Thread: Reputation frustration

Originally Posted by Bruno

Yes, if the rep system had been enabled from the start, it would have looked different. But it has been enabled fairly late in the game. Give it a couple of months and it'll stabilize into proportions that match the reputation of the active population. It needs time to reflect actual reputation.
Trying to retroactively fit it to what the majority thinks it should be is not practical.

It has been a few months.

I lurked on different shaving forums before I joined SRP. Some of them were elitist, some were fine but did not concentrate on straight razors. SRP seemed to be populated with people that I could picture myself having a beer with, normal (kinda) folk. It is a place I appreciate. I can not put my finger on why this reputation system really bugs me but it does. The way it was implemented without considering the rank and files input was frustrating. I know that this forum is not a democracy but it is a community designed to listen to each others opinions.

It as been a few months since the reputation system has been installed nothing has really evened out. The system does not seem to reflect reality. The following are active users, maybe not prolific but active.

Tony Miller
Randy
JoeC
Mblue
Mparker
Dwessell
Papabull

They all have one or two green boxes, I think that this proves my point. These users would make great brain trust for any straight razor issue.

Sometimes moving forward is not a straight line, sometimes you need to take a step back and reevaluate and remedy problems then move onward.

Charlie

I think the rep system is more geared towards posting reputation than reputation as a person (although it overlaps).

So it is true that Robert Williams is a very reputable person, but not an active poster, and it is the posts that are rated.

The examples you list are valid, but there are also other examples. Take Glen for example. He is active every day, working hard in the resto forum. and his rep is going through the roof. Same for Bart, and several others (I am not that active in the technical forums anymore, so I don't know many examples).
The only way to get rep is via your posting behavior.

Giving rep for non-forum traits is not pratical, because then it will be up to me to decide who gets what rep. The only alternative would be to ditch it completely.

But if you accept that the reputation reflects posting behavior, and not personal reputation, then the rep system works as it should. Many of the active seniors are now recognizable through their rep.

On reflection, another point is this:

Say for whatever reason Bruno decided to stop posting right now. He then doesnt post on SRP for a decade or so. Straight razor techniques and things will likely move on in that time. If he then comes back to SRP and starts posting without keeping up with all the current developments he would not have the same experience as someone else. But his reputation would remain the same.

My point? Reputation doesnt go down (to my knowledge). Or if it does, it doesnt go down naturally over time. Only by others posting negative rep to you.

I was one of the ones for the rep system at the start, but what I suggested and what the rep system is are two completely different things (as has previously been discussed). I am not in favour of keeping this current rep system. I dont use it the way it is suggested and it does nothing for me. In fact I was quite upset recently when someone gave me a second green dit. I was proud of my one dit status

Originally Posted by Bruno

I think the rep system is more geared towards posting reputation than reputation as a person (although it overlaps).

I was speaking purely to forum behavior.

So it is true that Robert Williams is a very reputable person, but not an active poster, and it is the posts that are rated.

I have never met or have an opinion of Robert Williams, But I do place a high value on the knowledge and advice he gives on this forum. It is highly weighted on my scale.

The examples you list are valid, but there are also other examples. Take Glen for example. He is active every day, working hard in the resto forum. and his rep is going through the roof. Same for Bart, and several others (I am not that active in the technical forums anymore, so I don't know many examples).
The only way to get rep is via your posting behavior.


So Glen’s advice is more valid than the ones I mentioned? Should Glen and Bart should be weighted more heavily on my “I need to listen to scale”.


Giving rep for non-forum traits is not pratical, because then it will be up to me to decide who gets what rep. The only alternative would be to ditch it completely.

I was speaking purely to forum behavior.

But if you accept that the reputation reflects posting behavior, and not personal reputation, then the rep system works as it should. Many of the active seniors are now recognizable through their rep.

I disagree with this assumption. I was only speaking to forum actions, I have no idea, nor do I care about people’s non-forum reputation. I interact and know these people through the forum.

Charlie Lewis

Charlie,

IIRC (love those acronyms) the greenies were adopted just about the time that people here were trying to figure out a way to both say thanks for the comment and "I agree with what you're saying." The "I agree" seemed to very quickly evolve into the green gizmos. I'd much prefer a gold or platinum star, but the little green footprints are real "now" and we're probably stuck with them. The bigger names and the better known will always pick up reputation points faster faster than the equally qualified but lesser recognized. I guess that's just another facet of human nature.

Speaking of nature, how are things in Tejas? Up here on the frozen tundra we just had a bit of snow, nothing much, but it will likely fall below zero again for the next couple of nights. One of the mysteries for me is how are we thawing the polar ice pack when it's FREEZING half way down to the equator?

You don't suppose Ma Nature is looking for a couple of green dots, do you?

