Reputation system..
 

The topic is the reputation system here on CD.

Do you use it? Is it useless? Helpful? And important part of CD maybe? Does it change the way you look at someone? Why?

What is your view?

I am curious because about how people see me because of my low rep. :p

Thanks

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The only time I really take note of a person's reputation is when it's red. Otherwise I never use it to judge whether a person's opinion is valid, or if I'm going to pay attention to their posts.

I do leave reputation for people when I see really good posts (and occasionally really bad ones).

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I use it to provide feedback on posts, positive or, rarely, negative. It's a lot more simple to give rep than send a PM and have to link to the post I have comments on. Also used sometimes if I find a post incredibly funny.

It's very nice to log on and see a "made me laugh!" or "excellent point" bit of rep on a post I've made. Everyone enjoys compliments in real life, and receiving positive rep gives me the same feeling. It's nice to have reassurance that someone took time to read your post and didn't think it to be absolute garbage.

Personally, I don't even pay much attention to the dots. When viewing someone, I look at their post quality above all else. If they're putting out very constructive posts and contributing to discussion, but have low rep, I make it a point to give them a bit, because they deserve it. However, if someone has red dots under their post count, it tends to catch my eye pretty quickly.

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The most reputation (by # of reppers anyways) I ever got from a post was a painfully awful play on words, so I think that speaks to how good of an indicator it is of technical knowledge. At the same time, I try to give green dots for useful technical information, but I'm not above giving points for especially funny jokes.

One of the kind of amusing things though is that since the # of points you give out is determined in part by how many points you have and the values of the green boxes have never changed the bar for getting a full green bar is significantly lower today than it was 5 years ago. I've always wondered if Brandon had a way to look at that, I think it would be really cool to see the exponential growth of reputation over time.

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I don't like giving out bad rep (except maybe to spammers) but I do like giving out positive rep for posts I really like and to repair the bad rep of poster who get slammed for giving an unpopular opinion that everybody overreacts to and then brutally attack the poster for it.

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I'm with Koko, I rarely give out negative dots and I give out positive when I see people in the red who don't deserve it.

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I give out positive rep when I want someone to know that I think they have done a nice job expressing themselves or supporting a particular line of thinking. I don't remember ever giving out negative rep but I have given neutral rep. I think that is very important for people to know that what they write in the privacy of their room still reaches a lot of people.
I look at stats too. I check how old someone reports themselves to be, how many replies a post has received or how many times a post has been viewed. I don't like to respond to posters who take a hard line and won't listen to anyone else although I have been known to tilt at windmills. I don't like a a person who uses a screen name only and doesn't identify their real name somewhere so they can be addressed properly in a reply. And I really don't like spammers, especially sneaky ones who ask a technical question when they first log on and then spam later.

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A low rep, and a low post count just means you are new.

I use it to provide positive feedback. I usually use IMs to convey messages of negative feedback for the first strike or so. Usually any post that I would give a red mark to, enough others have buried the person in a sea of red.

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I don't think people look at low-repped posters differently (unless they're on the red scale). I've never noticed people treating my posts differently and always take them seriously (when the posts themselves are serious).

Personally I don't rep people, but that's because I don't really understand the system. I think it's a nice system, not because it can tell you how knowledgable the poster is (as Ian pointed out, though it can give you a general idea sometimes), but because it can make a person smile and know his post made an impact on someone. And since most, if not all, FIRSTers are firm believers of GP, there's little risk of someone getting bad repps he doesn't deserve.

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Personally, positive rep is a huge self-confidence boost for me. I think there's (at least this was true for me) a slight fear in posting at first upon starting to post here, for fear of coming off too strongly or being ridiculed for a differing opinion or comments being taken the wrong way. At least for me, getting positive rep changed that and increased my confidence at posting.

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I will give positive rep for a wide variety of reasons, most often to someone just starting to post on CD. I will also, like Ed and Sam, give positive rep if I think someone has received negative rep unfairly. I'm more inclined to give neutral rep rather than negative rep if I think someone needs negative feedback on a post, but most often I'll send a pm to the poster.

I will look at rep in conjunction with post count prior to reacting to a post that is written in a fashion to be non-helpful to the CD community, but other than that, if you are a middle of the roader and building rep in a slow and steady fashion, you are good to go! :)

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They are only dots...

... somebody had to say it.

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I agree with all above, but I also wanted to throw in an additional way that I use it. If I am looking for someone from a particular team to ask a question, I often search the members list, and then send a PM based on the reputation & role. Chances are if they have good reputation, they know what is going on with their team and/or can point me to whomever does.

