Season 2011 - Site suggestions

[starpug]

Good spam, while being better than bad spam, is still spam.

It's hard to address your concerns when you don't give examples...

[JustDroobles]

Off the topic of Karma...

I would prefer a change in the way the event forums are organized. With lab, study, and building categories, I have been confused a few times trying to find which forum an event is in... there are events like "Physics Lab" which are really part building event and part study event, but get put in the lab events because of their name. It's About Time is also a combined event. There is a fine line between some events that are lab/test. All events that are active (like Picture This or Pentathlon) are not necessarily labs either...

I might consider putting them all events in one forum, but that would be a lot of pages to scroll through to find one event. Maybe the events could be divided into the 5 official categories of Life, Personal & Social Science, Earth & Space Science, Physical Science & Chemistry, Technology & Engineering, and Inquiry & Nature of Science. They could be divided by division, but there are some multi-division events.

I think the best idea to be the most organized would be to have the events in forums arranged alphabetically, e.g. A - F, G - M, N - S, T - Z.

[EastStroudsburg13]

I don't know, I think I would rather the 5 official categories than alphabetical. That way people who do events in mostly one category can see all of them in one place.

[JustDroobles]

I don't know, I think I would rather the 5 official categories than alphabetical. That way people who do events in mostly one category can see all of them in one place.

Well, that was my first thought, but the reasons I thought alphabetical would be better were a) Even thought it's official, some people may still not know what category their event is supposed to be in (I could see It's About Time potentially in Physical Science, Technology, or Nature of Science if I didn't bother to look up its actual category), b) Alphabetical has no room for interpretation and is the most straight forward. c) Alphabetical can be adjusted if we still want only three forums, or can be extended to more forums.

[starpug]

I don't know, I think I would rather the 5 official categories than alphabetical. That way people who do events in mostly one category can see all of them in one place.

Well, that was my first thought, but the reasons I thought alphabetical would be better were a) Even thought it's official, some people may still not know what category their event is supposed to be in (I could see It's About Time potentially in Physical Science, Technology, or Nature of Science if I didn't bother to look up its actual category), b) Alphabetical has no room for interpretation and is the most straight forward. c) Alphabetical can be adjusted if we still want only three forums, or can be extended to more forums.

It doesn't exactly take that long to look in 3 sub-forums to see where your events thread is

[JustDroobles]

It doesn't exactly take that long to look in 3 sub-forums to see where your events thread is

Well, it should still be as organized as possible, right? Clicking 6 links is more annoying than clicking 2. That is why I also mentioned:

b) Alphabetical has no room for interpretation and is the most straight forward. c) Alphabetical can be adjusted if we still want only three forums, or can be extended to more forums.

[winneratlife]

I think this form of the system is better. I don't think regular users should be allowed to rate, just mods/admins.

Because you can't trust them? All they can do is help you as negative karma is disabled

Says who?

Let's say I develop a grudge against you (I have absolutely NO INTENTION of doing this. It is an example only).

I then proceed to search up every single one of your posts and give it a 0. You have around 600 posts. Let's say that your current karma is 5, based on 300 ratings. After my little "grudge", it crashes to 1.67. If I get one more person to help me, it falls to 1. If stars are awarded as follows:
<1 = No stars
1-2 = One star
2-3 = Two stars
3-4 = Three stars
4+ = Four stars

One person just dropped you to 1 star, and two people just nearly dropped you into no stars. You may say "Oh, nobody would go through 600 posts to give 0 karma just for a grudge" but there are bots for that. That also assumes a fairly stable number of ratings: 300. Many people will only get around 50, seeing as not many people go through and rate every post they see. I know that I, for one, just ignore karma when it's there.

If anything, I think that karma should not be able to take away stars. It should ONLY be able to add them, for members like fleet and Fester (stealing your examples)

This way, a grudge can't kill a member's stars. If a member got their stars through post count, they stay. If not, they don't have enough posts for one member to bot up a ton of 0s to kill their karma, and they retain their stars as well.

[starpug]

I think this form of the system is better. I don't think regular users should be allowed to rate, just mods/admins.

Because you can't trust them? All they can do is help you as negative karma is disabled

Says who?

Let's say I develop a grudge against you (I have absolutely NO INTENTION of doing this. It is an example only).

I then proceed to search up every single one of your posts and give it a 0. You have around 600 posts. Let's say that your current karma is 5, based on 300 ratings. After my little "grudge", it crashes to 1.67. If I get one more person to help me, it falls to 1. If stars are awarded as follows:
<1 = No stars
1-2 = One star
2-3 = Two stars
3-4 = Three stars
4+ = Four stars

One person just dropped you to 1 star, and two people just nearly dropped you into no stars. You may say "Oh, nobody would go through 600 posts to give 0 karma just for a grudge" but there are bots for that. That also assumes a fairly stable number of ratings: 300. Many people will only get around 50, seeing as not many people go through and rate every post they see. I know that I, for one, just ignore karma when it's there.

If anything, I think that karma should not be able to take away stars. It should ONLY be able to add them, for members like fleet and Fester (stealing your examples)

This way, a grudge can't kill a member's stars. If a member got their stars through post count, they stay. If not, they don't have enough posts for one member to bot up a ton of 0s to kill their karma, and they retain their stars as well.

I think we are misunderstanding the extreme limit that will be placed on what a person can do to your karma, you can only give people POSITIVE ratings (no -1s or 0s or anything) and ratings are not an average, they're simply a number. Once you reach a certain star level (assuming it's linked to stars) there is absolutely no way for someone who has a grudge against you to bring you down. Not only that but you will be limited in the amount of Karma you can give out a day so as to inhibit schemes to gain more karma. Karma gaining schemes (karmaing your friends as much as possible) will also atleast get you a stern warning from an admin if attempted

[Celeste]

I think that the whole karma system would be mostly hype. Everyone would go crazy about it for a couple of weeks and rate, like, every single post. But then when the novelty of it wears off, I hardly think it would be used at all. For example, if I'm reading through the Ornithology thread and find a really useful post. When karma is all new and cool, I'll think "Hey, that helps me out a lot. KARMA!" then give them some. But in a couple weeks, I'll just think "Hey, that helps me out a lot." but I'll totally forget/not bother to give them karma because it's not a shiny new toy anymore.

[winneratlife]

I think that the whole karma system would be mostly hype. Everyone would go crazy about it for a couple of weeks and rate, like, every single post. But then when the novelty of it wears off, I hardly think it would be used at all. For example, if I'm reading through the Ornithology thread and find a really useful post. When karma is all new and cool, I'll think "Hey, that helps me out a lot. KARMA!" then give them some. But in a couple weeks, I'll just think "Hey, that helps me out a lot." but I'll totally forget/not bother to give them karma because it's not a shiny new toy anymore.

Actually, that's a really good point. Most other forums I'm on... karma is there, but almost never used.