Bitcoin Forum

just noticed this. yay for karma system!

Yes, it will be interesting to see how it develops and/or how scores compare to my intuitions about the subjective reputations of other users.

Details of feature are available here (http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=104.0).  Do we know the details of

for the forums?  It would probably also be good early on to establish a social convention of treating these ratings seriously rather than just as a joke.  As long as the established user base does this the feature should retain some correlation to its intended purpose.

Should we upgrade to the Advanced Reputation System (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1129)?

I think you should upgrade to Xenforo.  :)

I do like the advanced system though.  OCN uses it, and it works very nicely.

If used fairly, I can see this being a great benefit.
Although I'm still not sure of the forum ranking system.
Ie newbie, jr member, etc.
I'm assuming it's based on post count? Rank increases every 50? Posts?

Hopefully the reputation system helps 'general' information

The problem is that many of the informative posts I've made are on other forums/in the past! I'll never get my reputation up now that I just lurk (hint: I do post, quite a bit even!)

I think either the advanced system or karmalog (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=127) would be good so that abuse of the system can be identified.  Has anyone used a forum where this feature worked particularly well?  How was it configured and what was the social convention around it?

Edit: Leapfrogged you there, SgtSpike.  Sounds like a vote for the ARS!

One problem I see with this is that people who simply disagree on a subject will start giving each other negative karma and eventually it will invalidate the helpful post they make

My fear too.

I think this is one problem the advanced reputation system attempts to address--users who get in a negative karma war will end up invalidating their own ability to influence reputation.  Can someone who has used the system comment on the "softer" points of how it tends to work out socially?

I was wondering how this applaud / smile thing would work... now I get it :)

All I can say is; great, now bobR is going to troll AND smite on everyone.

What about some sort of peer vouching system or mods review of a member before he/she becomes eligible for the system?

Well, I know this much anyway...

The advance system sounds better, but what I'd really like to have is a system like the otc web of trust where you can rate a person from -10 to +10 and change those ratings without restriction.

Edit: Btw, is it possible to see who has applauded or smited you? If not, does that apply to mods/admins as well?

I'm not too crazy about the titles because "applaud" and "smite" don't really suggest intended uses. Perhaps, "helpful" and "unhelpful"? That way it would discourage negative ratings just because of differences of opinion.

How about "Congratulate" / "Fire into the sun with a large catapult"

But really, it'd be fine with me if there were no 'smite' option at all, just let people rack up the applause points.

I don't like these things. Posts should stand on content, not reputation. (This is why I prefer anonymous boards like 4chan.)

Don't think reputation based on if forum goers agree with you is useful.

Rather have reputation related to doing business.

I just got a smite for no apparent reason....

How about "+" and "-"?

Business reputation is definitely useful, and that is precisely what the OTC ratings are for.  It's also very valuable, though, for a first-time visitor to the forums to be able to tell which users simply post a lot, and which have achieved some kind of recognition by their peers.  Especially if that visitor is a potential entrepreneur, investor, journalist, etc.  There are a lot of people who use the forums but don't spend a lot of time on them getting to know everyone.  We'll have to see how it goes--I think the advanced system sounds like a good idea.

This might be a good idea, too.

I agree on remove the minuses. I personally see this system as a win/lose situation. I'd much prefer see a Thanks button and accumulation of thanks

This is exactly what my concern was in my post in similar Meta thread:


And I guess I got a smite for that...or any of my other 91 posts, or for any random reason. Is this really the way this is supposed to work? Although some may not give much importance to the applaud/smite, especially those who have got to know each other here for a while, new users could have hesitation about interacting and/or transacting with smitten members.

I realize it's purpose is not necessarily transaction rating, but if a new user or any user wants to conduct a transaction with someone on the forum the first thing (I suspect) that may cause trust issues is if the person has smites...which can come from anywhere.

I hope it is just that I don't understand how the applaud/smite works.

Wow...looks like the forum owner has already adopted my suggestion!  That was fast!  :D

People who are paying attention to the reputation system will applaud/+ you to correct for any undeserved smites/-
Assuming you occasionally make valuable posts... and if you don't you probably deserve the smite anyway.

