About the member rankings.

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Anyway I guess the idea of having Live report symbol, translator symbol, etc, its ok... but it might bring useless competition and childish envy.
I see now that it might too ::erm:: even though that wasn't my intention, but I think that any kind of ranking/title will bring that about. I don't know how I feel about no rankings or titles whatsoever, it's nice to be able to 'sort it out' as flowers put it when you first join so that you know where someone's coming from when you read their posts. Plus you don't really notice after you've been a place a while anyway, you can judge for yourself. I mean if you saw, say, faith get a translator symbol above her avatar would it make a difference to you?
 

toshiro

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I think we should just get rid of the preset titles/symbols entirely and allow custom titles. That way there will be no "rivalry" or envy to try and get to the "top" status aince everyone's title will be different, and on the same level as everyone else's.

Of course, moderators and administrators and even staff should keep their symbols and status to show who the law enforcers are of the site & forums
 

Romanticide

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I'm all for the "no post counts" and the "no member rankings" idea. If newcomers come to the site on a regular basis, then they'll get the feel of everyone here. Having rankings will only separate people into groups and I don't think this site needs any kind of groups to separate who from who.

Only those that are mods would need kind of note over their avatar that say "Moderator".

This site mostly information driven, so I don't think that post counts and rankings help this site in the least bit already. And I don't think that such members like Faith would want to have that "Translator" title anyway. I just think that they might be suddenly barraged with translation requests or something of that nature. X_X I don't think that it's such a great idea.
 

LejuN

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But that is why Faith and Gwendal have the *staff* title anyway. And it says they are the translators on -scape- site itself...

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I think that having no ranks and no post counts is an interesting idea... then again, having the ranks and stuff is a small amount of extra little 'fun' or whatever for people who visit here often.

A lot of good ideals here guys. Making a decision pretty difficult :P

+LejuN+
 

navate

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Eee...honestly, the idea of no ranks/no post counts disturbs me. Not in the "omg, I've been here for a long time and I want people to know it" kind of way, but in the "omg, I have this stupid need to keep track of other people by their join dates and post counts". I get a lot of the occasional posters and new posters mixed up because I'm so awful with remembering names, but I can always check myself by looking at the person's post count, rank, join date, or even percentage of posts per day feature in their profile.

I know it's probably just me being all OCD as per usual, but I really think erasing the evidence of membership is a bad idea (my own disorientation bound to occur notwithstanding). But then, keeping it solely postcount is bad as well because people are tempted to spam. I think it goes without saying that plenty of people put a lot of weight on postcount. But that's why I like the idea of special icons best. It was mentioned that such might bring childish envy and competition, but honestly... how is that different from postcounts? Silly people who care about such things aren't going to change so there is no sense in appeasing their immaturity. I'd rather give the extra recognition to those who deserve it--that way, it might even divert attention away from postcount and bring the respect to contributors instead. Because that's all postcount is--I know because I felt this way when I was a young teen and first started on messageboards: higher postcounts scream "this person has been here a while, has said a alot, and so must be liked and respected and cool." I'd much rather have such thoughts be given towards people who truly have said something worth saying, whatever the criteria is.

I'm not sure limiting it to live reports and translations is a good idea, since those are things you either can or can't do, but perhaps a general reviewer recognition would work? Live reports, translations, as well as reviews and reports on new albums, merchandise, different stores, scans, etc. -Anything- useful.
 

flowersofnight

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navate wrote:
But that's why I like the idea of special icons best. It was mentioned that such might bring childish envy and competition, but honestly... how is that different from postcounts? Silly people who care about such things aren't going to change so there is no sense in appeasing their immaturity. I'd rather give the extra recognition to those who deserve it--that way, it might even divert attention away from postcount and bring the respect to contributors instead.
.... but then we'll get people trying to contribute junk. Like Babelfish "translations", rumors posted up as news just to get "news points", etc. No matter what sort of recognition system we have, people will try to hustle it. Might as well leave it on something like postcount that doesn't harm anything.
 

Naja

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date of joining the forum would stay, that wouldn't be a problem for spamming... and I don't think you can guide from looking at someone's post count... but well that's just me. As I said, for me... information is information, it doesn't matter who post it... I don't know, I visit some forums with thousands of users and I don't even check their names, postcount nor symbols, I just read the text and I can figure out if they're discussing seriously or just joking/gossiping... I think it's not all that hard.
 

navate

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flowersofnight wrote:
navate wrote:
But that's why I like the idea of special icons best. It was mentioned that such might bring childish envy and competition, but honestly... how is that different from postcounts? Silly people who care about such things aren't going to change so there is no sense in appeasing their immaturity. I'd rather give the extra recognition to those who deserve it--that way, it might even divert attention away from postcount and bring the respect to contributors instead.
.... but then we'll get people trying to contribute junk. Like Babelfish "translations", rumors posted up as news just to get "news points", etc. No matter what sort of recognition system we have, people will try to hustle it. Might as well leave it on something like postcount that doesn't harm anything.
Yeah, but thats's why we only take notice of useful contributions, and kick the one's contributing junk in the ass. We already don't tolerate Babelfish and rumors that are occasionally posted. Why stop? You're going to get idiots no matter what, but quite frankly... the new no-bullshit policy should take care of anyone with a mind to be obnoxious about it.

