Rewarding Points

Odd, let me try again.

I believe that Slashdot has a (large) number of "moderators", each of whom gets an allotment of votes each week with which they can vote individual posts up or down.  Users can then, based on these rankings, filter out any posts that have been voted below a particular threshold allowing the "cream to rise to the top".  Unlike the current super-"moderators" here that can actually edit and delete forum content, this is their only additional privilege so it can be disseminated quite widely, possibly based on an activity level threshold?  (I'm not sure how it's actually done).

Since the ratings live and die with each individual post there's no user level "reputation" ranking that's retained -- each vote is ranked on its own merit.  I believe that this was your biggest concern Batgirl, was it not?

I'm also of the opinion that the voting need not be limited to just a smaller group of moderators.  It seems to me that this system would be just as effective, possible more-so even, if everyone could cast their votes on individual posts.

It's not a simple system.

But generally, comments can have a score, between 0 and 5 (IIRC - might be -1 and 5). Comments start out on score 1 (if the author has a bad reputation it starts at 0, good reputation it starts at 2).

In your settings you can set the minimum rating a post needs to have before you see it. I think the default is 1.

Every now and then, users get "mod points" that they can use; say you get 5 mod points, once per month. You can use these to give +1 or -1 to posts you choose (not your own).

The actual system is much more complicated than this.

A common complaint is that there is a lot of "groupthink" -- if your opinion isn't the common Slashdot opinion, it's likely to be modded down. Not everybody agrees this is happening.

Each user does have their own "reputation" -- it's called karma. It's basically the sum total of the moderation that has been done to your comments.

To be eligible as a moderator, your account needs to be not too new (say older than two months), you must have a decent reputation, and you must not be in the lowest activity bracket and not in the highest activity bracket (say, in the 10%-90% activity group). Numbers are guesses, and it's been a few years since I was really active there, but this is more or less it I think.

They tweak the parameters of how many points you get often, based on how well they see it working, I guess. Sometimes you get 5 points per half year, sometimes 10 almost weekly...

Thanks for the clarification -- i've not actually done anything other than read the occasional article there so my post was based on some quick research about their system.

Let the enjoyment of participating be you reward and stop saying omg.

>:)

Quality content is such an subjective thing, though.

A few days ago, someone posted a really good puzzle, with a Grimshaw interference theme. 6 possible defenses, 6 different mates.....

A 2000+ player made a comment that it is a bad puzzle, because the position is not realistic. Realism is not a prerequisite in composing, but many people hate those puzzles, while others (like me) consider it an artform.

One could argue that rating individual posts might "get it wrong", as in your example rooperi, but from your description it would stand to reason that the person who posted that puzzle would on average post quite interesting things.

I think given a system where each person has a limited number of votes to cast within a given time period that a puzzle would have to be pretty egregiously flawed before most would waste a vote on it.  If the votes are scarce they really should tend to gravitate towards elevating the very best and suppressing the very worst and indifference about the rest.

Agreed. But I still don't like the idea of the system creating a reputation for anyone.

Rate posts, fine. 

Rate people, not fine.

I'd say that there's some value in calculating a reputation, but that it's the publication that is contentious.

I'd suggest that a higher individual rating might be a consideration for awarding more votes than a user with a lower one would get and as such might also serve as an incentive for people to try to ensure that they're contributing quality content not garbage.

Rate Posts: Fine

Publish Post Ratings: Fine

Rate Users: Fine

Publish User Ratings: Not Fine

I wouldn't have any serious problem with that, but I still don't think it's worth doing.

Bah!  Fine, et. al.

They should award a free platinum lifetime membership to the author of the "Rewarding Points" topic.

 Very good idea.

        Judging by the number of responses it looks like you have touched upon an interesting topic here.
         I like your idea of a reward system as well, and would also like to see a
revised version of the monthly site trophies return.  I would much rather see "Batgirl" receive more points for one of her well-researched articles or "Dozy"
receive more points for an insightful blog.                                                                      Chess.com is a great website and I'm sure it will continue to improve in the next year. 

This topic has been rehashed again and again. I understand the desire to filter out the nonsense as well as the topics that don't interest an individual.  I've been trying to determine if this Slashdot concept adds an appreciable wrinkle in the somewhat flawed solutions traditionally offered, but either my understanding of it is too elementary, or it doesn't really solve anything without adding equal or worse problems of its own.  I've recently read a couple, what I consider, very high quality new blogs but they had nothing to do with chess and had very few hits. Would such writing fall through the cracks??  If I were to set my level low enough to find such writing, I wouldn't be filtering anything and the entire system would be pointless. If I pushed for more select filtering, I'd miss potential intellectual enjoyment.

I think maybe what you describe, though, is another issue altogether -- that his how do you provide better exposure for blogs and articles so that they get the same degree of viewership as forum topics.  If I understand your concern correctly it's that the lack of exposure would result in these blogs not getting elevated like you think they might otherwise be if they had a wider viewing audience.

Remember, though, that under a Slashdot type system they would start out with a neutral rating and just as it would not have enough exposure to be elevated, it would also not be voted down from this level for the same reason so filtering out the lowest rated content would still allow you to retrieve this blog.

As for the issue of how to get better exposure for Blogs and Articles, well, that's probably another thread altogether.

Lol, it would be nice to get memberships from having a certain amount of posts that aren't spam or anything since I post quite a bit and most aren't too short. I also post alot of games for analysis in my groups, so I think some are deserving of memberships.