I don't see why the stars should indicate one's level of respect. If you want to do that I'd do it manually since that's the only true way you can make that work.

I'd go with basing it on stars and if you want an indicator for respect I'd activate the built in reputation system or download a customized one. You can always fill in respect manually for those respected members who no longer visit.

I think you should replace the stars entirely with small pictures of Brad Pitt's head. Just my opinion.

I knew you were a filthy queer.

Your child is the product of a lie!

Alcar...

Maybe if you do one of the other methods, but when a user has been away for a while their stars are frozen as they were when they made their last post, and unfrozen again when they come back. That way newbies and infrequent posters would have fewer stars but old members would not be penalised.

Out of curiousity, how are the stars calculated? I don’t mean mathematically, I mean markupfully. Is it phped every time a profile page or postbit is generated, or is it stored in the database? If we knew how vBulletin does it, we could think more in terms of what it’s capable of.

BM’s idea is good, but I can’t think how the stars/rank could be ‘frozen’, much less how the software could distinguish between periods of activity and periods of inactivity. But you could effectively do such things if you never allow the rank to decrease. But to do this you’d have to have a rank pre‐defined in the users database, as well as frequent phping to keep that figure updated.

Do we definitely want stars to be incapable of going down over time, or are they strictly cumulative?

They are cached - only being updated if they need to be when a user posts.

Alcar...

According to the Forum Statistics at the bottom of the page, there are 176 active users. I suppose it is just who has posted before "so long" ago.

Instead of stars, can we have little rotating Moai heads?

Here's a little suggestion for you. You could change the system a bit, and let the stars represent rating... Then let the members rate each others posts... Or give positive or negative points. But this would work better if you need a certain amount of points/time active, before the points you give count. Otherwise people could make multis.
This could be very confusing too though, but cool too. You just have to trust the population of OWF enough, that they can take this matter in their own hands.

No because I would have no stars because everyone hates me.

I don't hate you.

A little suggestion: an OWI symbol and some mini-stars, then two OWI symbol and other mini-star. So, the change woul be just adding the mini-stars, maybe five for each OWI symbol.

Well The points should be given based on the quality of the post, and not how much people like or dislike one another.

I guess this system wouldn't really work for the trolls though. :-/

Which is prolly why Hobo doesn't like the idea :p. I like the idea though.

Of course you would, you dislike eachother :p

Alcar...

Wasn't that war ended a long time ago? :|

What's your opinion on it, though?

It's not a bad idea within itself but the potential for abuse will be hilarious.

Do it

Well that's the thing. This would only work if you guys trust the forum to be able to use this feature responsibly.

Well either way the majority of the forum arn't idiots. They'll vote for what's funny, constructive and witty.

Bad spelling, confusion and being a dick will generally cause negative voting

I've seen a system like this work on several forums but like anything else it requires a certain amount of moderation. For one being able to give negative reputation should not be possible as this is GREATLY abused between members who don't like each other. It's human nature, that simple :p. With that, the reputation system becomes somewhat of a record of good posts without any negative things in it (we can leave that to the moderators, who are afterall qualified to do exactly that, determine whats right and wrong. If we would have members do that us moderators would become useless.). The forum that has it in effect recently also made abuse of the system punishable by warnings and even bans. Users would for instance request reputation at the bottom of a topic or have a "Rep me and I'll rep you" sentence in their signature. This has since then stopped.

These were exactly the concerns I had in mind, but seems there is an answer to it after all.

But of course. I am all knowing :p.

No... No you're not. Really. <.<

Anyway, I like the idea of people being able to give positive point or whatever, then the mods could have power to give negative points. Or maybe one star could get removed for every infraction. There are many ways to do it.

The reason the reputation system has never been enabled on the OWF is simply that I don't see it as anything more than a fad. And I certainly don't want the stars to be reliant on such a system.

Especially if you're all talking about a reputation system where negative points would be disallowed. What then of the idiots?

Alcar...

The idiots would generally receive no or hardly any reputation points. Thats the idea of a reputation system :p. Besides, as T-nex pointed out. Moderators could have the power to remove reputation or it could be linked to the infraction system where one loses a set number of rep points for each infraction given.

And btw, the current stars, the post counting and the user titles are also funny little things to make the forum experience a bit more fun. A reputation system, IMO, would be a nice addition to that list.

Perhaps stars could reflect posts and titles could reflect reputation?

I agree with Natey

Not a bad idea! +1 for Nate! :p

(Thats how it should be used, see children?)

The only way I see this star system working is having two seperate rows of stars, one for posts, one for years, that way, we have a new system, we have the old one in tact, and people can ignore the new row if they don't like it.
And yes, I was basically just rehashing what I've said so it makes a bit more sense.
So what I mean is that you'll see the regular oddworld stars for posts, then under it you'll have the years with a different type of star
or you could have you oddworld stars for posts in the regular purple, and the amount of years you've spent on the forums would be shown with say green oddworld stars, that would go over the purple stars.
So say it looks like you have 3 purple stars and 2 green ones, but you actually have 5 purple stars.
Ok, now I'm confusing myself.

I resent that. I am not filthy.

To change the subject a bit, I've been thinking of how to make stars a bit more fair, and came up with a kind system that goes with different parts of the user's activity. I'd better type this quickly before I start thinking its stupid and talk myself out of it.

Each group of stars a user has would be based on different activities. For instance, if:

A user has less than a pre-determined amount of posts (say, 50) they will have no stars for posting. Once they pass 50, they get one star in posting. If they get to another pre-determined amount (say, 500) they get the second star in posting, and so on until you want to stop the star rewards for posting.

Another thing would be amount of time spent with OWF. If they've been with OWF for a pre-determined amount of time (say, a month) they gain a star for their OWF age. Then, up to another pre-determined time (like a year) they gain another star, and so on.

The final thing could be like an extra star if they're a mod or admin.

So, if someone has posted a lot, they have 3 stars for posting, and they've been here a long time, they get 3 stars for their time spent with OWF, and they're a mod, they will have a total of 7 stars beneath their name.

I'm not really sure how this would could be worked out, but just my two cents. You could definetly dance around with the different amounts of time, posting, and stars for each thing, but the problem is it'd get kinda weird if someone (probably Xav) got a bajillion or maybe 12 stars underneath because of the combination of the time stars and posting stars.

I'll be right back, I'm going to go copyright the name 'time stars'.

P.S. I approve of the rep system since I think it has more meaning than the post sytem since if people new want to know who the helpers and the trolls are they just look at the rep instead of just basing it on posts.