Voidus

Not our fault if they don't pay due attention, we still warned them.

Edge? Any objections if I write Scribbler following Baxter over to the coffee and asking questions along the way? I assume not but just in case you wanted to have him suddenly turn out to be a serial killer or something and also I'm tired and not well able to process the difference between god-modding and reasonable control of characters.

Most of us have links to the Dark Alley in title or signature, the Dark Alley disclaimer clearly outlines potential loss of soul, life or humanity. We have a legal team that is most adept at finding loopholes

Well that seems fair enough I suppose. Any chance I could get a 'most worried about the return of badges' badge when they come back? Just to quickly address this too since I just saw it, the problem as I see it is that memes aren't being valued more, they're just being seen more, having a centralized 'funny' thread like that generates dozens of viewers while most theories get maybe 5 or 6 unless they really kick off, so even though the theory may be excellent, unable to be improved, is new and provides a unique insight it will still generate far less upvotes than a single meme that took all of 10 seconds to make.

That might have been it, but I feel like it was an award that only one person had. Not sure. On this note, thank you so much to our admins for not spiking us opening up the discussion for everyone to discuss this and give feedback and letting us know the reasons behind the decisions. I've always loved how open and approachable the 17th Shard staff are. So now that that's said... when are we getting badges back? (I kid of course, I'm sure it comes with many difficulties and now is not the best time)

We all do that, admittedly sometimes after they've eaten it but hey, informed is informed. It's not our fault that other people perceive time linearly.

The awards were little pictures that used to appear underneath your reputation rank IIRC, the ones I remember were the 'secret' award, the means of achieving which was secret, two awards for contributing to the coppermind, one for being a regular contributor the other for being a major contributor/making a page which was exemplary, at least one, maybe two for miscellaneous contributions to the fandom like transcribing or translated the Alethi womens script, one for participating in Brandons Q&A, one I think for getting a question RAFO'd and a few were for RL events like midnight launch parties. EDIT: Also I think one of the Admins had an award, the requirement for which was being that Admin. My mind says it was either Joe or Zas but I don't think it was actually either

Welcome to the forums for the first time. Would you like a cookie?

To mirror Chaos' warning to Kobold I feel like you're getting a bit needlessly aggressive here too, there's no need to jump down someone's throat just for speaking in the collective, this is just a discussion for feedback on the idea, we're not warring factions about to face off in an argument-to-the-death. I also agree that the quota reduction isn't a great idea, even though I disagree with Kobold in that I think there is a problem to be solved. It just feels a bit stifling to have a limit imposed like this, I understood having it to prevent reputation abuse and even having it lower than it previously was since almost no one hit that but 10 is really quite limiting. I'm going to hit that limit pretty much every day, which means I have to really pick and choose where I put them (Which is admittedly the point but I think it won't influence the places that the upvotes are spent, merely quantity so I still don't think it will solve the problem). I just think it'll make for a less pleasant forum experience if I have to stop and read and re-read a post, track how many upvotes I've given today and weigh that against the upvoteworthiness of the post.

What about just a single line tied to post count? I just still feel that a single collective reputation count isn't going to work since even with a Quota threads like the bad days thread or Random stuff are the most visited threads and so most people will still spend their quota there, it'll make it less extreme if the quota is low but I think it'll still be pretty biased.

That sounds awesome. I insist that this become a mandatory system. Not just in the Shard too. Everywhere. Someone fundamentally alter the internet please!

You think that's bad? StrawberryPhi's command is (Somewhat stupidly I admit) fix grammar. I have an insane, fanatical, grammar nazi who telepathically speaks to me and tells me to kill people who say 'who' instead of 'whom' or 'naseous' instead of 'nauseated'. Or end sentences with prepositions. Those are the worst. Kill them all! That's not even considered bad grammar anymore!

As evidenced by my previous (And to be honest, current) desire to lose 18,000 reputation just so I can be a chasmfiend corpse, so do I. Could it be tied to post count or something? That way we still get silly titles but they don't come with the status that the reputation-based titles do, it's just something that slowly changes every now and then as just an amusing aspect of life on the Shard.

I imagine there is but then that completely removes the other popular use of reputation, as a way to keep track of the Shards most prolific, well versed users. Something I could see though is to do exactly that and bring back the forum badges in it's place, they were a great way to show who contributed to what, and occasionally acted as a bit of inspiration to edit the coppermind, participate in more theories or search out secret posts. That way those of us who participate a lot in RPs could have an RP badge, while those who spent several hours on a single post about the relationship of quantum mechanics to shardic investiture can be known for that with a theorizing badge. I know the admins have already mentioned that they want to but personally I honestly feel like that's the best solution to the problem, let individual posts be upvoted but not show a collective reputation, that removes the problem of having a single centralized reputation pool and the re-addition of badges would still let people know at a glance what users are the best known and for what they are known.

