Awaiting Feedback Why Rep Should Return: Our Posts Are Worth More Than a Like

Around this time last year, our little forum community made the switch from the vBulletin forum client to XenForo. Boy, that was a Summer. A lot of things happened, a lot of things were said by all of us that maybe should have been thought through a little more. Honestly, it was stressful, but it was worth it. We got quite the upgrade over here and JUST LOOK AT THOSE BIG OL' AVATARS. Alas though, one thing that was very important to the culture of this forum was lost- reputation.

For those of you who weren't here at all during the vBulletin times (yes, that's possible! KHIII WAAAAAAAS just announced; I'm sure someone Google'd 'kh3 vidz'), reputation is a system somewhat similar to our current "likes" system. When browsing the forum and you, the user, saw a good post, you could award what was coined as "rep" to the user and leave a comment explaining why you did that. To put it simply, it was a way to compliment a good post and award the user for putting in that effort. The more "rep" a user accumulated, the more "rep gems" that user would get to have under their username. This gave a sense of accomplishment and riches around the forums, and let new users know who was well-received around the rest of the forum.

Unfortunately, as stated earlier, we had to lose this in the move to XenForo. Now you may ask yourself if this isn't old news to you, why didn't our staff work some magical coding in the system to make it appear? Well, it doesn't work that way. XenForo was designed around the "likes" system you see all over this place. At the time of the switch, it was asked of the staff if we could get rep back. According to our staff, that was impossible without an add-on that cost money.

Now, around a year later, this is no longer case. And I am quite thankful of this.

A couple of days ago, I was shown an add-on that will allow a vBulletin 4.0 rep system to be implemented into XenForo KHV. It's even easy for staff to install.

Here's how it'd work for us:

Spoiler: This is a post

As you can see on the left, there is a measurement of reputation in the form of a number rather than gems. This makes it easy for likes to convert to rep and carry over.

Once you scroll to the bottom of the post, you will be able to award (or take away) rep to the user. Upon clicking, you will be met with a popup like the one in the image below.

Spoiler: POP UP

There's a nice twist... Not only can you leave a comment, unlike a "like," but you can decide how many rep points you want to give to a user. That's right- you decide what you feel that post is worth in quality.

From my understanding, it would work like a rep wallet. Each user has only so much rep they can give within a certain time period, thus, they are required to space it out. As they rep others, post, and gain rep themselves, they gain more rep in the wallet. And as a user gets rep, they're allowed to award more rep.

Spoiler: Mechanics kind of shown here. Staff this is what you'd sort of see in your CP

Bonus features would include:

Spoiler: The ability to see who rep'd an individual post

Spoiler: The ability to see all rep and comments in your profile

This also seems to allow for moderation. Meaning. even negative rep can be controlled and kept from being a personal attack. A user would need a good reason to give negative rep to another.

And it can be assumed it even works with our version of XenForo, as this add-on from March 2013 requires the add-on we're proposing today.

Now we have the big questions:

Why would we want this?

What's wrong with "likes"?

I'm sure many members here could tell you many things that are wrong with likes, but honestly... there isn't much inherently wrong with the system. It works. But the thing with a reputation system is that we're gaining so much more value on this forum and reintroducing one of our community's staples.

Let's make an analogy. I'm hungry and want to consume some sort of food material. My goal is to become full, or no longer hungry. The choices being to grab a bag of potato chips from the cabinet, or to make a meal. Since I was specific with the snack food, let's say that meal is a nice juicy, tender, medium well steak with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy. To accomplish my goal with the potato chips is easier, as I just have to grab them and eat, but would take much more potato chips. It would require scarfing one after another constantly with a just one more mentality to eventually become full. Meanwhile, making that steak and mashing those potatoes takes effort. Yet, it's not as long of a meal, and it's just as filling as well as rewarding because of that effort put into the preparation. Plus, it's tastier.

In that analogy, the potato chips were "likes." The steak would be the proposed reputation system. The goal of getting full would be obtaining a feeling of post and user value. With likes, it certainly takes a lot of them to feel anything and it's never been much. Be honest, have you ever been "OMG I GOT A LOT OF LIKES ON THAT POST!"? Meanwhile, there's the rep where just one good, and respectful one can lead to feelings of value, fulfillment, and maybe even lead to friendship.

It's in your hands now KHV, so let me just bluntly ask- Would you be in favor of the return of the rep system?

 

Signed. And for the record, I for one wouldn't mind starting from square one if we had to. And that's about all from me :x

 

I'm pretty sure all past rep is already gone forever, so I think that'd be our only option.

