suggestion to reduce existing reputation for upcoming season

[Rickertsen2]

I think that the single simplest and most effective thing that could be done would be to simply make feedback from all people count equally regardless of the ranking of the person giving the feedback. Why should feedback from someone like Dave Lavery Count any more than feedback from someone like Billy Nobody. If you help Billy Nobody , why is that any less noble than doing something that Catches Dave's eye. This sort of thing turns reputation into an elitist club of sorts. The vast majority of point are being doled out by a select few. I am not familiar with the structure of the reputation system but i would guess that this would be a very mild hack. At the very least, the influence of the reputation giver's reputation should be reduced or perhaps make the influence logarithmic, arctan or something else like that.

It would also be a good idea to to display user's post/rep ratio in addition to their rep and post count. This would be at most a 10 minute hack but would be quite valuable

In addition, it would be helpful to see an additional reputation category added for technical helpfulness/accuracy.

[Camerzn]

Ultimately, the best way to restore faith in the rep system would seem to be by taking an arbitrary log() of every person's current rep. Thusly, people with low reputations (yo) would maintain their pitiful status, while people with tyrannical reputations would have achievable reputations.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Camerzn

Ultimately, the best way to restore faith in the rep system would seem to be by taking an arbitrary log() of every person's current rep. Thusly, people with low reputations (yo) would maintain their pitiful status, while people with tyrannical reputations would have achievable reputations.

I wouldn't go as far to say that people who have high reps are "tyrants" per say. We get that way by posting here alot and most of them are highly respected memeber of not only this messageboard but the FIRST community as well.

[Cory]

I'm not entirely sure why everyone is so worked up about the rep system... It is very clearly a popularity contest. While the top people all deserve the amount of reputation they have, that's all it is. Even if it gets changed, it's still going to be a popularity contest.

I don't look at someone who doesnt have 11 (is it 11?) little green dots and say oh man I'm never going to read THEIR posts. They dont have 11 dots like ME!!!

Seriously, if people can't figure out who makes good, informative posts by actually READING them, and they just look at how many dots they have, there's something wrong. That's like me telling you that the eart is flat, and you just taking it at face value.

Who cares if you never crack the first page of rep... It's not like you suddenly gain access to the elite "11 dot members of CD" club.

Rep should be eliminated from chit chat I think. There is some intelligent discussion in there, but for the most part it's entirely random and pointless things.

$0.02
Cory

[Koko Ed]

JVN
Andy Baker
Amanda Morrison
dlavery
Karthik
David Kelly
Ken Leung
Brandon Martus
Joe Ross
Paul Copioli

If you notice I don't think anyone would dispute that any of these people are not deserving of the credit that they have recived. They are team leaders, board moderators, a game designer and a Woodie Flowers award winner. These guys are the most influential posters here and deserve the credit they have recieved and they should be seen as an inspiration to low rep posters not as a threat.

[Billfred]

Alright, after reading through the topic thus far, I've got to throw out a few different things...

1) 99% of the time, I'm against chit-chat rep. But there is that 1% of the time that it's useful. At the risk of complicating the system more than it needs to be, perhaps set a bar (100, 200 points) that folks have to reach before being able to rep in there? Newbies would have to work a bit at being established as a thoughtful poster before getting crazy-go-nuts in there.

But looking at that first page of members by rep, I think the system is working as Ed pointed out. These folks are among the best and brightest in FIRST. Is it the definitive list? I'm inclined to doubt it...after all, there must be some great minds out there in FIRST that don't post on CD/don't post on CD much.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Alright, after reading through the topic thus far, I've got to throw out a few different things...

1) 99% of the time, I'm against chit-chat rep. But there is that 1% of the time that it's useful. At the risk of complicating the system more than it needs to be, perhaps set a bar (100, 200 points) that folks have to reach before being able to rep in there? Newbies would have to work a bit at being established as a thoughtful poster before getting crazy-go-nuts in there.

But looking at that first page of members by rep, I think the system is working as Ed pointed out. These folks are among the best and brightest in FIRST. Is it the definitive list? I'm inclined to doubt it...after all, there must be some great minds out there in FIRST that don't post on CD/don't post on CD much.

Oh no doubt.
I think 1% of the FIRST community actually post here.
2 of 45 current X-Cats actually post here and I can tell you me and Ellery aren't the only memebers on the team who could bring something to the table but messageboards aren't for everybody.
I'm sure this is the case on every team in FIRST.

[Yan Wang]

There were some interesting methods suggested for doing reducing reputation for the sake of the greater good or something, but I propose, if anything, a progressive reputation tax that will be taken by April 15th of each year. For those with low reputation income, measured by points per year, taxation will be unnecessary. Tax breaks will also be given based on hours donated to FIRST, number of whitepapers posted, and number of helpful comments. Each WhoIAm picture after the 100th will incur a cost of 500 reputation points while chit-chat reputation does not count. All reputation from 1,000 to 9,999 will incur a 30% tax. Reputation from 10,000 to 24,999 will incur a 45% tax, and anything higher will result in further revisions to the reputation tax law until it becomes grossly incomprehensible.