It seems likely that most users will accumulate both +'s and -'s as -'ed users try and cancel out their own "bad karma".  Public records or the advanced system would reduce this.  But there is also the fact that you can only - someone once every 10 days.  So as long as other users consider your minus unjust, they will be able to easily outvote it.

It would be nice to know for which post (in addition from whom) I got -'ed for.   ???

+1

But how would other users know whether a minus is unjust? I don't see that the plus/minus is related to any particular post/activity/transaction. If it was then it would seem it could balance itself out as some may find a post useful and others not. From what I see it is applied to the member and I believe new users will not necessarily understand right away its purpose.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for a rating system. I think it is extremely useful for new and old members both. I just worry that it will be abused the way it operates at the moment.

If instead of the title "Reputation:" it was listed as "Helpful:" or something similar I would feel a little more at ease.

-1  er.....  +1

I like the idea about "applause" or "+" or "helpful" points.  That way people can't hurt people's reputations simply because they don't agree with someone's opinion or because they had bad coffee that morning, but forum members who make good posts can still be rewarded.  Also, it would be nice to know what the limits on posting points is.  Can you only do so many a month?  That might limit excessive use of the rating system....

I am used to the rating system at stackoverflow. I think they were early to implement something like that and it works really well.

I too think the new reputation system here works somewhat counterintuitive because you +1 a person and not a post. It is much better than nothing, though.

The [-] might bring more aggression to the forum.

Idea:
Integrate the Bitcoin Faucet with the forum!

People will be able to Tip people with Bitcoin ( 0.01 or more ).
They even be able to withdraw them, but then they will disappear from the account, and they won't be able to show their "value" on the forum.

There must be some rules to avoid clones, example:
You can give 0.01 bitcoin if your account isn't older than a month and doesn't have X messages.

True. I thought I was ranking posts, until I try to give a + to the same guy and received the "wait 10 days" error.

I think it would made more sense if it was on a post basis.

Which would make reputation not a good term anymore... hence a thanks button should be better

As far as I can tell, the Forum Admins (sirius, theymos, and gavinandresen) have yet to post official guidelines on using the Reputation system. Please provide a link if I'm mistaken!

In my opinion, reputation should be based solely on quality posts vs. non-quality posts.

A quality post should possess some of the following attributes:

• contributes to discussion
• on-topic
• well-organized
• thoughtful
• interesting

Non-quality posts could be described as one or more of the following:

• troll
• flamebait
• off-topic
• illegible -- hurts my brain to read it

Basically, we should be striving for a higher signal-to-noise ratio. I've seen a lot of threads get derailed by off-topic conversations and emotional disagreements where the same points just get repeated over and over by a small handful of users. It's time-consuming to read through and puts a damper on meaningful discussion. If users were aware that they might lose points, they might think about starting a new thread or requesting a moderator to split them from the original thread.

It would also be great to provide a comment for a +1 or -1. If someone bothered to embed a URL to an article they mention in a post, you should be able to say, "thanks for the link to X -- good read!". When people know their effort is appreciated, they'll keep putting in that effort.

I think this could really improve the quality of discussion on these forums, but we'll need the admins to officially define guidelines for using reputation. Otherwise it will be meaningless.

But if was a really clever off-topic trollerific post, then I'm giving it a +1.

You have to be careful though, because it's also an excellent way to discourage people from posting on forums in the first place... especially if you try to define what exactly a + or - should be given for.  People will try to start "policing" the forums - "He was flamebaiting!!!!11!!!!11", and posters will be afraid to post for fear of receiving said negative feedback.  If you leave the +/- undefined, then it will fall back to a person's common sense, which will generally give much better and more accurate results as to the actual helpfulness or hindrance of a person.

It would also be a headache for the moderators if they were to lay out guidelines.  People would start complaining... "He gave me a minus for flamebaiting, but that's not what I was doing!", and it would just give them one more thing on their plates to worry about.

