Trusted Members List (similar concept as Buddy List)

[ludachris]

So a friend and I were discussing this idea the other day. It came about after I told him some of the drawbacks I noticed with the Reputation System on our site. Basically, the idea behind the reputation system is to build a system that identifies the trusted members of the site, right?

Well, I was thinking about doing it a different way - encouraging members to add other members to their "Trusted Member List". This system could be based off of the Buddy List (probably just duplicate the feature). I'd just like to see more features that the buddy list doesn't have, like:

- Display a count for each member in Postbit and Memberinfo (Trusted by "X" other members)
- Show each members' list of Trusted Members in Memberinfo
- Be able to display a list of the most Trusted Members from highest to lowest (without displaying those with no count)
- Add to reputation count when "X" number of members add you to their list (configurable)
- Search for posts by only your list of Trusted Members
- Add a Promotion option for those members who have a high count
- Only members with "X" number of posts can be added to a list
- Admin option: Each user must choose a trusted member before they themselves can be added to other trusted member list. This should be able to be turned off and on.
- Be written in a way that it won't get wiped out when upgrading.
- Compatible with 3.5X

There are still two issues that I haven't figured out just yet - and these issues also plague the Rep Points system...

1. A way to discourage users from abusing the system by adding their friends to their Trusted list for no real reason. There should be something that makes you choose only those who you really trust to be on your list. I'm thinking by publicly showing each users' list, it will make them a little hesitant to add a questionable member to their list.

2. A way to encourage users to actually add members to their Trusted list. As with the Rep Point system, there is a clear incentive to receive points, but no real incentive to distribute them. Maybe force users to choose 1 or 2 trusted members before they themselves can be chosen as trusted members?

Any thoughts? Anyone want to try and code this?

[ludachris]

Does anyone know exactly how the Buddy List works? Are buddies stored in the DB somewhere? Are there any number counts stored in the DB for the buddy list - like if I'm on 50 buddy lists, is that number stored in the DB? Or, if I have 5 people on my buddy list, is that number stored somewhere?

[ludachris]

Originally Posted by ludachris

Does anyone know exactly how the Buddy List works? Are buddies stored in the DB somewhere? Are there any number counts stored in the DB for the buddy list - like if I'm on 50 buddy lists, is that number stored in the DB? Or, if I have 5 people on my buddy list, is that number stored somewhere?

Is there a better area to post a request? I'm willing to pay for this. Is there a paid Mod Request section for 3.5?

[Borgs8472]

Paid requests go here