Something that I think illustrates the problem, the top four members of 17s (Kobold, Twi, myself and Edgedancer) are all members and the most frequent posters of the Reckoners RP as well as all being involved pretty heavily in general discussion, while we do participate in theory threads pretty frequently as well I think we could all agree that most of our reputation comes from the RP and general discussion threads. We have more reputation between the four of us than the next 20 highest members combined. That includes the admins & Mods, Brandon and Peter as well as the top theorizers and posters. Whether you view reputation as a competition, as an accumulation of appreciation or as a rank of how prolific you are in all things BS related, for my part at least I believe that reputation count is insanely inflated. If I was Chaos and I saw my reputation, no matter what it is that you think reputation is a count of, I would be pretty annoyed. If it's just a show of appreciation then why am I 3x more appreciated than the guy who keeps the site functioning, has frequently excellent theories and is an admin? If it's some kind of competition then likewise, and as a show of knowledge about the cosmere it's equally absurd, I've been corrected or informed by Chaos numerous times, I'm not more knowledgeable about it than he is. We don't walk around in real life with a running total of how many people have smiled at us though, reputation is one of about 4 things that is public knowledge about every Sharder, along with their name, join date and post count.

The only reason it becomes a problem is because it's a centralized system, there's no way to distinguish between reputation gained by a single joke in a very popular thread and the reputation gained by posting 15 pretty detailed and thought out theories. I went on something of a hiatus from the Shard a few years ago and so I guess it's because I share that feeling that reputation used to be used quite differently, I still managed to be in the top 20 (Maybe top 10, I honestly can't remember) reputed members on the site but it just felt more earned than they do today, I remember when the 'popular post' feature was added and I personally knew of every post that had achieved that milestone. It was a really big achievement and when I finally got a popular post it felt like an accomplishment (Though admittedly I think my first popular post was a joke rather than a theory which somewhat undermines my point, but it was something that I actually put some amount of effort into) now though all it takes is to pop into a meme thread, take five seconds to put a vaguely Sandersonesque spin on a meme and bam, 15-20 upvotes, popular post. Yes upvotes are used to show appreciation but that doesn't mean that they can't be devalued, in school the praise from a normally grumpy and sullen teacher is valued much more highly than that of the fun-loving teacher who praises everyone no matter what they do because they're all special. The only way that upvotes could be incapable of being devalued is if they have no value, and if they have no value then why do we have them at all?

While I don't personally do so I can understand the idea behind doing something like that, since it seems that often the only reason some posts get so many upvotes is because of the audience size, they're posted in a thread that a lot of people view so they get a lot of upvotes, whereas in the RP threads while we all post a lot and are pretty liberal with upvotes I don't think I've seen many posts get above 10 reputation. It's a very friendly section of the forums but a limited one so the few times that upvotes on a single post numbered in the double digits it's a good sign that it really is an excellent post. But in for example the meme topics where there are dozens of viewers I've gotten upwards of 15 rep on a post that was really just a throwaway joke.

On that point I was in another discussion where it was brought up and it is apparently impossible. Also in light of it separating BS stuff from unrelated stuff I doubt it would be possible, the only way to do it would be to separate it by which subforum the post is in, but plenty of off-topic threads and posts appear in the Mistborn forums and plenty of legitimate theories are discussed in the general discussion forum. 1. I'm aware that Chaos just posted about how people should feel free to use downvotes but even so the prevailing culture on 17s is that people really only downvote things that are offensive, rather than just wrong or overappreciated. I know plenty of cases where people have balanced a negative reputation out with upvotes but I don't know of anyone that downvotes posts just because they think it doesn't deserve as many upvotes as it got. 3. I don't think they would actually, most of the time people are only replying to one key point in your post, just because you made multiple points doesn't mean everyone else has a strong enough opinion about each point to voice it (case in point I have opinions about your first and third points and so am addressing them, I don't particularly have anything to say to 2, so I'm not.)

Never said you were. But if you're not you might want to change the only tags in your guild which are 'anti dark alley'.

See? No disclaimer, they're so reckless they don't want people to be informed about the consequences.

Well you are from the church of Wayne, some level of imitation for the sake of funny is expected

Quota is reset daily yeah.

We had to maintain a low profile from admins and mods so they didn't notice us stealing the spike monopoly We're pretty pro-alternative universes in general, if they evoke wailing and despair then so much the better.

There are so many things I want to upvote but can't.

There was a WoB that it's a Shard we know (Or maybe one we've seen, can't remember exact wording)