Tutorial: Reputation

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Hello and welcome to your unofficial tutorial on giving and recieving reputation. Look right underneath my avatar - see the little icon that looks like a set of scales? Click on it.

A little box will pop open saying that you either A) approve of my post, or B) disapprove. You choose one, and then you can even type in a little encouraging note for the user you are giving reputation for. Or a silly note if you like.

Then send it, and you're done! You can access your reputation and notes that people have sent YOU in your User CP.

May you be so lucky to recieve the same reputation in return.

[TheHolo.Net]

Have you found user notes in your profiles yet?

[Dasquian Belargic]

Reputation is a cool way of letting people know if you enjoyed an RPing post of theirs :cool

[Liam Jinn]

What is the point of reputation?

[Yog]

I really love this feature!

(poorly disguised attempt to harvest some reputation points! :p )

[Arya Ravenwing]

Have you found user notes in your profiles yet?

I haven't. :( I meant profile not User CP. ^_^;

[Dasquian Belargic]

What is the point of reputation?

As I said, it's a good way of letting people know if you enjoyed something they posted :) Other than that... just a bit of fun, I guess!

[Liam Jinn]

So no prizes :(

[Dasquian Belargic]

Only the satisfaction of knowing that you are loved... and occasionally another little green box next to your 'Rep Power' count.

[Liam Jinn]

Woohoo, I'm loved!

I like this rep crap :D

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I was right initially, the comments are in your User CP on the main page. ^_^;

[TheHolo.Net]

User notes are added via the prifle though and are not part of reputation, but I think user note permissions are limited to regular registered users. Its one of the Supporter perks I set up so far I think.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Oh User Notes are different than reputation. ^_^; I thought you were referring to - well n/m what I thought. :p

I saw the User Notes, but I'm not sure how they work. You get to leave notes on the profile of other people?

[TheHolo.Net]

Oh User Notes are different than reputation. ^_^; I thought you were referring to - well n/m what I thought. :p

I saw the User Notes, but I'm not sure how they work. You get to leave notes on the profile of other people?^_^; I'm still figuring things out myself. Little things like user notes are nothing when I'm considering plugin hook locations and global variables.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Ok, then don't worry about it and I'll figure it out by trying to leave <strike>nasty</strike> nice notes about other people.

Also, it should be noted that if you send negative reputation you will be contributing to making someone infamous. So if someone did something truly evil in an RPing post, for instance, or mouthed off a fantastically sarcastic remark OOC, you could give them reputation to speed them along onto their career of villianry. ;)

Keep in mind they can see who's given them the reputation, so the whole "karma" thing... it'll come back to haunt you. :D

[TheHolo.Net]

Keep in mind they can see who's given them the reputation, so the whole "karma" thing... it'll come back to haunt you. :DFunny you say karma, the reputation system was based on an old hack called the "Karma" hack. vB even credits the author of the karma hack in the adminCP.

I see you also found user pictures. Thats another feature that is better for supporters.

[Liam Jinn]

I wasn't able to see who gave me a good rep...

[TheHolo.Net]

I wasn't able to see who gave me a good rep...Hmm, I thought supporters could. Well, supporter accounts still aren't fully setup yet.

[Yog]

Is it possible to edit user notes? I see there is a button for that, but it says I have not permission to do that.

[TheHolo.Net]

Managing user notes is a group permission. I'll decide how to set up all of those options sometime in the near future. I'll probably give Supporters more rep power and permissions.

[Ogre]

Lets see how things look on the other side a little. Now I'm just a registered user.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Oh, only supporters/staff members can see who gave them reputation? I read gud. :p

[Jaime Tomahawk]

Oh no :(

I would have preferred not seeing reputation voting. I'm quite familiar with the feature and on another board (Where I behave myself), people there did have problems with others with agendas and abuse of the reputation system

[Dasquian Belargic]

It's actually pretty difficult to abuse, from the looks of things. Everyone has a limited amount of 'Rep Power'. Even the Admins only have a power of 10, so you can't really do much 'damage' to anyones reputation. Even if someone went out of their way to register lots of new accounts (or whatever), for the sole purpose of racking up negative reputation for someone, the staff can see all of the reputation comments given. If someone does decide to view the reputation as a tool for sending malicious comments to others, they will be punished just as if they had posted those comments in a normal post.

