Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums

[M2]

Originally Posted by Brutus

It just seems to me that people already have their opinions of other posters with or without a reputation system. I just doubt that anyone will have an opinion about a poster that is going to be influenced by their reputation rating.

I'm not vehemently opposed to such ideas if there are legitimate reasons to implement them. And if people decide they want a rep system, I'll go along with. I just don't see what it will accomplish. It just seems more about trying to embarrass people they don't like than anything else.

As noted, the plug-in Boss mentioned only would allow positive feedback. And no one ever had their opinion influenced by a reputation rating before, so I don't see why it would start now.

What it would accomplish is giving the community the ability to once again identify quality (the lack of which has been the main complaint I've heard from many long-time board members, a fair number of whom no longer post here for that very reason) and set some standards. The ability to "like" a post plays an important role in online communities. It allows the group as a whole to steer the conversation a bit and encourages people after they've made good/well-considered/creative/interesting/amusing posts. The board needs more good stuff and less skull-pounding inanity.

[*BaseClogger*]

Originally Posted by M2

As noted, the plug-in Boss mentioned only would allow positive feedback. And no one ever had their opinion influenced by a reputation rating before, so I don't see why it would start now.

What it would accomplish is giving the community the ability to once again identify quality (the lack of which has been the main complaint I've heard from many long-time board members, a fair number of whom no longer post here for that very reason) and set some standards. The ability to "like" a post plays an important role in online communities. It allows the group as a whole to steer the conversation a bit and encourages people after they've made good/well-considered/creative/interesting/amusing posts. The board needs more good stuff and less skull-pounding inanity.

+1

[Brutus]

Originally Posted by M2

As noted, the plug-in Boss mentioned only would allow positive feedback. And no one ever had their opinion influenced by a reputation rating before, so I don't see why it would start now.

What it would accomplish is giving the community the ability to once again identify quality (the lack of which has been the main complaint I've heard from many long-time board members, a fair number of whom no longer post here for that very reason) and set some standards. The ability to "like" a post plays an important role in online communities. It allows the group as a whole to steer the conversation a bit and encourages people after they've made good/well-considered/creative/interesting/amusing posts. The board needs more good stuff and less skull-pounding inanity.

That was precisely my point (that no one's opinion is influenced by a reputation rating). So I think it's kind of redundant to have a rating system.

Good conversation can already steer good conversation. Quantifying it isn't going to make the conversation any better. Now, like I said above, if we're going to have a rating system, I do much prefer the "like" option where you simply credit a good post. But my point is I just don't see how a rating system will improve the conversation. We can already identify good posts and respond to them. Each person has that ability without needing to see a measurement or tally by the person's name.

Again, to reiterate, I don't see much of a harm in having the ability to "like" a post. I just don't think it will fundamentally change how folks interact with one another. A good post will always be considered a good post and a poor post will always be a poor post. The conversations will take on a life of their own on the content rather than the rating.

[Red in Chicago]

Originally Posted by Brutus

That was precisely my point (that no one's opinion is influenced by a reputation rating). So I think it's kind of redundant to have a rating system.

Good conversation can already steer good conversation. Quantifying it isn't going to make the conversation any better. Now, like I said above, if we're going to have a rating system, I do much prefer the "like" option where you simply credit a good post. But my point is I just don't see how a rating system will improve the conversation. We can already identify good posts and respond to them. Each person has that ability without needing to see a measurement or tally by the person's name.

Again, to reiterate, I don't see much of a harm in having the ability to "like" a post. I just don't think it will fundamentally change how folks interact with one another. A good post will always be considered a good post and a poor post will always be a poor post. The conversations will take on a life of their own on the content rather than the rating.

Yep Yep

[Plus Plus]

Originally Posted by Boss-Hog

Here's one potential option, but it only allows for positive feedback:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=165673

Feel free to provide your thoughts.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't we have this in place for a brief period of time? (I think this was around the time that posters could place public tags on each thread)

[jojo]

IMHO redszone was the most consistently interesting to read during the rep period.

It's probably been the least interesting in recent times. The last couple of years it's progressively become pretty noticeable.

Hindsight is 20/20 but when speaking of things that have influenced the board, the voting system has hurt significantly more than the rep system did. Apparently Rep points were a more appealing carrot than access to game threads.

[M2]

Originally Posted by Brutus

A good post will always be considered a good post and a poor post will always be a poor post.

The downward spiral of posting quality on this board argues otherwise. Meanwhile the level of unjustified self-esteem seems only to rise.

[Boss-Hog]

Originally Posted by Plus Plus

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't we have this in place for a brief period of time? (I think this was around the time that posters could place public tags on each thread)

I'm not positive it was ever implemented, but it's certainly possible because I've definitely seen that addon before. To the best of my knowledge, posters still should be able to place public tags on threads; I don't believe that's anything we ever disabled.

[Unassisted]

I'd like to see a system that highlights quality posts, rather than issuing points to quality posters.

IMO there's no benefit to the community from knowing that Poster X got 1000 upvotes over the course of the season.

The community might benefit from seeing that a particularly good reply in a 100-post thread got 50 upvotes. Some of us might otherwise miss it while reading the thread, or we might go back and think about it again with a new perspective after seeing that it got so much appreciation.

[gilpdawg]

I was negged once in a game thread for saying Griffey's injuries had made him too slow to play center field, which, IMO is not the spirit of the system.

And, funnily enough, I was just a few points away from being called up when they changed the system.

Xda developers forum has a "thanks" button for posts that people find useful. It works well. It's pretty much the same system as that plug-in Boss was referencing earlier.

[Brutus]

Originally Posted by M2

The downward spiral of posting quality on this board argues otherwise. Meanwhile the level of unjustified self-esteem seems only to rise.

