Rewarding Points

Someone had placed a post on how to get points here. My first reaction was "Why are you so keen on getting points?". They don't mean anything except to show how many times you've posted. I think the original concept was to show other people here how you've contributed here with help to others. Since alot of posts do help, there are other posts that are simply a forum for insuting others, arguing over little things, and simple ramblings (OMG am I doing it now?).

Anyway..........

I thought it might be a good idea for Erik and the other Gods & Goddesses who run this site, to maybe award a monthy free 30 days platinum membership to the person with the most instructive post each month, thereby encouraging everyone to place more useful posts in the forums. Or maybe have the Erik & the others go over the posts & award points to the useful advice & learning messages, and then when you've accumulated a certain number of these credited points, then maybe set it up where non-paying members like myself (I can't afford it right now, sniffle sniffle) could us them to purchase limited days of god or platinum memberships.

What do you think?

There used to be a place for site awards (just trophies really) that served just this purpose but they weren't very well publicized and as a result weren't getting a lot of votes and ended up being really prone to abuse by vote-lobbying.

I think the idea was sound but the execution was poor and I wouldn't mind seeing them come back.  The trick is that they need a higher profile so that any vote lobbying is drowned out by the volume of legitimate voters.  Adding tangible prize is a nice idea was well provided chess.com has the apetite to do so.

As you can see they stopped doing this about six months back:

http://www.chess.com/site_trophy_list.html

The trophies are nice & cute, but actual free 30 day or even a free 7 day memberships would be more incentive to help others or post helpful messages.

Agreed, but unless they are better publicized an actual tangible prize would just be even more incentive to game the system.  I think the nominate and vote methodology is great, but it needs more exposure to actually get a critical mass of voters involved so that the vote lobbying is no longer viable.

Most of the people who have a ton of points are people like Suggo.

Big posts, little substance.

I don't want to see chess_kebabs win the prize every month. Vote no on popularity contests.

 There is something to that. I can think of one 20k+ poster who is chronically obtuse and mainly does lol or huh? or what?

I read that as 'chronically obese' at first.

*cough*

I thought we were talking about how we could best award-chess memberships for forum contributions that are helpful.

lol xD

It would have to be the staff who votes, to keep it honest

Members should be able to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on certain posts.  thumbs up is 1 point, thumbs down is -1.  Whoever reaches 1,000 gets a free chess.com t-shirt.  However, the member cannot vote on his post.

This type of "reputation" system has been discussed in the past and was hotly contested.  I tend to think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks but many did not agree.

That's why it has to be the staff & not members voting. The staff would keep it fair.

For periodic rewards I can see it, but for a post by post reputation system it has to be the members.  I'd prefer the staff focus on continuing to develop new features.

i don't think that it would be possible for the staff to see thousand and thousands of posts each month and also if it was people to vote then the result would be that people would create many many many multiple accounts to vote for themselves and get the membership!!!

so ideally it is a good but practicaly it is impossible...

Well usually the staff does seem to moniter posts regularly, so why couldn't they select the ones they think are most beneficial to other members. the whole purpose of this would be to create incentive for most intelligent posts rather than the "Why boys are better than cats in chess" type of posts.

I don't want to pretend I would know how such a thing would best be done, but I agree with Surfer Girl in that it would good for some kind of benefit to come to those that generate a lot of good points.

Some sites have a "karma" type rating.  Also some sites have benefits but their formula they don't publish so you can't so easily game the system.

still there would be many posts to read...just guess that you were he staff.would you sacrifce many hours of your day just to give freee memberships!!!

there are new posts after 10 minutes it would be really bad!!!

also think of the fasct that if such feature would be realised people would get really angry if they think they deserved to win and they didn't!

it would be a really bad change!after all the staff are people the don't live for chess.com!!!

i really like your idea but find another way to conclude who the winnere would be

Yes -- there's no sense in making this a perpetual make-work program for the staff when the option to crowd-source is right at your fingertips.