Just leave it arbitrary.  If someone likes a person (which generally happens BECAUSE of them being helpful), or reads something helpful/funny/otherwise worth a +, then they'll give it to them.  If someone's being truly obnoxious, they'll get a few -.  There's no need to put a bunch of rules or guidelines around it.  Those who deserve it will get it, those who do not will not.

Yes!  A truly decentralize non-authoritative rule system!  I like it!  Let the emergent order determine ranking!

Hahaha! I need to consider my audience better :)

I agree that ultimately reputation should make things easier for moderators rather than more difficult. I chose my words wisely, though: "guidelines" not "rules". If there's not even a loose definition of what reputation means, then it doesn't really mean anything. Imagine if you brought home a report card where you got 2 stars in English, a 7 in Math, and a Monkey in Art. What's that mean?

I've seen a lot of threads started by new users who say something like: I'm new to bitcoin. It's really interesting, but I'm worried about X and Y. Because of X and Y I think Z is inevitable.

No matter how thoughtful, polite, and respectful that user is. They will undoubtedly get responses like:

• OMG. You don't get Bitcoin!
• That's wrong!
• I'm so sick of n00bs!

Often, the new user is wrong or misunderstands something, but no-one bothers to provide a link to a wiki page that explains why they are wrong. Instead of a useful discussion that might be useful to other users, we just get some emotional knucklehead posts. Without a definition of reputation, I could easily see the new user getting lots of -1s and the knuckleheads getting +1s. Am I wrong to worry about this? I guess you guys are saying an undefined reputation system won't be perfect, but it will probably work better than I think it would?

You could be right Abe.  I guess I just have more faith in common sense, that people wouldn't rate down a newbie just for asking a commonly asked question.

*shrug*

I dunno.  :D

The thing about sense is that it's far from common. :)

I like the idea of rating posts rather than people, but it's likely to spin out of control either way. Remember when /. first started moderation? They had to add meta moderation to help balance the crazies and the cranks. It works better now, but it took a long time and is still a little questionable.

So did the system get turned off or did I get banned from using it?

You apparently need 250 posts to rate people.

Wow ... 250 ...  Looks like it will take me awhile to reach that at my rate of postings.  I guess I could go start trolling or posting my useless opinions to get my post count up but I won't.

I'll get there someday.    :) Post count +1  :)

Well, NOW you need 250 posts to rate people. I don't think that was true when the system came up.

Two hundred and fifty?!?  DAMMIT!!  That means I need......two more.  :D


I know everyone is concerned about the potential negative affects of the +, - rating system but I think it will work out pretty well.  Most of the people who are talking about it sound very reluctant to use the "-" button, as they should be.  I know for myself I will primarily be rewarding people for good posts and will only "smite" when someone is being dishonest or a REAL jackass.  Also, I plan on informing people when I give them a +1 and also in the rare cases I dish out a -1.  I think the feedback mechanism will be important for the rating system to work correctly.

I'm glad I rated a lot of ppl before this restriction  :)

isn't 250 a little high? Will take forever to get there.

Also I got a -1 already before the restriction was in place.  :'(

It's not fun if you are on the negative side - and don't even know why.

First thing I'm going to do when I get to 250 is give -1 rep to Sirius for putting this restriction.

+1
and one closer =)

Thanks for the info theymos.

I don't think that the sheer number of posts that someone makes is a good indicator of their contribution. There are a large number of "me too" and uninformative posts which make the forum less rewarding to follow. There was already an incentive to post indiscriminately via the "Newbie", "Junior Member", "Full Member" thing and this will just make it worse as people race to make 250 posts.

Others have similar concerns (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7267.msg108704#msg108704).

Gavin was throwing around the idea of switching to a mailing list, presumably because he too was having similar problems with the forum.
I was not particularly keen on a mailing list at that point but I'm much more equivocal now.

The value of ratings depends greatly on who's doing the rating. Given the fact that ratings are taken fairly seriously nowadays (seriously enough to exclude a large proportion of users from changing them), it needs to be more nuanced and transparent. It's at an unhappy half-way stage at the moment.