But don't "worry" about the low rep. As long as you don't have red, 99.999% of the community will take your posts just as seriously as anyone elses.

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It's a very effective method of keeping all the "Me too and I agrees" out of a thread. It also connects the community a little more. The more communication the better.

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The cool thing about CD is that there are so many wonderful people from the FIRST community who post or who have posted here, helping to build and sustain the CD community. Some of those wonderful people can become heroes and role models to you and when they appreciate a post that has been made and take the time to rep it, it can absolutely make your day. I've seen posts sprinkled throughout the years of participating in CD that are along the lines of, "Oh wow! I just got repped by Andy Baker!", and I know how much that meant to the person on the receiving end of that rep. It's along the lines of having the great role models stop and talk with you at a competition or send you a private message of encouragement or wisdom.

That's what's great about the reputation system. What is not great about it is that some people don't really take the time to understand that participating in CD can be a very valuable experience and they focus on trying to get those green dots as quickly as they can, instead of letting them accumulate naturally.

Humor and knowledge have been mentioned in this thread as reasons for giving positive rep. I think there are other good reasons as well, such as asking thoughtful questions or bringing the discussion back on topic when it has strayed off course.

Another thought is that everyone starts out with one green rep. We build our reputation from there, some more slowly than others. The key word is build.

Jane

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I completely agree with Jane.

I give green rep points if someone makes a really good point in the hopes that they will continue to make really good points (and therefore continue to teach me and others)

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I use the system to give credit where credit is due but I personally don't like the system.

I am a super moderator over at badcaps.net forums and there they disabled the reputation system. At least at that forum it was somewhat useless; usually one could see how good someone is based on how they post and what they post. I along with a few members sometimes have very unpopular opinions; I know that we'd get spammed with negative rep over it.

Over here that doesn't seem to be as big of an issue although in the past I have gotten some negative rep for IMHO stupid things. One was for questioning the opinion of some who the person giving the rep was "above being questioned". Another was for making a point that the person giving the rep thought was "unhelpful". There are other thigns I've been given that were kinda dumb but that's beside the point.

The other thing I'd like to point out is that humans typically have a stronger reaction to negative feedback as oppossed to positive feedback. As my dad once told me, "it takes 100 'Atta-Boy!'s' to counteract one 'you [stink]!' " This why I rarely if ever give negative (or for that matter neutral) feedback.

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This is exactly why I rarely give negative rep unless the person is just generally being harassing or offensive and won't listen to anything else. I prefer neutral rep if they are being jerks and occasionally even use pos rep to ask them to chill out.

I'ma paraphrase my friend Santosh, the moment I start caring about dots on the internet I hope someone hits me.

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Just mirroring everything said above already. Low rep doesn't mean anything unless you're in the red zone, which isn't good at all. Likewise, having the max rep doesn't mean you're Andy Baker (Unless you are Andy Baker, in which the previous statement becomes invalid).

All in all, a well thought-out and intelligent post benefits the community regardless of reputation (And it may even earn you some ;))

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I haven't been giving (or receiving) much reputation, but I think that I'm going to start.

When reading a post, I don't pay much attention to reputation. Even someone with few posts and therefore a low reputation can contribute to a thread.

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We don't agitate the dots.

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It's like the old E.F. Hutton commercial ("... people listen"), when Andy Baker hits the green button, people notice.*

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*I only know of one instance when Andy hit the red button, and that was in a thread that went on far too long and became extremely unproductive.
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I give negative reputation for repeat inaccurate or misleading posts.

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I personally subscribe to the idea that they are just dots in most cases. I tease certain friends because I have them and they don't, but it's only in jest and I don't actually think having a lot of dots makes me better than them. It's just a fun little tid-bit to look at when someone posts.

I will consider them if the person in question has one or more red dot, but even then, I don't base how much I listen to that person on what their reputation bar says. Every single person on Chief Delphi is entitled to their own opinion, so if the person in question said something and a group of people didn't like it and destroyed their reps, I won't disregard the person for having their own opinion, or just for having an opinion that differs from others (example: the mentor vs student built debate is a common CD topic. If someone speaks out against teams with "mentor built" robots and gets massacred in rep points, I won't disregard the person because their opinion differed from others and some people were offended by it).

I don't really make frequent use of giving reps, and I've never given negative reps. For the most part, I use it to thank people for saying something I found useful.

