Change

[ComSoft6128]

Reputation?

[Gryzor]

You've got it!

[Gryzor]

Well yes, I should explain more.

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Karma

Essentially a likes/dislikes system. We have the option of only showing the total reputation (as it is now) or display both up and down votes. This feature is integral to smf but we've never used it...

[MaV]

Um, not sure this is a good idea. A more prolific writer will eventually just garner more and more "reputation" simply by posting because some people will eventually like a post once in a while. At least that is what I can garner from looking at some of the scores in a few threads anyway.

[Bryce]

Finally a place where my reputation isn't in ruins!

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Um, not sure this is a good idea. A more prolific writer will eventually just garner more and more "reputation" simply by posting because some people will eventually like a post once in a while. At least that is what I can garner from looking at some of the scores in a few threads anyway.

But that's how Likes always worked! And it does make sense-the more you post the more reputation you can gather, which is the sort of activity a community wants.

Maybe the word 'reputation' didn't sit well with you, we could change it if we can come up with something better.

For the time being, honestly, I don't know where the scores have come from so don't applaud just yet, @Bryce !

[Gryzor]

Oh I'm almost tied with you (now that's an image you won't get off your mind soon enough)

[MaV]

Yes, 'reputation' doesn't sit too well with me. It gets a bit to close to the idea of China's social credit system, albeit on a lesser scale. The main difference to 'Likes' is that a 'Like' is linked to a post that anyone can read and the all those who checked it are visible via one click. Transparent.
If you distill a person's 'reputation' down to a number, the scoring is completely unclear. Anyone can in anonymity up- or down-vote a person once per hour as it seems (just up-voted you, @Gryzor to test this.)


Just so you know why this rubs me the wrong way, I also have major issues with KPI numbers in my team/company, as they do not reflect anything of interest in most cases, and usually cannot be compared to others simply because the jobs are different. If any in my company wants to know why I detest that crap, I usually explain one of the finest examples of KPIs in history. In the Vietnam war squads had to reach a target body count value which eventually led to many soldiers just slaughering the  Vietnamese population instead of the Viet Kong. Made them look good on paper which is what the generals wanted.


And don't get me started with the "valuable" job position of "Controller". You'd have to move this post to the "Hall of Shame".

[lmimmfn]

Its a bit of fun in this corner of the retro community, its not like its going to impact your facebook status or whatever!

[ComSoft6128]

I agree with @MaV .
My first thought too was Social Credit.
I think 'Likes' should be post specific, 'reputation' is personal territory.


@Gryzor you have my sympathy on this one because you are "damned if you do and damned if you don't".

[Nworc]

Reputation?

If I were to be asked, I'd call it high-score.
I think that high-score would allow people to rate your postings without actually reading them - very efficient.
If people would be using that score to filter that way, I want to have a filter to filter out people that are using a filter. Oops, I see the cyclic paradox in here.

Why do we do it? Because we can. Or to say it with D.A.:

"Why it's got to be build?" - 'What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said, "It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses."

[abalore]

In my humble opinion,
karma systems are the first step to political correctness,political correctness is the first step to kill the freedom of speech,and that's the first step to ruin a community.
I saw that on Twitter, Facebook, Hollywood movies, TV shows and even whole countries.
Please let's keep this site as a bastion of freedom and the spirit of the 80s!

[eto]

I liked the old system were only the number of posts and likes were shown. They gave a bit of an indication if a significant percentage of the posts of a person are relevant to others, independent of being here already for years or just for weeks.

[Gryzor]

Sooo people didn't like it. Personally I think that people are maybe overthinking this - Reputation, as a word and a forum term, has existed before the Chinese Social Credit system and of course has nothing to do with it, with privileges or anything else. It works like the total "Likes" we used to have (though Likes had the added advantage of showing details for each post, of course).

But it's not like I was doing it for myself so if people don't like it, off it goes.

[Nworc]

Hey, thanks!

We all know why this forum is an excellent place.

Sometimes you have to try things to find out how they work - we have to do that or we wouldn't make any progress.

The subject is now solved, but I can't help thinking about it, and I can think of two aspects to this that might justify why one might feel uncomfortable with the display of such a score.

The first aspect is that such a score, if taken seriously (and only then it makes sense to introduce it), evaluates a person, exposing him to competition. The second aspect is that a person's ability to interact is reduced to a number.

