Suggestion - other ways to gain reputation

[Deception He/Him]

I think that the current way of gaining reputation (getting likes on posts) isn't quite enough. It would be great if you could get reputation points from engagement with your topics as well as likes. For example, if you got 1 reputation for every 5 replies on one of your topics, to a max of maybe 3-5 rep so things don't get out of control. Or what if you got rep when someone followed your topic?

I have no idea if this is even possible (I know the framework the site uses is restrictive) but I think if it is, it would be a great addition to the Shard.

[Aeoryi she/her]

I'm curious what this would accomplish.

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

I don't think this is a great idea, because there are some posts that get, by nature, a lot of replies. With this system, the person who made tLT would get God Beyond. At the same time, capping it makes it worthless.

[Deception He/Him]

4 hours ago, Through the Living Hopper said:

I don't think this is a great idea, because there are some posts that get, by nature, a lot of replies. With this system, the person who made tLT would get God Beyond. At the same time, capping it makes it worthless.

That's why I suggested capping it. It would still be a good feature, why would capping it make it worthless?

15 hours ago, Aeoryi said:

I'm curious what this would accomplish.

It would reward people better for actually contributing to the Shard rather than the pure luck of if someone is thinking about the like button when they read your post.

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 hour ago, Deception said:

It would reward people better for actually contributing to the Shard rather than the pure luck of if someone is thinking about the like button when they read your post.

It's only rewarding the person who made the topic in this case, not rewarding actual contributions made by people who respond to that thread. In addition, even if someone replies to some topic, that doesn't exactly mean that said topic is actually deserving of reputation.

Replies are disproportionate to a topic's contribution, and reputation granted through this way is therefore also disproportionate and essentially meaningless if the prerogative is to reward contributions.  

[Deception He/Him]

1 minute ago, Aeoryi said:

It's only rewarding the person who made the topic in this case, not rewarding actual contributions made by people who respond to that thread

That is a problem, but it would still be better than what we have right now, I think. And I'm not saying we get rid of the old system.

2 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

Replies are disproportionate to a topic's contribution, and reputation granted through this way is therefore also disproportionate and essentially meaningless if the prerogative is to reward contributions.  

So are likes. Replies represent contribution more than likes do, even if they aren't perfect.

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 minute ago, Deception said:

That is a problem, but it would still be better than what we have right now, I think. And I'm not saying we get rid of the old system.

As @Through the Living Hopper previously said, the only way in which this is better is by giving the person who makes the OP of a topic a whole lot of rep. 

2 minutes ago, Deception said:

So are likes. Replies represent contribution more than likes do, even if they aren't perfect.

Replies don't necessarily represent contribution more than reputation currently does. 

People are likely to rep a reply if it helped them, for example. In this case, people viewing the thread later can determine which posts are most important by viewing the most liked posts. People are also likely to rep a reply (or topic) that they may agree with. Reputation doesn't represent contribution accurately at all, in fact. I would direct you to the number of posts a user has, because that accurately represents their contributions.

[Deception He/Him]

13 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

I would direct you to the number of posts a user has, because that accurately represents their contributions.

I thought about that, but that would encourage short and spammy replies instead of thoughtful ones. Also, then the people who roleplay would naturally get more rep than those who write detailed responses to questions, because roleplay demands constant posting. Is roleplay really more of a contribution to the Shard? No!

[Aeoryi she/her]

24 minutes ago, Deception said:

I thought about that, but that would encourage short and spammy replies instead of thoughtful ones. Also, then the people who roleplay would naturally get more rep than those who write detailed responses to questions, because roleplay demands constant posting. Is roleplay really more of a contribution to the Shard? No!

by that very same logic threads that are more prone to spammy behavior/require more activity are more likely to be rewarded by the proposition you are making.

I would also argue that your system does absolutely nothing to reward posts that are detailed responses to questions, which you agree should deserve rep.

I also was not proposing that post count should replace reputation. I was simply noting that a metric for viewing a user's contributions is already in place.

I don't know if what you're proposing is really a solution to any of the problems you have listed, nor do I think something like this can/will be implemented at all. Reputation kinda isn't the point of being on the shard, it's kinda just a bonus.

[Deception He/Him]

23 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

by that very same logic threads that are more prone to spammy behavior/require more activity are more likely to be rewarded by the proposition you are making.

Which is better than encouraging the actual poster to be spammy

24 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

I would also argue that your system does absolutely nothing to reward posts that are detailed responses to questions, which you agree should deserve rep

That's what the likes are for. Never said they were useless.

25 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

Reputation kinda isn't the point of being on the shard, it's kinda just a bonus.

The Shard kinda isn't the purpose of human life, it's kinda just a bonus. Does that make it unimportant?

[Returned he/him]

I can appreciate the sentiment, but I think that the substance of community engagement on the Shard is what it is-- reputation reflects that reality rather than leads it. My own impression is that the community would be pretty much the same as it is now, with most reputations mostly unchanged from what they are today and a handful being modestly higher. "Actual contributions to the Shard" is maybe a bit loosely defined, but that's a different topic. To be clear, I'm not saying I think it's a bad idea, only that I don't think it would move the needle much for users nor change the site very much.

Big reputation increases tend to track with book releases, especially major ones, since that's when there is the biggest flurry of users logging in and the period in which new information is actually new rather than picked apart ad infinitum. For the long lulls between releases it can be very hard to introduce ideas that are fresh and intriguing to the hardcore fans who hang out here during the interregnums. In the midst of those quieter periods I'm not sure that there are a whole lot more follows on threads than there are likes on posts within them, or that gleaning an extra 3-5 reputation points per thread would result in more/better threads being posted or greater community engagement. Maybe I'm mistaken or thinking too narrowly. But high-engagement threads already tend to generate reputation via likes, even while the reputation system is far from perfect.

[Schizoposting]

Why do you care about reputation anyways? Its only purpose is to show which posts are popular, and which are not. I understand that getting likes can be addictive but tying them to anything other than popularity, will only lead to further perverse incentives. 

[Deception He/Him]

2 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Why do you care about reputation anyways? Its only purpose is to show which posts are popular, and which are not. I understand that getting likes can be addictive but tying them to anything other than popularity, will only lead to further perverse incentives

That could be a problem, but considering that all you get out of reputation is a title, I don't think anyone will do anything too bad.

I just think things would be better if said title reflected your contribution more accurately, and this could possibly be a step in the right direction.