One thing I do note, is that CD users with full reputation bars are generally very reliable and noteworthy people (Karthik, JVN, Jim Zondag, Ether, etc, etc.). So if someone has a full bar of reps, I'll generally take that as a sign that they are a reliable and helpful person.

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Reading this, I tried to think back... I can't remember really seeing anyone with a negative reputation posting. I may have just not noticed, or ignored those threads, or whatever.

So, I looked at the (sorted) member list. We have 402 members here with a negative reputation. Approx. 3500 members have actually accumulated some amount of reputation (more than 1 dot). We have 28,000+ total members on the members list (oddly, the CD stats puts that number at 44,000+...). Some interesting numbers.

Unfortunately, there's no option to "search posts by reputation" so we can see which posts received the most positive reputation, and which ones the most negative. Personally, I think it would be pretty interesting to see what the highest rated post of all time was on here!

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To take Jon's point one step further, let's look at the top two members in terms of rep. #1 is Karthik Kanagasabapathy, who shows as a rookie in 1998. #2 is Andy Baker, who shows the same rookie year. Both men have one world championship to their credit; Andy has a CMP Finalist as well. Karthik outranks in CMP Chairman's, 1 to 0. In their time on CD, Andy has roughly twice as many posts as Karthik - does that mean KK is twice as clever / insightful / humo(u)rous / reputable as AB?

(rhetorical question; I wouldn't want anybody to try to answer that.)

By the way, the fella who comes in third to these guys? Just landed another car on Mars. He's gotta use two hands to count them all.

The first page (50 members) is a who's who of important figures; it's encouraging that almost all of them are still active on Chief Delphi - those that aren't are still mainstays at competitions.

It bears noting that DSK is well represented on that list.

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What? I only see one Kamen and she isn't a brother ;)

For what its worth, I'd estimate that 1/2 to 3/4 of my karma are from jokes and sarcasm rather than useful information :p

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That's one of those headaches of a rating posts and posters. It's hard to say whether a post was of a useful social or technical merit and to whom with what viewpoint. It's even harder to quantify the reasons of the person rating the post on a technical level. Worse one has no idea of the exposure of the reader to the topics in general so one doesn't know from how much experience of the forum quality they judge a post or poster.

It's a fun and fast way to let other people know you like something. On the negative side I'm not sure it's specific enough to deter anything. On the other side, as others have pointed out, leaving negative feedback knowing it is nebulous seems like the sort of thing that's just looking to polarize a situation.

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It is an interesting phenomenon:
Post something which you think is really cool, and helpful = almost no rep.
Post something where you call out an idiot for being an idiot = tons of rep.

The internet is a strange place. They're just dots.

-John

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Looking through rep I've received, this trend is 99% accurate.

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I don't post many useful things and somehow I have full rep and am apparently on that first page of top reps.

It is clearly not always indicative of how much you know/how helpful you are. I think half my posts are from Fantasy FIRST drafts...

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...or robot!

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CD47-Bot (and his brother, archiver) look rather human to me...

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Right now, I have to say I don't find the rep system all too useful. Rep simply isn't something I notice often. Like others said, I'm more likely to notice if it's red, but it mostly doesn't factor into how seriously I'll consider a post.

However, I think that when I first started on the forum, it served as a pretty good indication of who is an experienced member of the forum. Over the past few years, I feel like I've gotten a pretty good sense of who people are, so it's declined in usefulness, but generally I think it's a decent resource for newer members of the forum.

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This is completely true. I have received more positive rep for posting in controversial or otherwise popular threads than any other type of post.

I haven't seen this brought up yet, but would some type of yearly reset or deduction of rep points make the rep system more valuable? Lets say I have the maximum rep "dots." On January 1, give me a star in the row above or below rep dots, and reset me to 1 dot. Then as I post throughout the season, I can refill my rep dots. If I max out again (or some other reasonable level that says I have positively contributed) by the next January 1, give me another star and reset me again. Maybe hovering over my star would display lifetime rep points... Thoughts?

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I don't look at people's reputation points, pretty much ever. I don't really care and it's in a corner filled with stuff I don't pay attention to. I occasionally use the system to leave people comments about their posts. I also enjoy seeing people's thoughts on what I have to say. I like this aspect of the system and definitely wouldn't want it to go away. I'm fine with the system as it is, but I don't think I would be heartbroken if it changed, either.

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To me, the rep system is a general indication of community respect.
It is not accurate for measuring intelligence or social charm, because it is often an unbalanced combination of the two.