Regarding the first aspect.
Competitive thinking is deeply rooted in society, it probably has evolutionary origins. Darwin is always quoted at this point by people who use his theses as confirmation of competitive action. In fact, however, he is misinterpreted precisely in this, because the survival of communities depends not only on competition, but often enough on social cohesion within a society. I believe that the competitive element is over-represented in our everyday lives (at work, in sports, but also in leisure time), and I find that especially in a social medium like a forum the communal thought should get the priority, finally also to create a balance.
Because we are all here voluntarily, and we are here because it is fun.

On the second aspect:
The fact that reducing a person's ability to interact to a simple number touches people to their core. Here an algorithm decides on his reputation, i.e. on how the person is presented to the public. Fortunately, human personalities are extremely complex, and it must seem like an insult for a person to be reduced to a number.
"My smile was worth 12 points yesterday. Today I made a joke for 23 points, but unfortunately the algorithm didn't understand it, so I got only 5."

It is unfortunate that IT makes a lot of things possible, and unfortunately this is a classic engineering profession that is in the responsibility of people who have enjoyed a predominantly or mostly purely technical education, because of it being assigned to natural sciences. As IT today intervenes more and more deeply in people's lives and concerns, I think it is increasingly necessary, that people who want to take up IT as an engineering profession should take at least one third of their courses in the humanities.

Don't let it get you down!

[Gryzor]

Well now that the thing is dead we can discuss in as a source of academic interest.

Let's begin by recognising that in different countries/cultures these kind of things may translate in very different concepts.

Also, let me say that I never cared for such indicators myself - high scores don't really motivate me (maybe apart from a "hey, cool" second or two), and low scores don't really demotivate me. But these scoring systems *are* there in *all* forum platforms (don't look for Karma/Likes etc, even the number of posts or class-based description is the same), so surely there must be something to it? But nobody has ever, ever complained about the visibility of the Posts figure or the description (haha, you @Nworc n00b! You're still a 464! ).

Personally, I don't think that a single number can reduce a person to anything within reason; Maybe 'reputation' is a pretty abstract and vague word to use in our context, but I can't think of anything better to be honest. But in all honesty, with Karma +/- it pretty much encompasses what we are interested in - how valued the member is in the community; it's not a passive measure, others shape that figure and it is (should?) be understood that it doesn't quite describe a person but rather (and merely) his presence *here*. It's not like we're running an AI that can understand if you're a good human or if you're held in high regard by others in your real life...

[TotO]

Well... Maybe this "karma" feature can just allow to restore the total likes for each user, under the post count? The other features to know which user is a good community doggie just suck.

I forget... I dislike the new like button! 

[abalore]

Well now that the thing is dead we can discuss in as a source of academic interest.

Let's begin by recognising that in different countries/cultures these kind of things may translate in very different concepts.

Also, let me say that I never cared for such indicators myself - high scores don't really motivate me (maybe apart from a "hey, cool" second or two), and low scores don't really demotivate me. But these scoring systems *are* there in *all* forum platforms (don't look for Karma/Likes etc, even the number of posts or class-based description is the same), so surely there must be something to it? But nobody has ever, ever complained about the visibility of the Posts figure or the description (haha, you @Nworc n00b! You're still a 464! ).

Personally, I don't think that a single number can reduce a person to anything within reason; Maybe 'reputation' is a pretty abstract and vague word to use in our context, but I can't think of anything better to be honest. But in all honesty, with Karma +/- it pretty much encompasses what we are interested in - how valued the member is in the community; it's not a passive measure, others shape that figure and it is (should?) be understood that it doesn't quite describe a person but rather (and merely) his presence *here*. It's not like we're running an AI that can understand if you're a good human or if you're held in high regard by others in your real life...

I think how valued is a member in a community is something that lies inside the minds of the other members, not in a number, and must be based in one-to-one interactions instead of what others said previously about you. Because for a newcomer to the community, the only information he will have about you is that number, and that number can be motivated by spurious interests, not necessarily on how good or useful person you are.
In all communities that implement a karma system, two kind of members rapidly grow: The karma whore, how only thinks in saying the correct things to get good karma. And the balcony police, who is negativizing anyone he thinks is moving away from the hive mind.
As you said, it's not a serious thing, it can even be funny for some people. But I think it doesn't contribute anything to the community and, on the contrary, can make things worse.