Not that I can see it becoming a problem, personally. Please don't prove me wrong, people ;)

[Jaime Tomahawk]

Ummm.... that's not the kind of abuse I'd be worried about - what your thinking is abuse against SW-Fans full stop. Abuse of the Reputation system is where you vote approve or disapprove not according to wether the post deserved it or not, but when your pushing an agenda (like for example on another forum when ever I mention pace notes in rallying, always someone will neg rep because they have a political agenda for the other form of road book) and that when I've fallen victim to abuse it was not regular posters generally doing it. In the case of the above, it was a site administrator who doled out neg rep for going against his personal views. That only came out when the rep system was made completely transparent (rep giver identified to poster) and a reason for reputation given enforced.

Applied wrongly, reputation systems are a form of censorship against opinions that others dont like but are still valid. I honestly can only think of one place it's done right, but that's because the rep system is strictly regulated and checked - in that case it was for rating advice given (ie how factual it was) and also buying and selling

[Serena Laran]

If and when such a problem occurs we will deal with it. You are assuming that this is applied wrongly and that the posters of Sw-Fans are not capable of being mature adults, AND that the staff will be part of the problem.

It smacks of paranoia, and I'm a little offended that you think the staff would use it to push personal agendas, if they had any to start with.

[Jaime Tomahawk]

I'm only telling you how I've seen it applied and the problems. I've also told you part of the solution.


You assume wrongly if you think I'm having a go at somene - and why not in fact read what I said again and think it over. I've told you a reputation system needs to be transparent, it needs rules because you can wish for the goodness of humanity all you want but there will be abuse and you need to be completely beyond reproach for it to work.

I know quite well people have their barrows to push - you have them, I have them and I'm not naive to believe that no one is going to not rep without regard to those. I'm not talking about just RP either. A clear set of guidelines and being as transparent as possible (In the manner I also stated helped on the other forum) goes a long way to prevent such accusations as barrow pushers think twice before pressing buttons.

On the other forums in fact, I give neg rep exactly for one reason - bad trolling (OMG ROTARIES HATE APEX SEALS LOLOL). I personally try to argue or discuss a point as this seems to be the proper way. I am however, not other people. Not everyone else feels the need to explain or put forth their point of view, which leads to neg rep for the wrong reasons. I'm sorry if you think that's being down on a system that on the surface looks amusing but unless you set the ground rules out and make it as transparent as possible, you WILL hit those issues.

Edit : Right now I cant tell the diffrerence in layout between BMSC and here, I almost gave pos rep to someone here for a NSW State requirement re : Clothing, which would have been WTF to explain.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

It should be noted that all users can see who's leaving them reputation now, not just Supporters.

[Rod Stafford]

I'm really not a fan of this at all, I'm afraid. It's just an unneccessary move towards popularity nonsense in my eyes and I'd rather there'd be a way to disable it in your User CP options.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Some people will see a popularity contest under every rock and around every tree. There's nothing we can do about it.

[Sanis Prent]

Anything that encourages a person to look to a graphic rather than a post's content to help make their minds up gets a thumbs down from me. I just do not think there's any practical purpose for this kind of thing. If we have a person who's a dunder-head 99 percent of the time, I'd like people to not write him off because his rep is in the gutter in that one iota of a chance that he's cogent and on the money.

I've just got a bad feeling about this.

[Bambi Maddox]

Im surprised that anyone is taking the Rep thing so seriously. I thought it was just to add a little bit of fun.

Does anyone really care if there are little red blocks after their name? I dont, and Im not going to not read someones posts because they dont have any red blocks either.
I doubt Im alone in that regard.

Having said that, I didn't like the average poster not being able to see who left what message for them. Thumbs up for changing that. That should help keep ppl decent.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Im surprised that anyone is taking the Rep thing so seriously. I thought it was just to add a little bit of fun.

Yes, I'm not quite sure that this is the end of the worlds, people. But I forget, the internets is serious business. ;)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Goodness Holly, you certainly seem to have gotten yourself a few red blocks there :)



As for the rep issue, I echo the sentiment that it's just a fun little thing. If, in the future it becomes a raging problem, something will be done about it.

