Oddworld Forums - Proposal to Change Function of 'Stars'

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- - Proposal to Change Function of 'Stars' (http://www.oddworldforums.net/showthread.php?t=16417)

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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.

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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?

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.

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I knew you were a filthy queer.

Your child is the product of a lie!

Alcar...

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.