 

There's literally no reason why this system shouldn't be implemented. The rep system is something we had for years and it worked wonderfully and was undeniably an integral part of the KHV experience and was important in the community. Everyone can attest to the fact that members used to search the member list based on who had the most rep more than anything. Members always wanted to see who had the most, who they'd just passed, who passed them, etc. It was an important part of being a KHV member. Why SHOULDN'T we have this back?

 

I will admit that I liked rep more than likes, but the only thing I see wrong with this is that you can determine the value of the rep you give. Personally, I enjoyed the way vBulletin's rep system worked (where the amount of rep you can give and take away is determined by how much rep you have) and I can see this being abused by some. Still, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

 

The beauty of it is, it seems to work very similarly. Pending on how much rep you have, you have a max and minimum (usually a negative) amount of rep set by the staff. So you can spread around more, and give it a value.

 

I'm gonna have to say no and leave it at that because we can't implement this because of reasons. Gonna lock right now.

Spoiler

LOLJK.

A civil and nice suggestion with a lot of thought behind it. i could cry right now. These happen a dime a dozen. I'll read this with detainment and let some others reply first before posting my thoughts.

Good job, guys!

 

I'd be willing to give it a shot, as long as someone was appointed to moderate how easily this was abused.

As I said last night, Rep is better than likes in my opinion, and I see no reason to not have it.

 

The amount we can give is still limited by whatever the staff set up. Look at the mechanics picture, it shows you can set the system to give an increase in the amount of rep you give based on time active on the forum, the amount of trophies, posts and reputation already obtained. Essentially it's the same as what we had but maybe a bit more in-depth.

20/10 Chev, you actually made me jump with that reply. Much respect.

 

Chev, you really got me. I was about to sh*t bricks before clicking that spoiler. Thank ya.

 

I'm down to have this, it was a groovy system, and even with the updates, it's what we would have now if we still had vB.

 

I dunno, if the maximum amount of rep you can give is equivalent to the flat rate vB would've used, then I don't see much potential for abuse. Rather, I think it could be useful for differentiating between posts you just got a chuckle from and ones that really earn your respect and admiration. It also means that members with oodles of rep power could choose to scale it back a bit.

 

Ben liking every post in this thread is not only hilarious, but it's accurate to how we don't have post value...

 

This basically.

And this lol likes get handed out left and right. Exhibit A: Last night there was a thread about how Amaury likes basically every post with his name in it. When he inevitably shows up in this thread because he his SRS STAFF BZNZ senses began tingling I'm quite sure he'll like this.

 

I can get behind this, but it needs tweaking on this "decide how much you want to give", I don't care if I have a set number, I'd rather it be a pre determined value I distribute than a user decided thing, my status on the site should reflect how powerful my rep is, not my opinion of the member. Other than that yes, Likes are insignificant and almost pointless, and with the pin shop closed indefinitely they're even more useless since the materials they give are useless right now.

 

What most of you guys are missing is it's all still determined by status. Post count, time being a member, "trophies" which I'm thinking my be the equivalent of pins, and however much rep you already have. You just might also be able to choose to give less rep for something that may not deserve as much rep in your eyes, but someone like you would still give more than Nova who's current account is pretty new.

 

Thank you, my friend.

I'm glad you mentioned the pin shop as well. I've heard rumors of it to be reopened? Rep could also add more value to the pin shop. All we'd have to do is set a "like" as a certain amount of rep to be carried over, and then adjust the pin value from there.

 

I thought you wanted a rep system, not a rate system. By that merit we may as well scrap the idea currently and replaced it was stars, "I give you 2.5 stars for this post, it's good, but it needs a bit more satire to be 3 stars." This self decided thing trivializes the whole affair, if you're reading reviews of something online, the vast majority of comments are either full points or minimum points, because if you don't like something you're going to not give it a good rating, but if you do like it you're going to give it the best rating you can, because that's just nature. Some people will be more decisive, but the majority wont.

It's like giving a game a rating out of 10, can you honestly do that objectively? Choosing a number from a predetermined range is never a reliable form of ranking, because it's difficult to justify your choice "is a 10 the best post I've read, in that case can I never really give out 10's?" it'd fall into that sort of mind set.

 

Except the range isn't pre-determined. As you get more rep and status, the rep you can give goes up. It's basically the old rep system, but instead of being stuck on max and min, we have options.

 

I wouldn't mind having this feature. I enjoyed the comments (if there were any) from the rep people would give me (haha you're kidding yourself Jake).

...anyway I support this. Dunno what else to say.​