Sure its useful, and I award/deduct points as I see fit.
Next question? ;)

*honestly, you can tell quite a bit from someones userbar and I always glance at it after reading a post. *

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Hmm.. Okay, seems pretty reasonable..

• A low rep bar doesn't really mean that someone's post is inaccurate, or shouldn't be trusted.

• Now a red bar may be a different story.

• A high rep means that you may be Andy Baker..or JVN..or Karthik :p just kidding. But in all seriousness, that post would most likely be very helpful, or accurate etc.

Thanks to everybody who responded! I always like to see everybody contributing to a discussion.

One more question though.. What is the difference between the bright and dark green rep bars??

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I believe it is just the first five green dots are dark green and beyond that they are bright green, which I assume may have been made to catch peoples attention...just a guess

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Does it take longer for your submitted posts to show up if you're a new user with no reputation points? Do they have to get through a moderation filter or something? It has seemed like that to our team at times, but maybe that was just gremlins in the server.

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I think that is somewhat correct. I don't know the specifics, but it seemed like that when I started. When I started my first thread, it told me it had to be checked first before it could be submitted.

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I find it funny to me that (with the exception of the guy above me) everyone posting in this thread has like a gajillion bars.
To me, this whole thread is like: "No, I don't pay any attention to the rep system" says the guy who's maxed out the rep system.

I guess it's like money: everybody wants it, but once you have it, you realize it doesn't really matter.

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I would suggest that they are active community members.

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I would second this suggestion, as I recognize most of the people posting here :)

Another important note though... I never payed attention to the rep system, even when I first joined. Posting on here isn't about getting rep, it's about helping other people/teams, and being helped in return. Rep is just a side affect.

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^^ Well said. This precisely what we mean by "they're just dots."

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It's easy to see this statement as being valid from a certain point of view but you have to remember that even those who have a 'gajillion bars' have also had their share of red reps as well. No one is immune to being repped in a negative or a positive way, depending on the post being made. What (I think) a lot of the folks who have posted in this thread are saying to the OP is not to worry about the the gajillion bars too much. People realize when a poster is new to the forum and they recognize that it takes time to develop a reputation.

One thing that has been pointed out in other discussions but I haven't seen much of in this one is the fact that people join CD in the fall and very close to Kick Off. Kick Off is a busy time for FRC teams and CD becomes very noisy with lots and lots of posts regarding the rules and the new game and chatter. Typically, new members are very susceptible to being given red reps. I fall in the camp of being more tolerant with doling out the red reps and not so quick with hitting the button. That could be what some of the posts in this thread are talking about - some who have a lot of greenies try to help the new member who has received the red reps. Some new members stick around and become valuable CD participants. Some leave as quickly as they come. Some stick around and continue to make careless or obnoxious posts and then they merit the reputation they decide to build.

It's an option to use or not and it provides opportunities because it is made available.

Jane

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I have to agree a bit. I have only been in FIRST and on ChiefDelphi a little over a year, and no longer pay much attention to the rep system. But I have to admit that a year ago I did pay a lot more attention to it. Everything was new, I did not know what advice to trust, or when my own posts were on or off the mark, or even what was needed or wanted here. The rep system helped me to understand CD a little better.

I am not a regular poster, but every once in a while a topic comes up where I think I can provide some value. When I do post, I find it often takes quite a bit of time to figure out how to communicate information effectively in a short post. To do a good job you often need to take much longer that you might expect to organize and verbalize a response. I cannot say how good it made me feel as a new member of the forum to find a simple reply like, "I found that useful" in my inbox.

It is not an ideal system. But the crudest tool can often do amazing things in the right hands.

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The system is actually quite flawed in its weighting, if you ask me. I went from two blocks to nine from one opinion post, because a couple people agreed with me. That doesn't make me suddenly full of good information. In fact, I have very little technical knowledge in any area relevant to CD. It's too easy to get a lot of rep quickly. There are 733 members with all ten blocks of rep, and no way to distinguish who really made a lot of good points, and who made just a couple.

Moral: It doesn't mean much.

I would like to see a diminished influence from others on one's rep (a rep that would give you two blocks only gives you one), making it harder to reach a full bar, having a max rep limit on a post, and I second the idea from elsewhere in this thread of counting stars for every time a member reaches ten blocks (two stars and three blocks counts as twenty-three blocks), but not on a yearly basis (make the rollover of ten blocks --> star immediate).