Is it Sirius who makes these forum decisions? Sirius alone or an ad-hoc committee?

ByteCoin

+1





 ;D

Are we going to use this thread just to increase our post counts until each of us reach 250? Maybe someone can start a weather topic.

Nice bright sun-shinny day here   :D

Post counts do indicate that a person has been able to survive for a while on the forum without being banned, which has some value. I agree that it's useless for measuring someone's contributions.


I find mailing lists difficult to deal with, but I would love to see a Bitcoin NNTP sever.


Mods and admins act mostly independently. I'm not going to change the limit, since I want the reputation system to be completely removed.

I hate this system.... I have haterz on me and I got -1s :(

I want the minus button removed, but I want bobR removed as well and no luck so far :(

I surprised myself with how upset I was when I saw someone had given me a negative vote. I can't really think what I've done to deserve it.

Then I saw that theymos had -2 and instantly felt a lot better!

The temptation for the mods to see who's rated them negatively must be overwhelming.

ByteCoin

how about instead of a post requirement, a rep requirement? you need net +5 to rep other people.

That would be an improvement. Can it be easily implemented?

Does anyone know what functionality this rating system facilitates? I haven't been able to find any documentation on what it can do.

ByteCoin

It's pretty simple:
https://i.imgur.com/OGA7X.png

Only admins can see the ratings in-depth, and only by downloading the database. There's no web interface that I can see.

Wow!  I bow to my powerful great overlords.  Great power yields great respect.  The people cheer!  :D

I agree.  abuse (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/102491) is fairly simple.


It will be difficult to determine whether a + or - was unjust, and especially in cases of one or more users using a greasemonkey script as linked above, it may be fairly difficult or spammalicious to moderate if too many users start noticeably abusing it, or even providing a not so noticeable form of abuse such as by modifying the script to include randomness in whether or not to + or - or skip altogether.

It makes sense that for such actions, there should be some sort of cost or expense.

In my opinion a childish group-think game system has no place on a serious forum like this.

I pay 10 BTC for a Greasemonkey or Firefox plugin that hides the ratings completely.

Seconded! And I have 7+/1-.

NO matter how good my reputation is, I just think it's a bad idea.

So I have received my first rateing and it is a -1  ??? So I gather I have no way of knowing who or why? Haven't a clue what this is about?

Don't worry about it. We're all getting mystery negatives. No-one is going to think bad of you for it.

Here you go:
http://pastebin.com/5aTU768g

Indeed. This "rating" system needs to be removed ASAP as it is not a useful feedback system.

If theymos could somehow get -3, it's proof that the ratings are broken.

+1 for removing the rating system.

Awesome job, correlation between intelligent posts and negative ratings established. Look at my threads on the equilibrium discussion, those supporting my opinion all got negative votes, especially those using terms like "invisible hand" and "tragedy of the commons". Read and weep, those of you who really understand economics.

I'm wearing my -2 proudly. This system behaves almost like politics; the populists get by far the majority of votes. The outcome does make the administration look a little ridiculous though, if I might add. ;)

Oh, if you want to join the troops shouting "you are wrong" at me... care to add some negative karma? It's a dilemma, to prove this post wrong, you have to add positive. But to try to drown my other arguments, you have to add negative. What do you do now, I wonder? :)


Edit: just wondering, is there any punishment if I reach 0/-20 or something?

+1

I'm all for an NNTP server, too!

Cheers,

+1

I don't see anything positive coming from this either. I think it'll just reinforce the circle-jerk that goes on in some threads.  I frequently clash with bitcoin2cash, caveden and that-golden-apple-guy-whos-name-i-forgot on various issues, among others. I enjoy the discussions, but I'm pretty sure I'll be moderated to oblivion by those who would prefer not to see different opinions. Not saying that the guys mentioned would do so, but I do feel that I'm in a minority with my opinion here, and that might not be a good thing for my karma.  :(

I booed the karma system because I thought it would lead to group-thinks and irrationality.