Or whatever Brandon finds managable.

[Camerzn]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

Tax breaks will also be given based on hours donated to FIRST, number of whitepapers posted, and number of helpful comments. Each WhoIAm picture after the 100th will incur a cost of 500 reputation points while chit-chat reputation does not count. All reputation from 1,000 to 9,999 will incur a 30% tax. Reputation from 10,000 to 24,999 will incur a 45% tax, and anything higher will result in further revisions to the reputation tax law until it becomes grossly incomprehensible.

Hah. This is fantastic. However, why should WhoAmI pictures cost rep? If I really want to know WhoYouAre, is it not for the common good that I get to see your picture?

Taking your system to an extreme, maybe there should be a curve of reputation (x) versus taxation amount (y) that hits an horizontal asymtote at 50%

Something sort of like:
f(x) = 50+20*(-(x/1000)+2)/((x/1000)^2+1))

Some say I like to complicate things. I say I obfuscate better than others.

[Koko Ed]

The funniest thing is almost all of the bad rep I got has been carlessly given to me by mistake. I just got a bad rep point with a compliment.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally Posted by BoyWithCape195

One more thing is, if you sort the member list by reputation, you notice that some people have made minimal posts as in not very active, but still have high rep. points.

Some of that may be the fact that they are UFH or WFA winners. Those people have been given relatively large chunks of reputation points based on their other accomplishments.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by BoyWithCape195

One more thing is, if you sort the member list by reputation, you notice that some people have made minimal posts as in not very active, but still have high rep. points. Now a days it is a "give your friends rep and enginners that are from big teams and companies" CD Something needs to be done to the reputation system, but i dont know what...

Aha! You have come across the exact reason for the reputation system. Let me give you 3 examples:

Ken Patton, Jason Morrella, and Aidan Browne all have very high reputation points while only posting a few times. The reason why they have large reputation points is two-fold: 1. They make darn good posts. 2. The rest of us crusty veterans give them reputation points when they post because we want the rest of the CD community to LISTEN CLOSELY to them.

If there was no rep point system, then these guys would only be seen by their post count. New folks to this Forum would only see a post be one of these guys and consider it "just another CD user", but in fact they are not. Each are leaders in their fields. What we CD users are doing by giving them rep points is saying that everyone better listen to these guys.

For myself, I think that the reputation system is a bit out of hand and the points could be scaled down. Heck, I've even asked people to negtive rep me in the past ((here) , so my care for the rep system is loose. I see it's purpose, but I don't know why people get hung up on it so much.

Andy B.

[Kevin Sevcik]

A random thought, but it just occured to me that the rep system is turning out like the levelling system in a final fantasy game. Dave and others have levelled up so much that the difference between them and the level 1 people is just silly.

So, I'll repeat one idea here and add another. First, I think it'd be useful to have rep points decay over time. This would still allow people to benefit from posts in the past, but would also encourage people to continue to post occasionally to keep their rep up. I think it's fair, because you kind of need to stay current with things to provide useful information anyways.

I suppose the other option is to change the math of the rep system so it's more like a logarithmic curve. Your rep grows linearly at the beginning, and then as you get more and more rep, additional rep adds less and less.
You'd still effectively have really large reps, but it'd be scaled down.

[Brandon Martus]

Lots of good discussion in this thread ...

I agree that having 3 pages of 11 dots (maxed out) is kind of weird. I looked into scaling that down, but it wasn't easy enough. I'm going to be looking into what problems it will cause to scale everybody's posts down. I just don't want to break anything.

[Steve W]

I guess I would like to ask what the problem is with the rep system. Do you know how many points that I have as compared to John V Neun? I personally don't care and if you ask I would tell you my points. After you reach 11 dots everybody looks the same. Now over time, if you post meaningful posts, you will build up rep. Over the next 6 months I am sure that there will be more people added to the 11 dot club. I agree with so many people that have posted so far in that I judge by the post, not the dots of the poster. There are many times I have felt that some of the people with 11 dots were on Mars with their rover (OOPPPs, did I say that). Ask Dave, John, or Andy and we have been on opposite sides of a discussion. Just because they out dotted me didn't make them right. Try as I might they sometimes just didn't see the light but that also doesn't stop us from agreeing on other issues or changing each other mind.

Dots are dots and if they disappear I wouldn't be too upset. People are starting to know me because of my posts. If they met me then they might change their mind. I guess it might be good to look back to the old days. Should we judge someone by their hair, clothes or DOTS, OR should we judge by actions and words. If by hair, I'm in trouble and if by clothes Dave is in trouble.