Ciris: I'm passing this on to our web team and decision-makers now, so your vote will definitely be heard in the discussions that are going on regarding the forums.
BreOl72: Some suggestions:
1.) Get rid of the rep.
There is no obvious use in it, with the only exception of being an indicator on who is trustworthy enough to be allowed to partake in GA's.
2.) If you really think, your customers need some kind of e-Peen (and some threads of late seem to encourage that view), why not do, what GamersGate (
note the s, this is about the shop, not the idiots convention) does, and give your customers experience points, based on their purchases - would everyone show, who is an actual customer (
aka: an active buyer) and who's only here for the freebies and GA's.
3.) Since lately a lot of drama threads started about the loss of rep.
Now, let's say (
for whatever reasons), you don't want to get rid of the rep, and you also don't want to "reward" purchases... then why not change the "minus"-button to a "hide"-button instead?
It would work exactly as it does now, (
= hiding posts, you don't want to see) - BUT... without actually having a de-repping effect on a users rep-number...(
as it has now).
That way, rep would only ever
increase, but never
decrease.
And its worth as an indicator for ...well, whatever... would still stand, as people who don't contribute to the forum in a positive, and / or constructive way, wouldn't receive many upvotes (
but many hides, instead).
4.) Using the forum for the last days proves one thing to me: We definitely need a "Block User" / "Ignore User" - Button. Some of the threads that were made in the last few days (and some that were made some longer time ago, but then to a lesser extent), made me aware, that I would be a much more happy camper, if only I could choose to hide some users and their worldview from my sight, completely.
Thank you for your time - and maybe you include some of my suggestions into your discussions.
true, thats kinda like the way i see it aswell.
'rewarding' users , be carefull with that, cause some might be going bananas, cause when they get reward scores/points this will create a competition, now they do it because they wanna help, when it gets 'rewarded'
things might go out of control.
I've been around for a long while and i know what can happen, been a mod in small community 6 years now ( 400 users max.) and believe me >50 users and it will get out of control, furthermore i believe that if and when forum mods should be needed for, i think it be better to have paid mods, like official GOG staff that does coding, mailing and support, this way it will stay professional and there will never be a reason that people might be thinking that differnces will be made between users.
Free mods is okay if the community is a non profit forum, free site builders, and poem forums can handle it with free mods, but as soon as its a commrcial thing it be better to have an official GOG team as forum staff , and fully paid like normal GOG staff.