To be fair I don't think those guys will vote you down for disagreeing with them, they don't seem to be that type.  The rating system could be useful if people gave feedback on why they rate people, but they don't.  I've been trying to inform people why I rate them as I would want others to do the same.  But I just got a -1 and am not sure why.  :P  Oh well. 

I registered a new account and will not post with my normal account until this ridiculous rating system is abolished. It is sad to see that some people would go around and give everybody a -1 for no good reason.
What is even more sad is that they would have to be established forum members with more than 250 posts, so they should really know better. >:(

Please give me a feature "ignore all who down-vote this person". A little like the way freetalk does it. Auto-blacklist, their posts being gone from my vision. I know this makes it less anonymous, but it would improve the quality of this forum so much.

Someone who down-votes db, asdf or epii should not get responses from me. Neither do I want to read what they produce. Auto-filtering them out would be a blessing.

This way, the feature would suddenly become awesomely useful.

I decided after reading this thread to do just that, but I have a good reason: To help show how out of alignment with reality it is.

I smited all the most trustworthy people I could think of, and applauded all the jerks and newbies.

That's why I got the -1.  :D

If you havent been smited you are doing it wrong.  ;D

That's a pretty jerk thing to do.  How does that show how out of alignment it is?  The only way the system will work is if people actually take it seriously.  If even the established members like you act this way, then yes there really is no point.  But the only thing you are doing is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy...

So did you down vote me?

Why do you all take this so seriously?

It's a rating.  On the internet.  Given by random people.

So you get a -1?  So what?  Get over it.

Nope, missed you the first time.

But that's why you now have -2 :D

Before the rating system was implemented, I heard lots of people asking for it.  It was implemented.  I think to myself that it can be a good tool if people take it seriously.  Now people are complaining about it, and even the members who should know better are using it like a game.  So whatever, I'm not going to lose any sleep about it.  But don't fault me for trying to understand what's going on.

I don't remember which actually. You've been around a while and perhaps are 'trustworthy', yet I disagree with a lot of your posts philosophically (your discussions with bitcoin2cash come to mind, where I consistently agree with him, not you).

That probably means I up-voted you.

Lol  That's hilarious.  I guess it pays to play the devil's advocate.

Has it been established exactly what we're trying to achieve? It seems like a reputation system has been implemented possibly in the hope that it will "improve things" but even this is not made clear. How do we establish whether having ratings is better or not?

Personally I have the following problem; there are too many posts (especially "me too" or other lightweight posts) to read in order to stay informed about the good ideas. Reading the board now takes too much time.

I'd like to be able to nominate (without their knowledge) certain people to recommend posts to me. The recommenders would know only how many people rely on their recommendations as an incentive to keep recommending posts. I would not want to see any posts which had not been recommended. Recommended posts would have the names of the people who recommended them so I could add/delete recommenders on that basis. I can recommend posts myself and get statistics for who recommends in a similar fashion so that I can add them to my list.

I know ARS doesn't do this but could I set all posts below a certain reputation to be already read?

ByteCoin

Me too.

It is clear that the current reputation system is causing problem. One example incident goes like this:

A: You downvoted me, instead of answering me. Thanks

B: I didn't downvoted you.

At least in my Firefox, it freezes up without the following include/exclude

// @include        *://www.bitcoin.org/smf/*
// @exclude        *://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?board*
// @exclude        *://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php
// @exclude        *://www.bitcoin.org/smf/
// @exclude        *://www.bitcoin.org/smf

But now it's wonderful.  Thank you for making that!

Sorry. I thought I tested for stuff like that...

I added those excludes, plus some more checks:
http://pastebin.com/5aTU768g
My post is updated.

Slow down a little bit:

Step 1:  Try to fix the system
Step 2:  Try to build a better alternative to the system
Step 3:  If possibilities for step 1 and step 2 are not exhausted, retry the corresponding step
Step 4:  Then, attack the system with your integrity intact

What about if we let the experiment go on for a couple more days, and then if the community hasn't developed a useful way of using the ratings that doesn't sweat a couple of intentional abuses, try one of the more advanced options?  Until then I think we should all remember that this is just an experiment.  Try to make it useful, and if we aren't able to we can move on to other options.  Don't use it in a way that you don't want it to be used.  That's just not helpful for an experiment.

