Likes or Karma or Reputation and Self-Moderation. What do you think?

Hi,

I'd like to throw out a question to all admins of online communities. We've been given the "Like" button by Facebook, which certain online community solutions have adopted and other online community solutions have a reputation system with comments, where you can even give negative reputation, if it is turned on. But is there anything better? Or is a like system enough? Couldn't a rating type of system be even more valuable, for instance, in moderation of users? For instance, if a user is getting an awful lot of bad reputation or ratings, then they could be automatically dropped into a "fishbowl" for further observance?

What do you prefer as a way for users to show their appreciation and/ or disapproval for posting on an online community as an admin? Couldn't a system to weed out bad users based on bad ratings or reputation be useful?

Scott

 

I used to find the rep system valuable on a forum I used to go on; it was a help and advice forum so it helped me judge how I was "performing" (IE. How accurate I was, how informative I was being etc). It can be useful, but generally people don't use such systems for that purpose.

Pretty sure there's a feedback modification for vBulletin boards, but not sure on other software.

 

Thanks for your thoughts Confabit. I like the "check the performance" aspect of a quick feedback system too.

Scott

 

I prefer the Reputation type, especially when you can write a small sentence on why you think the member deserves the rep. I think it makes it more genuine this way than people just spamming like on every post in an attempt to get one back.

 

Auto moderation only works with an advanced reputation system with negative ratings. Negative rating functionality attracts abuse which is something that functionality needs to deal with.
Likes have no real value IMHO as a like may have no relevant meaning. To illustrate: a like can be given if the giver if physically attracted to the profile picture. A dislike can be given if the giver hates the receiver. A like does not have to be relevant to the content.

 

I prefer a like system because i dunno it just seems more simple to just have likes where people just like then it says under the post i find reputation systems to complicated.

 

I have both a likes system, and reputation system(with comments) that allows you to give positive/negative reputation on my forum. We will be reopening our doors on August 15th.

 

Hmm...sorry I am coming back to this so late. I have to ask myself if I missed a notification....hmmmm...I don't think so. I just went to my "Watched Threads" and noticed this thread still had unread posts. Strange...

Anyhow....

How can a negative rating be abused @Alfa1 and what are your thoughts for functionality that may help avoid it?

@bauss - Are you talking about Poker Forum? What software will you be using?

Thanks everyone for the discussion.

Scott

 

I just prefer the likes system. Indeed, I don't even pay any attention to anything other than what specific posts are being liked, the whole concept of a reputation system seems a bit to... outdated and generally open to abuse.

 

I wrestle with this.

I prefer the negative and positive reputation system personally as I like to be able to downvote someone who is not really contributing to the discussion or just being an ahole in general. It's my way of politely disagreeing with them without getting into a big argument over it.

However, most of my forums are either about debate over politics/religion or have a P&R section. Far too much room for abuse to be worth it. So likes it is.

 

Negative reputation can be abused by:

• forum cliques bashing others and bringing their reputation down
• disrespectful comments
• punishing those who do not agree with the rater

This can be resolved by:

• moderation of ratings
• report function for ratings
• a clear rating policy

 

Thanks for that @Alfa1.

How about negative ratings not being visible to the public? Or should they be visible too, if who rated is publicly viewable?

Or what about the level of reduction in the person's "value" (whatever it may be named. Reputation, Karma, etc.), when they receive negative ratings? Should it be worth more, meaning, negative ratings could drop a person's value faster? Or should it be less/ have less effect than positive ratings? This should be most likely an admin setting anyway, but what are your thoughts on the valuation? Does this make the rating system too complicated? Is that the beauty of simple "likes"?

And how about the gamification of it all? Like giving and even taking away awards/ trophies/ badges etc.?

Scott

 

These questions relate to what purpose & design the admin is trying to reach. I have negative ratings visible, but not the rater. If you display the rater then the post author will likely see the rater as an antagonistic force and act out towards the rater. This can be avoided by making the rating anonymous. Making ratings anonymous does mean that some raters will get idea that they can anonymously abuse authors. This is why the above measures like moderation are necessary. With such functions my staff have functions to create reports or infractions from the moderation queue. Moderators are also able to downregulate the number of points given. One form of abuse is when a valid negative rating for a minor issue, has a maximum negative ratings.

To correctly identify members with quality contributions and members with a lot of bad quality contributions, negative ratings should impact a members reputation. This allows auto-moderation, so that members with less than a certain value get moved to restrictive usergroups or even banned.
I dont think negative reputation should weigh less or more than positive. But this is all dependent up the rating guidelines that a board has.
Reputation/karma basically is the primitive form of gamification. Reputation should be part of the same system as awards. Separating trophy points from reputation points makes little sense to me.

The beauty of likes is that likes are one click UXD and therefore likes flow all around. Rep needs to be fast, easy and intuitive.
With my move to XF I will overhaul my rep system once again to make it even more intuitive and easier to understand.

 

I’ve seen mods that offer several options like the post rating mod for xenforo but I think it just makes things to busy. K.I.S.S.

I didn’t mind the vB options where you could leave a comment, but I tend to use the “like” system a lot more than I ever used the old reputation system.

 

Yes, this is exactly the problem that needs to be solved to create a functional reputation system.

 

On the subject of vBulletin's reputation system, I think there are two things that slow its usage down. In vB4, it was the terrible sheriff's badge (or Jewish Star, or however you saw it). In vB3, the icon for the reputation was also a bit cryptic and thus not enough people would even know to use it. Then there was the "please spread some reputation around" warning. Why? If people write great posts more often than others, then they deserve my vote of confidence, as often as I'd like to give it.

Scott

 

Well, there is the issue of Gaming the Gamification system... in other words: reputation trade. Once reputation points become a valuable commodity, there will be people trying to gain in rank by using multiple accounts or forming a group of members giving each other reputation. A reputation spread can be useful if its dynamic.

 

I do not think reputation systems are useful or good because by using them, you are giving the members the feeling that they are allowed to break more rules than those that have less reputation. I have seen this occur on multiple forums, and I have even seen this happen on the popular StackOverflow site, of which I am a member. While I love StackOverflow, I think that the site would be much better without the reputation system.

 

Does what you say really happen that often? Wouldn't a moderation of the given ratings also suggest relatively quickly that someone is overdoing it? Why aren't "likes" spread in Xenforo? Can you detail what you think could be a more useful dynamic system of spreading ratings?

Scott