, tend to be answered by some staff members with great detail and without a hint of negativity.

I see your point but please note this: vb.com staff is Jelsoft employees and it is their job to answer all questions there and give support. On the other hand vb.org staff (all of them) are volunteers so it is not possible to expect them to give as much support as vb.com staff.

Same applies to major hack releasers. Say, I'm a major hack releaser. I've released a lot of hacks some of which are major projects. I'm sharing my hacks in this site without commercial intentions although it requires a lot of time commitment on my end (translate my hacks to English, write install instructions, fix bugs, give support etc.). I do it for the sake of sharing with the community. Do you think I deserve to get a "bad karma" when someone asked a question about one of my hacks and I couldnt find time to answer it?

As a matter of fact this is the sole reason I have reservations about enabling the reputations. We appreciate hack relasers, we need them and we are grateful to them. I really don't want them to be discouraged by bad karma which they don't deserve even if they are not responsive or give support.

[nexialys]

reputations doesn't mean the coder is releasing good hacks... but have a good behavior.

having the INSTALL button is a better indicator of good hacks, because if we stats the install buttons from the start, we can see that most of the BEST hacks are installed often.

[nexialys]

@tenbucks... problem with difference between employees and simple downloaders is that many-many downloaders are not able to close their mouth and are always commenting on things they don't control...

most of the times, when we read long threads about any subjects, we can see newbies or stupid lamers answering insulting things, or simply guys that know nothing in coding argueing about things they mess...

these users are known as "gods of the net"... they know nothing, but claim they know everything and they are in the right path... this is the kind of guys that really need to have reputations at low, so we don't have to bother about their comments... but we're in a free world, so we have to deal with everyone.

many times i've followed threads about interesting topics/hacks, and the mess that was in the thread was bothering my visit, so i stop visiting these forums... 90% of hacks discussions are not about the hack itself, but about lame comments...

but here, we don't have to deal with reputations i think... BUT.. something like the Trader Rating thing: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65730 would be cool on hackers... each guy that release a hack/mod have it's rating activated, so we can rate the job and service/support... this would give some hints, more than a simple reputation level...

my other 2?

[Logician]

But if they choose to reply, then how they reply should be something that feedback can be given. I don't want to name names but yesterday I really wish I could have given someone some negative reputations.
Regular members don't need reputation in my opinion. Those are people that are here using the resources this site has to offer. What is the point in for instance me having a reputation.

Please do not consider reputations a sole tool to punish(!) staff. If some of our members are having problems with the staff, then it is our job to correct things. But since you are also a site admin, I think you'll admit that staff can not make everybody happy. You as a staff sometimes have to take direct actions (like closing thread etc.) and you'll make some people unhappy even if you are doing an excellent job. So I believe reputations is not a good tool for evaluating staff.

On the other hand I don't agree regular members don't need reputation. There are many people here who are able to help to others with certain questions, but they prefer not to. They just download the hacks here, but do not join in the discussions to give some support for the community. I was thinking that good karma can be an incentive for some members to help others in our forums.

In other words my understanding of user reputations is not to put down people (staff or member) but just the contrarty praise them when they are helpful to you. I think good karma helps to build a supportive community.