And awesome greasemonkey chops, theymos!  Just imagine if we were all on Apple's vision of the internet.  shiver

My opinion on reputation systems like these:

They create too much agreement. People generally +1 people who they agree with, and -1 people who they don't agree with. Since the reputation represents trust, people only agree with each other in order to gain reputation, and healthy debates aren't posted.

I think an upvote system works best, somewhat like Facebook's "like" system.

doood, that's kinda dangerous, now everybody who gets positive ratings might suspect that you think he's a jerk. Ahaha~ doood you hate us all!!  >:(  ::) (Sounds funny when reading this out in my mind... doood, seriously!)

Come on, what did people expect... an anonymous smite system, voting right based on the amount of posts written? This will systematically exclude certain kinds of people, very especially those who have little time to spare on Bitcoin. To make things worse, those abusing it will cast lots of votes, while those only using it for spam or most insightful posts will hardly use it. And there is apparently no punishment whatsoever for absurd voting behavior. I can't use the system, but from what I read, every user can vote all other users at once? So 20 users could give one another a reputation of +19 and the entire rest of the forum -20, and if done slowly enough, people can only guess who's involved?

I claim nobody ever even thought about the dynamics of this. I wrote a comment on it when I saw it, and then changed my mind and deleted it. Some people just wanna watch the world puddi. ;)


Edit: it was too late anyways, the system was already in place when I noticed. Don't worry, I'd have annoyed everybody majorly had I seen it in time. ;)

Thanks for the -1, it's a real honor?  ::)
As noted above it's just a silly Internet rating. But since we do real transactions with each other I think a bad system does more damage than no system at all. This rating is broken. I wish there was a way to "pay to rate". Let's say it costs .10 BTC to rate someone. Maybe people would not be so cavalier with their new powers.

Where would the money go? To the person you're voting for?

doood, you no longer think I'm a jerk or noob! *feels honored* ;D (you just changed a +1 to a -1, didn't 'ya!)

I must really hold myself back from playing along and producing posts like this one until I reach 250. Not that I want to rate anyone, just help putting the bad effects to display.

Actually, I just noticed something. This is messing with the post count statistics, one of the Bitcoin indicators I use. Newbies want to post faster to reach 250 and join the madness.

Let's just shut the thing down, okay? It was funny for a while, but there's just trouble ahead now.

Edit: Oh you. :P

by putting it to a vote?

me too =)

what about formatting posts that are not serious or do not advance the topic differently so they can easily be skipped?


this sounds quite complicated. What about a +1 for posts? good posts will stand out. The sum of +1 someone gets makes up the reputation.

-1 is really frustrating when implemented so intransparently and the advantage to +1-only is small.

That's what I was thinking. I'm not sure who would get the money for negative voting? Also, I understand there are many difficulties with implementing such a plan.

Thank god, no more of this...

Please, DO NOT PUT A SMITE SYSTEM

+1

I like this. It's much better in terms of feedback on what people don't want to see in particular threads, but doesn't go all the way to deleting which causes pain and frustration.

Just have a button that says "Help hide this post" or similar then make it hidden by default when it hits the threshold, readers can bring it back with one click.

Good riddance.

For once, everybody shares one opinion. Feels good, too. :)

Reminds me of "mark as spam" on Youtube. That, too, was abused quite a bit though, especially while not fine-tuned.

You're right that it's better than what we just had. But what about no system? I doubt any of these are going anywhere. If there was a way to distinguish good from medium content for everybody, we'd be using it to fix the world before the Bitcoin forum. Any positive voting system just makes popular statements even more popular. They work against debates, but debates are what a forum like this is, at least partially, about, right?

Vandroiy, you're right on the money.

TBH, I'd be looking for another bitcoin forum if they started hiding posts that were deemed "unpopular".  That's not what a forum is about.

If you want 100% quality content, go look for a blog or article.  A forum is for discussions of all kinds, and of all intelligence levels.

Wow looks like my systematic smite campaign may have worked...