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In my experience, in about a year or so the badge system will be tossed out and a new system started, so that we all start all over again from ground floor. If the trend holds, the only thing that will carry over is number of total posts, and your join date. I just got a badge for a regular contributor! Wow, only took 7 years and 7400 posts! But really, it only matters that today I might have helped someone solve a problem. If I accomplished that, I am happy.
 


I fully agree with this.
The way things are progressing has me in mind of Frankenstein. He ended up creating a monster he couldn't control and didn't understand as well.

I feel as you do that the only sensible answer would be starting over. However I would go one further and just Zero everyone for everything.
It is now impossible to make a "fair" reputation system that involved any part of the current system, as its such a mess now that you could conceivably argue from several standpoints concerning who and why any changes wouldn't be "fair" to various parties.
I have been around for 2 major forum updates now and its been messed up both times.
There was no reason to change the old reputation system, the Tags which seem to have so much love from those in control could easily have been integrated into the established system.

Still I don't expect any change as that would mean admitting that it was a mistake and that they cant make it work properly.
Not something I can ever see happening from firstly a need to appease the bean counters " What do you mean you spent (insert stupid price here) and you cant get it to work" As well as I just don't see the boys and girls above us admitting to it.

Mac
 
I feel as you do that the only sensible answer would be starting over. However I would go one further and just Zero everyone for everything.

I fail to understand how that could help anyone. The present system merely over-eggs a pudding which was already made. The current Badge system seems to have some flaws - I noticed yesterday I have on in an area I've never posted into - but nothing that can't be fixed. Posters, and particularly new ones, need some form of guide as to how seriously to take the advice they're being given. On day one under your proposal, no-one new would have a clue whether the person advising them has joined the same day because they have a near to zero post count.
 
What I'd suggest doing is wiping the badges, and back-dating the new badges based on all your posts since join date (not from date of rebuild) - so older people would have badges right from the start.

It'd be hell on the servers while you recalculated everything though; you're basically rebuilding all your indexes.
 
We can go on posts and join date ... I like it simple.

You post and help people ... you get a good reputation.

I like the badges stuff only as a means of encouraging new users to support each other and themselves getting a bit of recognition in the process.

Expert doesn't mean much to me when your posting advice ... I just generally see that it is someone who is interested and cares.

toms is about building a community of people who have PC's that work ... beyond that I am frankly stumped.

Maybe thats where we need to think a bit more ??


 
That would be the ideal way, where just a users inherent reputation would denote whether their trustworthy. But how do we represent someones reputation to a new user?
Unless we change posting etiquette here so that in every post has a review of everyone else's contribution in the thread ("yes bob is right and hes a fairly good guy"), the only way to do that would be through some kind of award scheme (badges anyone?) or some kind of community driven wiki about the users themselves (lots of issues could be had from that).

Basically we are trying to find a way to quantify intangible concepts such as reputation and trustworthiness. There will never be a perfect way to do it.
 
Yeah, you need something, likely based on based answers.

My main point is that it should go back before any of the recent changes - ideally as far back as we have data for. Perhaps a 3-year rolling window on the BA total/badges? Knowledge can go stale after a while.
 
Gonna nip the fatalism here in the bud. The system will not be "restarted" in a year, and no one is starting from scratch. A great number of our veteran users have been with us a long, long time, and we're not going to reward their loyalty with a do-over. The reputation system as it stands is staying put - but we do want recommendations and suggestions from you on how to make it better. Is there an area you'd like to see a badge for that doesn't have one now? Is there another metric you think should be measured as a part of reputation? What would you like to see in the way of safeguards? These are the constructive elements we'd like to be considering as we move forward with more development in user reputation.
 
The thing is that everyone is effectively starting from scratch - all the badges only refer to stuff that's happened after the new system came in (excluding the legacy ones which have to be manually set - you don't see them at a glance).

You have to go to their page to see the number of BAs or total posts (might be in the mouse-overs; they're not working for me at the moment, likely due to excessive numbers of blocked ad-hosting domains).
 