[TheHolo.Net]

It can be turned off with the click of an option. Consider it experimental.

[Bette Davis]

I like my red blocks! I AM INFAMOUS!

And, in the wrong account. :o

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I saw it as a fun IC gauge myself; something that showed at a glance the general standing of a character ICly.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I see it as mainly nonsense, and now its nonsense you can turn off if you're morally opposed. Obviously you can't use it as any sort of gauge of real character.

[Liam Jinn]

I was feeling special, then you had to go and ruin that :(

[Park Kraken]

I see it as a way to have.....fun with someone. Of course, rules should be laid down with a system like this. For example, I could see this being used as a private system of flaming someone for a post they made, and that sort of thing.

[Dasquian Belargic]

If we decide to keep the system in place, I am sure something will be added to the FAQ, much of which will have to be revised soon, I think. As I think I said earlier, though, the rules which apply to all other areas of the board would apply to this too, by default. If anyone does receive any offensive comments, they (and the staff) will be able to see who they are from and will punish the offender accordingly.

Like s'Ilancy said, it seems like it would be a cool way of showing In Character reputation, or (as I said) a way of letting someone know you enjoyed their post. I have already seen people giving reputation points for this reason, and so far everyone has managed to restrain themselves from doing anything naughty ;) The way I see it, people have had the option to 'flame' one another ever since the private message feature was introduced. People don't exploit that by randomly sending one another offensive messages, so I don't see why this would be any different. :huh

I won't comment on the whole 'popularity contest' issue because while I don't really agree some of the comments made, I know that peoples opinions on the matter aren't likely to be changed.

[Miranda Tarkin]

As with anything we do on Fans, it's meant for fun. When things get abused we take it be the reign and punish the offenders. This has nothing to do with a popularity contest ... it's just for fun :)

We're all friends here for a long time, some of us. I think we know how to behave. I think that fact is important.

For those that don't, or new people that fail to use things properly, it will be taken care of. Course we're still debating possible outcomes, nothing might ever happen! Which would be good. Otherwise, there is the option to get rid of it, tho if only a few people infract upon the system, be a shame to have to get rid of it for the majority that seem to like it.

[Blade Bacquin]

I ussually I stand with the people that would say this would be nothing more then a poularity contest. But Oddly enough today I'm going against my normal stance. I like the reputation thingy I think it's a great way to tell my friends I like what there doing and I'm reading there work.

It also helps you to gauge your character a bit IC I mean if as Blade got a allot of Disaproves I for one would be delighted it means I'm being an evil mama jama. If he got to many approves I would have to um turn Jedi or rethink his evilness. lol

Heck even if I don't get any reputation it won't bother me. I can already look at veiw counts and see if anyone cares what I post or if there just ignoring my thread. So if you want to call popularity contest on this rep thing you might as well call it on veiw counts as well it does the same except with the rep thing you get a bit of encouragement with it.

As long as it's used for fun and not a ban-o-meter like some boards I have been to use it for its all cool by me.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

We already have a ban-o-meter in the closet that we pull out and use on special occasions. This looks nothing like it. ;)

[Terran Starek]

Ooooo . . . ban-o-meter. I'd like to see it. :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Well, you can't. So there.

:mneh

[Terran Starek]

Well, Fine! See if I care, LD!

. . .

I do! :cry

[Varla]

so let me get this straight. red ones are for villains and green ones are for good characters. That's the way Blade has explained it to me. :lol

[Blade Bacquin]

Not really exactly how I was trying to teach it to you cause well I'm not the best teacher int he world but thats how I use it for my own personal self.

[Dasquian Belargic]

That sounds about right :lol

[Dasquian Belargic]

Four years later and the reputation system has DESTROYED THE MORAL FOUNDATION OF SW FANS DOT NET



Oh no wait :mneh

[Droo]

But... it did!

Actually, the whole rep thing I couldn't really care less about, I wonder if anyone really pays any attention to it at all. In time, I warmed to it because it allows roleplayers to let others know they like their writing and their work with a character.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I still don't really understand what all the numbers are next to peoples "Rep Power" but I like seeing people giving eachother little messages saying how much they enjoyed a roleplaying post, or how useful they found someones advice :)