Posted by Kromey at 12:58am Dec 30 '10that I see:
1) Exactly what you just stated: They're typically based upon lifetime post count, which means that someone who's been absent for a long time could still show a very high status if they were very active prior to disappearing.
2) They take no account of content into consideration. Someone who consistently makes thoughtful, intelligent, and/or insightful contributions to discussion should hold a higher status than someone who merely trolls, even if the troll has posted more.
To solve number 1, perhaps a system that takes into account a few different numbers: number of posts over the last 6 months; lifetime average posts per month; rolling 6-month average post count (i.e. average posts per month over the last 6 months); and/or rolling 2-year post count (e.g. average posts per 6-month period going back 2 years (4 periods)). Weight each of these numbers to something that seems reasonable, with the idea being that someone who posts a helluva lot for 2 years but then disappears for 6 months should still have a relatively high status but should be lower than someone who just joined 6 months ago and has been posting liking crazy ever since.
On number 2, most sites can't really solve this, but 4K can: Weight posts based on the rating received. Of course, this depends upon people rating responsibly (which more-or-less seems to be the case these days), and also begs the question of how to treat posts that never received enough ratings to show a rating (treat them as the average 3?), but conceptually the idea here would be to reward people who consistently get high ratings with a higher status, while punishing people who typically troll with a lower status.
Just by way of example, a rating of 3 would carry a "weight" of 1.0, while ratings of 1, 2, 4, and 5 would carry weights of 0.8, 0.9, 1.1, and 1.2, respectively; to figure out a person's post "count", you would add up the weight corresponding to their posts' ratings, e.g. someone with posts rated 3, 3, 4, 3, 5 would have 1+1+1.1+1+1.2=5.3 "points" toward their status. (Naturally, posts rated between these numbers would get a different rate, i.e. 3.5 would be 1.05. Basically, this example proposes that a post's weight be calculated as ([average post rating]-3)/10+1.00, e.g. (3.5-3)/10+1.00=1.05.)
1) Exactly what you just stated: They're typically based upon lifetime post count, which means that someone who's been absent for a long time could still show a very high status if they were very active prior to disappearing.
2) They take no account of content into consideration. Someone who consistently makes thoughtful, intelligent, and/or insightful contributions to discussion should hold a higher status than someone who merely trolls, even if the troll has posted more.
To solve number 1, perhaps a system that takes into account a few different numbers: number of posts over the last 6 months; lifetime average posts per month; rolling 6-month average post count (i.e. average posts per month over the last 6 months); and/or rolling 2-year post count (e.g. average posts per 6-month period going back 2 years (4 periods)). Weight each of these numbers to something that seems reasonable, with the idea being that someone who posts a helluva lot for 2 years but then disappears for 6 months should still have a relatively high status but should be lower than someone who just joined 6 months ago and has been posting liking crazy ever since.
On number 2, most sites can't really solve this, but 4K can: Weight posts based on the rating received. Of course, this depends upon people rating responsibly (which more-or-less seems to be the case these days), and also begs the question of how to treat posts that never received enough ratings to show a rating (treat them as the average 3?), but conceptually the idea here would be to reward people who consistently get high ratings with a higher status, while punishing people who typically troll with a lower status.
Just by way of example, a rating of 3 would carry a "weight" of 1.0, while ratings of 1, 2, 4, and 5 would carry weights of 0.8, 0.9, 1.1, and 1.2, respectively; to figure out a person's post "count", you would add up the weight corresponding to their posts' ratings, e.g. someone with posts rated 3, 3, 4, 3, 5 would have 1+1+1.1+1+1.2=5.3 "points" toward their status. (Naturally, posts rated between these numbers would get a different rate, i.e. 3.5 would be 1.05. Basically, this example proposes that a post's weight be calculated as ([average post rating]-3)/10+1.00, e.g. (3.5-3)/10+1.00=1.05.)
There are two major flaws in most systems - Kromey