Best Answers in the old forum contribute toward the badges in the new forum, its not like the new badges are based entirely off BA's since the update. When it switched over I set my current title of "Homebuilt System Master", and that's a badge that requires 50+ BA's in the Systems forum to get.
I'l admit I'm pretty good, but I cant get that many within a few days 😛.
 
i'm of like mind with jpishgar... a complete do over isnt really a wise idea. while some of our veteran users on here may not thnk much of the pretty little badge icons that pop up some new users do rely on them especially when there is conflicting advice. i am not saying that the forum veteran is always right or that posters shouldnt research any answer we give them but its a good guideline as to who has experience and who is questionable (ie you dont really know what they know).

i'm completely behind this kind of recognition. the only thing i'm not behind is any sort of special badge that only veteran users can attain which is off limits to new users which was mentioned before. any and all badges should be attainable i believe.

while on the subject of badges... we definitely need work on the auto-tagging system and the types of badges. i think vet users should be able to add tags to a post (perhaps add a badge for this so its worthwhile for us) to help the auto-tagging system out since its not always right.

i also think we need some more badges to get. instead of something like "cpu expert" perhaps "amd expert" and "intel expert" along with a bunch of other "sub badges" instead of one large blanket badge.
 
You can add tags to a thread, and there are badges for doing so.
http://www.tomshardware.com/community/badge/tagmanager.html
Scroll right up and there's the option to "Edit Tags" just under the thread title.

Not sure on this, but I think the requirement for that power is the same as deciding on Best Answers (except when its your own thread)

I agree with more badges, but more interesting that the standard "Get X Best Answers in this topic"
 

So theoretically a user that got a BA in a thread can go in and add TAG's to it and gain towards other badges, just one fault of the system that I disagree with.
 
@manofchalk

i must have missed that link. thanks for the heads up.

@rolli

theoretically you can create two toms accounts and give yourself best answers to every thread you post in as well. in a perfect world the op would mark a BA but in many cases this doesnt happen which is why they implemented the feature of us being able to select answers. even without this ability theoretically you can create any number of accounts, create BA posts which you then answer and then mark yourself BA from those accounts. there are always going to be loopholes.

most threads arent tagged all that well to begin with. changing tags to be more appropriate (ie from "perepherals" to "keyboards" for example where you would get credit for both keyboards and perepherals (provided they have a badge for both of course) isnt a bad idea. sure its more credit given but having more tags on it allows other users to find the post easier which is a good thing.

i think its a big of bad and a bit of good really.
 
theoretically you can create two toms accounts and give yourself best answers to every thread you post in as well.
Click to expand...

You could....
But our Moderators have a way to tell if a user is an alternate of another user. We investigate these dupe accounts if they have suspicious activity associated with them.
 
Could be email accounts, though it isn't too hard to just make another Gmail.
Besides, I think if someone was gaming the system, got caught and then got their account banned that would be enough. Most people wouldn't bother setting up a new account to try and game the system.

I have to wonder why anyone would, there's no tangible benefit and there would be no personal benefit as they are knowingly cheating the system. Trolling, maybe, but I dont think being helpful enough to get BA's really fits into that.
 
An since the act of gaming the system takes some thought and actions that follow it follows that we simply permaban users who engage in this behaviour since to do it by accident would require more monkeys than the NNSA currently has writing the software for Deep Thought.

That could have possibly been my longest sentence without a comma ... and I feel the need to edit it ... so I am not going to.
 


A great number of our veteran users have been with us a long, long time, and we're not going to reward their loyalty with a do-over
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That has got to be the single most ironic thing I have ever read.

You basically have given us a do over already. The new system has rewarded our loyalty by making it impossible to tell just who is a veteran and who isn't.
It used to take time and effort to achieve status on these forums, you couldn't have the rank without the time and effort, now a user can achieve the same status that took years to earn in a matter of months.

People seem to get the wrong Idea about this issue when I raise it and suggest that maybe its just me being precious about my status. Again personally I couldn't give a rats fig.

The main problem seems to be that we are yet to fully understand how the new forum is working, with quirks in the scoring system etc only coming to light when specific questions are posed, and some things are obviously not working 100% as expected.