I have an extremely hard time fathoming that some arbitrary reputation system has anything whatsoever to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of posts. That seems like an enormous stretch.

I also don't share the nostalgia for the 'good old days' on this board that others do. I remember that incarnation of the board as being one that was heavily broken into two factions: the 'statheads' and the 'flat-earthers', and they bickered back and forth like the Hatfields and McCoys. Every other thread denigrated into an Adam Dunn referendum. The rep system was simply the tool of the trade used to embarrass the other.

It was that discourse that actually drove me away, in fact. I didn't post much back then (hardly ever, in fact). I was mostly a lurker. But while the tangible content was impressive at times, the venom was unappealing. People certainly seemed to be close-knit within the factions, but it was the cliques going to war with one another that also turned a lot of people away.

Really, I just don't see this "unjustified self-esteem" you speak of. And to be honest, you said yourself people aren't going to change their opinions of others because of a rep system. I'm not sure, then, why you think that a rep system will do anything to change posters' posting habits.

[Caveman Techie]

Originally Posted by Unassisted

I'd like to see a system that highlights quality posts, rather than issuing points to quality posters.

IMO there's no benefit to the community from knowing that Poster X got 1000 upvotes over the course of the season.

The community might benefit from seeing that a particularly good reply in a 100-post thread got 50 upvotes. Some of us might otherwise miss it while reading the thread, or we might go back and think about it again with a new perspective after seeing that it got so much appreciation.

This is kind of what I was thinking of when I suggested the rep system again. I was at first thinking of the accumulation of rep to set an auto-ignore rule, but the discussions here has changed my mind. Each post stands on it own and the author does not collect rep for himself, I think that would remove alot of the "gaming the system" that used to go on.

[dougdirt]

Originally Posted by Brutus

I also don't share the nostalgia for the 'good old days' on this board that others do. I remember that incarnation of the board as being one that was heavily broken into two factions: the 'statheads' and the 'flat-earthers', and they bickered back and forth like the Hatfields and McCoys. Every other thread denigrated into an Adam Dunn referendum. The rep system was simply the tool of the trade used to embarrass the other.

But while the tangible content was impressive at times, the venom was unappealing. People certainly seemed to be close-knit within the factions, but it was the cliques going to war with one another that also turned a lot of people away.

This.

[Sea Ray]

I don't see that anything positive is gained by a rep/thanks system or whatever you want to call it. Such thinking seems to drip of social media ala Facebook where insecure people garner their self esteem by seeing a high number in their "friends" column. Isn't this (system being discussed) like counting RZ friends? Isn't the guy with 10,000 posts going to have a number 10x higher than the guy with 1,000? I see no reason for RZ to concern itself with people's self esteem issues

[M2]

Originally Posted by Brutus

I have an extremely hard time fathoming that some arbitrary reputation system has anything whatsoever to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of posts. That seems like an enormous stretch.

I also don't share the nostalgia for the 'good old days' on this board that others do. I remember that incarnation of the board as being one that was heavily broken into two factions: the 'statheads' and the 'flat-earthers', and they bickered back and forth like the Hatfields and McCoys. Every other thread denigrated into an Adam Dunn referendum. The rep system was simply the tool of the trade used to embarrass the other.

It was that discourse that actually drove me away, in fact. I didn't post much back then (hardly ever, in fact). I was mostly a lurker. But while the tangible content was impressive at times, the venom was unappealing. People certainly seemed to be close-knit within the factions, but it was the cliques going to war with one another that also turned a lot of people away.

Really, I just don't see this "unjustified self-esteem" you speak of. And to be honest, you said yourself people aren't going to change their opinions of others because of a rep system. I'm not sure, then, why you think that a rep system will do anything to change posters' posting habits.

You can act like there hasn't been an exodus of long-time and excellent posters, but there has been. Some of that is natural. Unfortunately too much of it is directly because of a general complaint that people don't wish to sort through the tripe and that the board often bores their socks off.

I was part of the exodus. It wasn't a planned walkout, just a lot of people asking themselves "What's the point?" and not coming up with a satisfactory answer.

I find it highly difficult to believe you joined and lurked on a board you didn't like. The Internet is a big universe. You had other places to go. You chose to return repeatedly to RedsZone. Too many people aren't making that choice today. I'm hopeful that can change because these should be the years when we're having the most fun, following the Reds when the team is on a roll. The window should be wide open for bizarre, daft and brilliant posts in a way it never was when the board partially had to serve as a coping mechanism for how terrible the Reds were. I sincerely doubt you'll find a big constituency for the notion that the board today is anywhere near something like a high point.

The main thing the rep system achieved (and it works this way all across the Internet) is it put a focus on the good stuff. It provided a way for the community to shine a spotlight on the posts it valued. And it cut down significantly on people who thought they were being brilliant when they were just running around in silly, little circles. Call it Richard Hand Syndrome if you will (though he was gone long before the rep system was instituted). If your pearls of wisdom were consistently being greeted by a wall of rep silence while a wide variety of other posts were getting repped, it let you know that maybe you didn't have quite the reach you thought you did. It wasn't so much what point you made, but how you made it that mattered. Again, more than anything else, rep put a premium on quality. Undeniably we had quality in those days. It's what brought you here.

For the record, what I said was nobody was going to change their opinion based on the rep score of a poster making a counterpoint. However, people change their opinions all the time if someone makes a persuasive counterpoint. That's what the rep system encourages. It's a way for the community to say "Yes, that right there, exactly like she/he said it." It's a virtual highlighter that draws attention to the best stuff on the board.

Right now the best stuff gets lost in the sludge. Perhaps an influx of new posters will change that, but I think it would help to have a mechanism that better identifies the Scott Rolen posts (e.g. be like that post, because that post plays the game the right way).