So long as we set a standard for the contributions, I don't see a problem--only benefit. To scape itself for having more reviews, as well as to all the other members a guests on the forum for having more first-hand information about stuff. I personally love when people post in-depth reviews of anything, because I need to know exactly what I'm getting before I purchase... reviews like that really don't happen often enough. I like the thought of having some sort of system which encourages it.
 

flowersofnight

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navate wrote:
So long as we set a standard for the contributions, I don't see a problem--only benefit.
The thing is, I don't like putting the moderating staff in a position to judge how good every contribution is. Like, imagine someone who tries their best but makes a translation that really sucks and is almost unreadable... should we "give credit" for that honest effort or not? Know what I mean? As long as there's a standard to be applied, the moderators will have to apply their own subjective judgement to the difficult borderline cases. I'm not sure how good an idea that is.

To scape itself for having more reviews, as well as to all the other members a guests on the forum for having more first-hand information about stuff. I personally love when people post in-depth reviews of anything, because I need to know exactly what I'm getting before I purchase... reviews like that really don't happen often enough.
This is an excellent point. An idea I had a while back was maybe to have a "reviews" forum, as sort of a way to encourage review-writing, but I dunno, we have a lot of forums already.
 

LejuN

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Funny, at one point I was thinking of a "translation" forum. Which would have just a ton of scanned articles and other such stuffs where people could take a crack at them if they so chose... but I never sat down and really thought out the details.

+LejuN+
 

Dix Princesse

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That would be handy. But is there enough of those to actually make its own section? I've been wanting to translate things but don't know what.
 

navate

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flowersofnight wrote:
Like, imagine someone who tries their best but makes a translation that really sucks and is almost unreadable... should we "give credit" for that honest effort or not? Know what I mean? As long as there's a standard to be applied, the moderators will have to apply their own subjective judgement to the difficult borderline cases. I'm not sure how good an idea that is.
Call me a grammar snob--which I am--but if someone produces a translation or report that sucks and is almost unreadable, then I'd say they weren't trying very hard. ;] (And as far as my warped philospphy of life goes, honest effort is worthless without acceptable results, so to those cases I'd go the cruel route and deny the credit--but that's me, and I'm not on the staff, and I digress.)

I understand lots of folks aren't native English speakers, but I've posted here long enough to know most of them are more than capable of writing in understandable English. Setting standards for readable English and intelligent feedback doesn't really seem too harsh. And when standards are set, the poster would know in advance that such nonsensical or sucky reviews wouldn't be accepted anyway, so how can they complain? ;]

Whether we go for the icons or not is up to the staff, of course. But in any matter--I feel something should definately be done to encourage useful contribututions in one form or another. :]
 

flowersofnight

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navate wrote:
Setting standards for readable English and intelligent feedback doesn't really seem too harsh. And when standards are set, the poster would know in advance that such nonsensical or sucky reviews wouldn't be accepted anyway, so how can they complain? ;]
As long as we're setting a standard, there will be a line between "acceptable" and "not acceptable", and difficult cases will inevitably pop up on either side of that line. My example was a really obvious one, but whatever kind of standard we set, there will be a gray area. There will be bruised egos every time we reject a submission, and we'll get complaints of "Why was X's review given credit but not mine?"

For precedent, you might recall -scape- had a Kami fanart contest a while back. The prize was just awarded to a randomly selected entrant, rather than getting into the business of judging submissions. I think we ought to have the same philosophy here on the forums - we can have some fun without judging some contributions more worthy than others. In my opinion it'd create more friction and bickering than it's worth.
 

navate

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flowersofnight wrote:
As long as we're setting a standard, there will be a line between "acceptable" and "not acceptable", and difficult cases will inevitably pop up on either side of that line. My example was a really obvious one, but whatever kind of standard we set, there will be a gray area. There will be bruised egos every time we reject a submission, and we'll get complaints of "Why was X's review given credit but not mine?"
I can envision a standard lax enough to avoid bruised egos (except in the case of particualrly childish people who won't ever be pleased anyway, so squish 'em) but strict enough to avoid stuff like "I got the new CD, and I'm posting about it first. It's so good! The cover is pretty! I like it and it's worth buying, yay!" with no actually useful information, or go and snap crappy webcam pictures of a magazine when they know someone will be making proper scans soon. But maybe I'm idealistic? Still, I think it could be done. Worth the trouble? Not my concern. ;]

If you're that concerned with brusied egos, then we'd better close down threads like the photo thread. Some people get fawned over in there, and others completely ignored or brushed aside. How's that any different? At least contribution judging would be based on something substantial, and not how omgHOTT<3 one is.


As for the Kami contest... heh. I thought it was very silly, precisely because it was random. No challenge, no fun! But still, I'm not sure it's a fair example. This doesn't need to be a contest, and no system is perfect. I think it's silly to reject it just because it might not work well with some people. I feel like we're all pretty level-headed people here. And if it makes the mods uncomfortable to deal out the reward, then maybe we could make some kind of joint system where the members can say how useful, comprehensible, etc, they found it. Then the whole forum will get flamed in the event of severely bruised egos, rather than just the staff. XD

Hope I'm making sense. I'm going to bed right after this, but occassionally my words get jumbled when I'm sleepy...
 

Tastes Like Future

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At least have three!


member, junior member, senior member. :D

Something in between member and senior. It just feels kind of empty and bland.
 

flowersofnight

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Well, part of the rationale for getting rid of the extra ranks is that I don't want to have any like "junior" or "n00b" that imply that newer members are less than full members of the community. Having only a few ranks also reduces the urge to pad one's postcount meaninglessly to move up faster.
 

Tastes Like Future

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So. How will you encourage well-thought out posts?

I don't want any denigrating ranks, just something besides 2. 2 seems way too simple.


Although it seems like the matter has been discussed.... Oh well.


I voice my opinion! Choose it or lose it! Vote or die!
 
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