Honestly whoever thought that scrapping a decades old reputation system was a good idea needs help as do those who signed off on the idea.
New badges fine, Tags even fine, but why totally scrap something that did its job well and on several levels.

Gaming is happening if we like it or not, some subtle and others not so subtle, we will never catch all of it so we need to make the system robust enough to stand up to it.
To me that means setting higher targets for achievements to make it so that you realistically cant achieve new badges in a single nights/weeks posting.
I know you are trying to foster greater involvement but there needs to be a balance. Post and best answer counts are never stable anymore which suggests people are going around deselecting best answers on older necro posts and reassigning them, I assume they get credit for that ?
This may well be something that would go un noticed ?

Mac
 
"It used to take time and effort to achieve status on these forums, you couldn't have the rank without the time and effort, now a user can achieve the same status that took years to earn in a matter of months."

Correction with the current limit it is achievable in a day or two.
 
Unfortunately it has been made clear that nothing will be changed, despite being specifically asked for input on what we liked and didn't like its now clear that there was never any intention to change anything we didn't like, the core of it will not change and the focus will be on adding extra features.
As an example, the overwhelming weight of response was that the number of best answers needed to grant the power to select best answers (5) was too low. Good solid community feedback.
The response, No we are going to leave it as it is :??:

You know, sometimes you need to go backwards in order to go forwards and admitting a mistake can be a sign of strength not a weakness.

Mac
 
mactronix, I'm not sure why you are saying anyone had a do-over already. Veterans are easily discernible by the sheer number of Legacy badges they possess, and this very thread has already generated ideas for feature expansions to further highlight our user's contributions.

It used to take time and effort to achieve status on these forums, you couldn't have the rank without the time and effort, now a user can achieve the same status that took years to earn in a matter of months.
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Correction with the current limit it is achievable in a day or two.
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I would challenge you to try it, or better yet, show a link to someone who has. Even those rare occasions where we have found users gaming the system, their gains are not as marked as they were prior to the new system, where we saw users farming post count in addition to Best Answers.

The main problem seems to be that we are yet to fully understand how the new forum is working, with quirks in the scoring system etc only coming to light when specific questions are posed, and some things are obviously not working 100% as expected.
Click to expand...

Most of the users who have read the guide to the new reputation sticky understand what's going on with the new reputation system, and based on the metrics we're seeing, they are digging it. There are a few quirks here and there (Billboards updating, multi-BA awards per badge), but these are also well discussed. Having dealt with the backend for both systems and being the one responsible for sending up the bugs and quirks for each, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the new one is considerably less troublesome to users.

New badges fine, Tags even fine, but why totally scrap something that did its job well and on several levels.
Click to expand...

It was working fine for a lot of users, but there was a huge audience that never, ever got involved because they didn't get it, or they didn't see how reputation added value to them. We're seeing more of our casual users returning, more of our members spending more time viewing threads, interacting with them. More of our original posters are coming back and selecting Best Answers, more of our responders and subject matter experts are getting involved and *staying* involved.

Post and best answer counts are never stable anymore which suggests people are going around deselecting best answers on older necro posts and reassigning them, I assume they get credit for that ?
Click to expand...

No one is doing this. We generate a list of the top users selecting and altering best answers. Of those, only one was doing things they shouldn't have, and they were subject to disciplinary action.

Unfortunately it has been made clear that nothing will be changed
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I started this thread because I was hoping for some valuable feedback on what could be done to improve the reputation system and make it even better for our users. Scrapping it entirely is not improving it. Your early, constructive feedback in the thread already has gone towards a list of features set to be added in the next update. The threshold for best answers granting is something we've heard a lot about, but the function in practice of the current threshold has seen to that it is working better than expected. There has been no influx of abuse, and there has been no explosion of badge awards as a result - but those lobbying for this change don't seem to take me at my word on this, even though the evidence is to the contrary and I have no motive in retaining the status quo. In fact, I was the very first advocate for changing the threshold during the beta.

There has been a lot of great feedback and input in this thread, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of the outcomes. Megabadges in particular (stupid name, probably needs work) are going to be really cool, and we're pretty sure the hammers are coming back. So take heart and keep up the constructive input.
 
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