No, this is not 'How do I get member points?' as, if you would kindly glance a little up and to the right, I am aware of the answer. Also, this is not a thread to get free member points for spamming.

I am concerned that perhaps the name 'Member Points' is having a subconcious effect on some of the members of our chess.com community- perhaps the use of the term 'points' influences people to gain them via silly means, e.g. spamming useless junk on the forums and making blog posts that say 'Hey everyone I'm pretty good today.'

So, I think that 'member points' should be renamed, for the good of the community... but what should they be called?

Or, what else could be done to fix this problem? A voting system for posts? Or getting rid of them? Or... something else?

Consider and Discuss.

moved to "Off Topics"

I'm saving mine up until I can afford the scooter.

 A prime example, thanks, TheGrobe.

Here's another example of the evident plague of misinformed members:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/member-points3

No I appreciate the Grobe's humour.

I'd honestly suggest doing away with them altogether -- they simply measure quantity, not quality so what is it you're really trying to convey with them anyway?

well, they should make it chess.com points that way, if someone says "i ate chicken on sunday" they are spamming and should not be counted as a point.

And, if someone says "what time is it?" and someone else says "9: 15" they are clearly spamming and should have votes on being kicked

So i decided it has to be about chess and if someone just says chess is boring that is spamming to me

so the sentece has to relate to the topic and cannot be just one or too words long

 Another idea. However, I dislike the negative effects of such an action- for how else would I know who is well entwined in our community? On the other hand, they serve no other purpose, and I can easily see who participates via recognisation of usernames.

For example, I already know you to be an active forum member- by looking at your name, not your points.

Garymossu is spamming!

That is a terribly subjective approach -- who decides what is and is not a point?  It sounds like a daunting task unless you implement some kind of community feedback system to rate individual posts and award the points based on that.

I've personally supported the idea in the past, but it is a contentious one with a lot of members feeling it would actually be detrimental to the community so I wouldn't expect to see it implemented anytime soon.

 Did you not just do the same thing, in your attempt to point out the obvious? In the same way, this post could also be considered spam.

Yes -- name recognition would be the only way.

How about this idea: instead of displaying the number of times someone has posted, show the number of times they have been quoted.

 Well, I've edited my original post to allow suggestions for other improvements other than a name change. Though I think getting rid of the 'points' and changing the name to something else may have more of an effect than you think...

It's meta-spam (and this is meta-meta-meta-spam).

TheGrobe:

How about this idea: instead of displaying the number of times someone has posted, show the number of times they have been quoted.

---

This post is an example of how your idea could be misrepresentative. This is not a quote- but I am still discussing with you. Also, some people respond to others without using quotes at all.

I doubt a simple name change would do it.  Even if you called it "Spammer Ranking" people would run up their counter with garbage but at least it would be a closer representation of what it counted.

That's fine -- I respond without quoting all the time too, but I think it would be an improvement over what it is now.

It doesn't stop people from posting inflammatory garbage just to get quoted, but it does give the rest of the community a mechanism to deny the reward: ignore the trolls.  Isn't that what we want anyway?

Ultimately it was a bit of a straw-man -- an idle suggestion to be taken and run with, or to be torn apart.  I just threw it out there to try to get some ideas flowing.

 Are you putting both of us down with this opinion of yours? Let me think... I believe at least 2/3rds of my posts aren't spam.

Actually, I like to think all of my posts serve a purpose. Perhaps you are right, but I would like to know the result of such a change anyway, as I am quite intrigued by the field of Quirkology.

Hurt: Member Points

Heal: Spammer Ranking

(Low blow?)

 Actually, I take all posts that include the premise of Hurt and Heal to be a tribute to the effectiveness of the thread on the community.

So, now let us consider trolls, as they are the primary source of annoyance for most forum-goers. The primary method of elimination does appear to be community-voting on threads. Here is a suggested improvement to the method, however I am not aware as to whether this has been posted before:

Ignoring + votes, we have the simple button 'Mark as spam'. This gives a - to the thread. This is an invisible variable- that is, we, as the public, do not know how many - votes a thread has recieved. When the number of - votes reaches a predetermined level, the thread no longer appears in the 'Most Recent Posts' column. Even further down, and the thread is removed from the forums completely.

An admin could be appointed (or a current staff member) to review the posts that have been removed from the forums. If they are not due to trolls/spamming, but rather some other factor such as general dislike towards the OP, the thread can be reinstated, and votes will no longer be allowed on that thread.

Thoughts?

I still honestly thing that a ranking system for posts that governs the awarding of member points fpr positive feedback (as opposed to taking them away for negative feedback) is the ideal solution -- very much in line with Erik's "Bury Post" functionality, only a little more robust (perhaps like the "Like" link on Facebook only it's "Spam"/"Kudos" for bury and award respectively).