Bruce,

It is not the quantity of dots, it is the principle of the matter. I guess I just liked the idea of a forum of equals, where everybody’s ideas are presented with the same emphasis. This system reminds me of high school cliques, something that I left a long time ago.

I will let it go. I had to try for the Hail Mary pass to see if it would work.

Things are good in TX dontcha know. I hope I can get to MN this summer.

Charlie

An internet forum rating system is always a delimma. There are different motivations for it.

One aspect is the forum providers/administration providing value to the "service". This would primarily be for newbies. It's a better place for newbies, buyers, etc. if there is some method, in the absence of personal experience, to establish trust. It's kind of like a seller's rating/ranking system. Once you've been in a forum for some time you've formed your own opinions based on your personal experience and you don't need or pay much attention to it.

Another aspect is from the established members view point. You get "recognized" for your reputation. It's like having your achievement award being posted for recognition by your peers. I don't think this was the intent as implemented.

The problem with any system you come up with is it's use and abuse by the members. It's always somewhat of a popularity contest and cliques tend to "pump up" their own. Sometimes discretely sometimes blatantly. On another forum I frequent we even created "post whore" threads so the blatant rep inflation would be contained more in one area. Fortunately I haven't really seen much of that here.

Originally Posted by sidneykidney

On reflection, another point is this:
Say for whatever reason Bruno decided to stop posting right now. He then doesnt post on SRP for a decade or so. Straight razor techniques and things will likely move on in that time. If he then comes back to SRP and starts posting without keeping up with all the current developments he would not have the same experience as someone else. But his reputation would remain the same.

My point? Reputation doesnt go down (to my knowledge). Or if it does, it doesnt go down naturally over time. Only by others posting negative rep to you.

You may have interpreted reputation differently than it's intended (not by you, but by the staff who put it in place). You have attributed a measure of current knowledge (relayed or not) to it. I see it more as a measure of trust. In the example, if Bruno had gained his reputation by making quality posts that you could trust then you could probably expect the same after his hiatus. In the above context and your example, Bruno's reputation would still be valid. You could still expect Bruno to be Bruno (in his forum identity). If he always tried to be helpful you could expect him to be the same. If he got a reputation of posting factual/helpful information that he was knowledgeable about before, you could expect the same now (If things had changed then I wouldn't expect him to post about things he wasn't familiar with). If he had always promoted events and the likes then he would probably be doing the same. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

Originally Posted by spazola

So Glen’s advice is more valid than the ones I mentioned? Should Glen and Bart should be weighted more heavily on my “I need to listen to scale”.

No, maybe not from the member achievement award perspective. But from the admin/service for newbie's perspective, maybe so. For the latter it's not so much a measure of your advice being more valid but a matter of trust. "I just got here, I don't know this guy from Adam, should I feel comfortable listening to what he says?" or "should I feel more comfortable that he's not going to rip me off?". That kind of thing. If you've been here for a while then you've made your own opinions and you're not likely to even look at the reputation. Here's an extreme. If Mastro Livi posted on here he wouldn't have much rep but you'd probably not value his post any less. If you only had $100 in your budget and wanted to PM someone for an opinion on an ebay razor then Glen might be the better choice.

I could be wrong, but I kind of thought the intent of reputation (maybe not Sidney's) was primarily a guideline for newbies. (I'm NOT saying I think there's ANYTHING wrong with what I assume Sidney had in mind, just that I don't think that's what the staff had in mind). Once you're not a newbie then it doesn't have so much value (still somewhat useful when you get into the very focused areas that you're not familiar with or don't frequent).

The formula that determines how many chiclets one has does not allow for reputation to be accurately presented. because of this, I don't think there can even be a good solution without removing it from view

Back in the day we used post count as a proxy for knowledge, and liked it. There was also this scheme where your status string (the thing just above "Join Date" on the left) was determined by how many posts you had. I believe it maxed out at 100 posts at which point your status became "Honemeister". Fortunately that's gone, since it was incredibly misleading to newbies.

More seriously, though, post count, thanks count, and reputation all suffer from some common failings that make them more decorative than useful.

They display their current value on every post, and not the value they had at the time of the post. This means you can have some post by a member with a 5-digit post count or 5-dot reputation that's incredibly wrong, but what you don't know is that it was his 5th post, and he was neither experienced nor knowledgable at the time.

There are also guys around there that know a lot about shaving technique or restoration or metallurgy but know very little about honing, but neither the post count nor reputation tell you which topics to ignore them on.

Also, many of the guys giving the thumbs up and reputation points are newbies that can't really evaluate the validity or usefulness of the poster. I suspect that this implies that these two numbers are closely correlated to the number of non-social posts made since these systems were enabled.

A more useful proxy might be something similar to the google pagerank scheme, so that the reputation of a member is related to how many links there are to his posts and how many references there are to his userid.