question on reputation modifications

[david-o]

Hi All,

I have a more product oriented question than technical question for modification. I wasn't sure if this would be accepted here but I appreciate filburt1's support that posting here would be fine.

I'm a product manager at an emerging startup, and I'd love to get some feedback on some modifications we're considering for vBulletin. We offer online reputation management, and would like to be a middleman for reputation on the web. So for example, if someone at forum A has a good reputation, and wants to join forum B, instead of starting off as a complete newbie, they can show their verified reputation from forum A on forum B.

With the general concept above, we are considering the following modification / integration with vBulletin. I would like to get feedback on these ideas, including any ways we can improve the use (leveraging) reputation. I'm sure some of these are already available (flagging, helpful votes, etc.), but we'll include this as part of creating a complete package.


1) Ability to label a posting as "helpful/unhelpful", if 5 "reputable" people (the exact number is customizable) label a posting as unhelpful, then everyone
else who comes into the thread will see this posting as "collapsed" so they won't see it unless they expand it to view

2) Ability to label people as "reputable", based on a customizable length of membership and number of postings (anything else?)

3) Ability to flag postings as offensive, best of, off-topic, etc. Both the person who flagged as was as the person who got flagged will build good/bad reputation with this activity.

4) Ability to provide a review of the person, including characteristics such as "helpful", "knowledgeable", etc

5) Ability to let users import their reputation data from Opinity to the board

6) Ability to let users to elect the copy of their reputation data, to another forum and Opinity (which could enable instant registration)

7) Ability to let people register by simply specifying their Opinity account (and auto-populate their profile)

8) Ability for newly registered people to jump a few levels based on their reputation from another reputable board or via Opinity


Again, any thoughts and suggestions on how we can leverage and build reputation is appreciated!! :-)

Best - David