My thoughts about ‘reputation’ or ‘karma’

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

’ve always been of the opinion that Discourse should focus much more on human-awarded badges rather than algorithmic ones.

I like this idea. What would the ideal human-awarded badge system would look like?

I’m thinking that it should include the abiliity to define badges that can be awarded by other members or through some other means that scales beyond the moderators… maybe through some anonymous nominating/voting process?

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

@mcwumbly

What would the ideal human-awarded badge system would look like?

I laid out one such system 3 years ago:

Plugin: Smart badge nominations based on Flags

Continuing the discussion from What is the most awesome plugin for Discourse, that does not yet exist?: I would like to see a nomination plugin for badges, which could easily be extended to encompass Trust Level 3/4 nominations as well. The nominations system could piggyback the Flags system, except of course if a user racks up a bunch of nominations, that’s A Good Thing. And the nomination button would live somewhere like the profile pop-up rather than in the flags menu. The “smart” aspect o…

Feel free to continue that discussion there.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

as if badges don’t also have “many problems”.

You have shown no evidence of said problems with badges other than “I don’t like them”.

For known reputation system problems, see:

http://xoxco.com/news/i-love-my-chicken-wire-mommy.html

The main issue is that you aren’t distinguishing between systems of opinion and systems of facts and data. These are radically different things and require very different approaches.

[FoohonPie]

That article is a great example of when point systems go awry, but hardly evidence that point systems themselves are inherently a net negative. A poor implementation doesn’t negate the value of a concept. “This point system was terrible, therefore all point systems must be terrible.” isn’t something that I am convinced of.

Similarly, with Discourse’s badges, I don’t think that their problems negate all of their value. As for those problems, my issue isn’t simply that “I don’t like them”, but as I posted earlier:

Getting these early badges didn’t encourage me to interact with this sytem, they gave me the perception that badges have little worth and therefore are of little interest to me.

There are other problems such as profile clutter, or members contributing non-constructively, but really none of that is ever too damaging because you guys have done a great thing by offering the option to disable badges system-wide, which is awesome.

you aren’t distinguishing between systems of opinion and systems of facts and data

I am though. To one of my earlier points, system of opinions can also benefit from a reputation metric specifically because they are reflecting something more fluid like social standing.

I’m not necessarily looking for a measure of truth, or that a user is an authority on knowledge. I’m looking for an expression of group dynamics that makes conversations more than just their words. That’s the potential value I see for Discourse compared to Q&A software.

To that end, I am grateful for Discourse’s plugin system. Those of us who want this have reasonable means to do it. I’d love to change peoples’ mind on this, and give reputation a better uh… reputation… by showing better possibilities.

[theportablegeek]

Considering the discussion here I’m surprised that nobody has weighed in over here

User scores / Reputation plugin

Hello everyone, I developed a Scores plugin that calculates user scores from Discourse stats. [image] This plugin is not ready to be shipped, but I would like to get feedback from you and see if there’s enough interest on this to happen. Things I’m looking feedback with: How to show the scores in users profile How to show the scores in users cards How to show the scores in users avatar Thanks!

[FoohonPie]

I hadn’t seen that one. Thanks.