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It's the fact that I can bump someone up--or down--quite a bit that causes me to be very careful in giving out reputation. I have yet to give a red rep, and I tend to prefer a PM to a neutral rep, but will use either or both on occasion, if I think it's warranted.

On the other hand, I also don't look at reputation very much. Usually, it's pretty obvious how many people have given red rep when I'm considering dishing some out, so I lay off the rep button.

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I've wound up with a lot of "neutral" feedback instead of PMs or a post in the thread, which is a weird use of the rep system.

I try to positively rep if the user is making a well-thought-out point or directly providing great information.

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I'm in the give positive to posts that I like, neutral to the posts that are from new people along with a comment on why camp. If they are really needing help then I'll PM them. So the only time that I look at the dots is when it's a post that is a little out there.

Only one red given in my CD tenure, that was a fumble finger move to a respected mentor while reading CD on my new iPad. I've gone back to a real keyboard.

Only received one red, from a disgruntled reader on a smart comment that I made that I was "looking forward to the water game"

They are just dots... But it would be nice if the dots would quit saying "You need to spread reputation around... " all the time :rolleyes:

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I've seen several people mention 'neutral rep'. What does it mean? Is it just giving 0 reputation points?

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Yep. It fills "dim" dots in front of red or green dots IIRC.

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Exactly. When you give reputation, you're asked if you approve, disapprove, or are neutral. Default is neutral; if you haven't met certain parameters, any rep you give is neutral. See http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/fa...n_faq#faq_rep2

Of course, it's the comments that go with the rep that can be the most helpful. That's why neutral reps are popular--a couple lines about "Hey, you're new, so you might not know that it's generally considered a bad idea to start a mentor-built debate" could work at least as well as a red rep with "You idiot, why'd you bring that up!???!!!"

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I find it weird that I get neutral rep with the message "thanks!" or "i really like that!" as if people are scared to give out positive rep. Maybe they don't click on "approve" though...

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I must be the odd man out. All the rep I've received has been for posting "cool stuff." To be fair I haven't received much, but I've never been downrepped either.

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The reputation system is like a text message while the messages system of the form are like phone calls: When you want to just say something like "I agree" or "good call, I like your style" or "Oh man, good catch" and want to make sure that person reads it but it's not really that important to prolong a conversation, use rep. When you want to share a conversation, use the messages system.

The majority of the people who I give rep to have full or near rep anyway, and the way I feel about Rep is the same way when someone Likes something on facebook. "Oh look, ThisPerson404 liked what I said. Yay me." I have a bunch of Rep statements from some posts I made, like the one in the Dodge Dart thread or from the comic I made, and while I got a bunch of "oh wow awesome" comments in the thread, I find the Rep comments better since they are more personal. I guess, thats how I see and use the Rep system - to send a little personal "I agree" or "Thank you" or whatever.

I do not give out neg rep - Not even to those posts that deserve it. I simply ignore the post.

Rep is a private form of "Liking something".

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Check that, there are 664 with 11. I didn't notice the drop from 11 to 10.
507 of those with 11 have "a reputation beyond repute", the rest have "a brilliant future".

[/OFFTOPIC]

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I seem that the repuation bar it decieveing because i have wrote some good post on topics such and guessing the next game or commenting of other robotsBut i feel CD picks on me becuase i get bad rep from other and is in the red but i write some post that should be given good rep CD can u help me out or i mite never post again

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bearbot,

I think there are two things that might help you.

The first is listening to your English teachers when they discuss spelling and grammar. I'd be willing to bet that at least one or two of the red reps you've gotten are for posts that are very difficult to understand. (You can find out why the red reps are given by going to your user cp--the first thing that crops up should be the reputation panel where you can look at who gave you rep for what post and for what reason.)

The second is to understand how the system works--and how some people use it. Just because you write a post that you think is good doesn't mean that everybody else thinks it's good. Trust me, I've had that a few times. And sometimes, someone else might think it's a bad post. Some people also are very quick to hit the red rep button, why I don't know. Some use it to pound nails that stick out a little bit; others slam the big mistakes.

I will also say this: I don't look at rep when I evaluate a post's content. I look at the content (if I can understand it--if not, I'll look at as much as I can understand and try to decipher the rest). Not posting because people are giving you a lot of red is not the right response; asking for good rep may or may not work. I would highly recommend looking at why you get red rep a lot and see what you need to improve with your posts. After improving in the suggested manner, I would be surprised if you didn't start getting more greens coming your way.

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I second this. Usually, if someone is obviously trolling, I'll just ignore the post, but if it's well written, like you said, i'll green-rep it.