Rep and You: Everything you were wondering about the rep system

[El Cid]

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This was originally researched by Megabyte, from the TAO forums, and I am reposting this with his permission. Red Devil also added some additional notes that applied to this forum only. If you find there are things that are different here, or if you would like something added, let me know. -El Cid

The LF forum utilizes a reputation system. This allows the people who use these boards to "rate" what they think of the posts of the other users.

"What is my rep?"
Your reputation, or rep, is a compilation of what all the other players in the boards think of your posts. This is represented under your name by a box system, and more precisely in your "User CP" section at the top.


"How can I tell what my rep is?"
The basic system runs in a green (good) or red (bad) rep. Every time you like/dislike the post of another user, and want to show your appreciation, you hit the "rep" button under their avatar on that post, and click the appropriate option. You may also provide a small explanation or random thing with this rep.

When checking your own rep, the simple means is to look under your avatar on your posts and see the boxes. Everybody starts at the boards with 1 green box. As you post, and people rep you based on your posts, this will change.

The more precise means is to look into your "User CP" section. This provides a numeral display for your reputation standing. The higher this number, the more rep you have. For every 100 points, you receive an additional green box under your avatar to show how much people like what you have to say.*
* Once you reach your 7th box, each subsequent box is 200 rep (light colored boxes), and may very well increase

If your posts are unpopular by the members of the LF community, your rep number will go down by half a pos rep power. Eventually, if that trend continues, your rep box will turn red, reflecting the dislike the users here have for what you have to say.

"What does my rep do?"
Your name turns blue after 150 rep. You get a little saying when you point the mouse over your rep boxes. There isn't any other "official" benefit to having a high rep, nor a penalty for a low one.

HOWEVER, its important to realize that people will tend to ignore, or disregard what you have to say if your rep consistently goes downhill and stays red. As the rep system represents what the players here think of what you have to say, you might consider adjusting what you post (or how you post it) to stop the negative reps.


"What are reasons to rep other people?"
You can rep other people for any reason you want to really. There is not set standard that says your must rep people for such and such reason (be it good or bad). Over time, it is ideal if you come up with your own ideas for this which represent your values of what should, and should not, be posted on the LF forums.

Other Reputation notes:
1. You cannot rep the same person repeatedly for the same post. Only once.

2. You must spread reputation to various people before repping the same person again (one of the most commonly quoted lines on the boards these days I might add). This is prevent people from abusing the rep system by boosting or lowering specific people's reps in manner's other than the system's intent.

3. There is a variance to how much the rep's from people affect your numeral score. In other words, how much Gypsy's reps will change your score is different than how much IROK's reps will change your score.

The amount of points you can affect another person's rep score for (be it positive, or negative), is based on a mildly complicated system that I won't go into detail about. If a mod or other use wishes to share it, they may. Suffice to say that people who've spent more time and posted more often will find their rep carries more weight.

4. Your reps are NOT anonymous. All members can see who they were repped by. This should be an encouragement for you to rep people (be they for good or bad) for reasons that have at least SOME sort of legitimacy.

5. To see the community members with the highest reputation numbers, go *HERE*

6. Here's the system that might help you find out how many points you're reps are worth..
1pt per 200 days on the LF boards
1pt per (at least 500, could be higher) points of reputation
1pt per 6000 posts on the boards
1 for getting the first 30 posts

Hopefully, this explains the basics of the rep system to those of you who are new and unfamiliar with it.

The Blue Rep:
In the Rep system, all rep is not rated equally. Its a weighted system where people who are more established can not only rep for more pts (be it positive or negative) but can also affect people at different levels in the rep system.

Blue rep is a rep from a person who is too low to affect your own reputation rating. Whether is was intended to be positive or negative, it has no effect on you. While this may seem unfair to newer people, it serves many purposes and is more realistic to how your own rep standing is within the community.

For example:
An established person neg reps a new to the community for foul language in their post. The new person, behaving in a childish manner, negs them back as "revenge". The new person would have little rep to their name here in the community, as a sign of how their opinion stands amongst the rest of the community. Because of this, their neg rep back at the established person would not lower his rating, while his original neg rep would affect the new person's.

This is just a case example meant to demonstrate how the Blue rep works. It helps prevent abuse of the rep system (you can't create a dozen new forum accounts and neg rep an established person here repeatedly to lower their rating for example) and it helps show where you stand within the community. After all, someone who is well thought of, and who's posts people take note of, wouldn't exactly be affected too much if someone who was new to the community didn't like what he had to say. While if established people have problems with a new person, that person's standing in the opinion of the community will obviously go down.

Note: This doesn't mean that your rep is necessarily what people think of you. However, it should be a sign that if you find your rep going down consistently for certain behaviors, that the community as a whole doesn't appreciate it and you should stop.


More info on Blue Reps... (May be white or other colors on other themes)
Apparently you must hit 30 posts for any of your reps to count at all. From 1-29, all your reps are blue, no matter what your rep level is. I'm sure for most of you spammers, this isn't an issue. But nice to see there's some means of keeping new accounts from just repping away the moment they're created. Also, if your rep is negative, your rep gives a blue box as well.

[| Red Devil |]

Edited a bit for the changes shin has implemented in the system

[El Cid]

Thanks for your edits Red Devil. And thanks to everybody that sent me PMs with corrections.

I think the main critique I had was that we do have a "tangible benefit" here for rep. Actually, I think that the main problem with Megabyte's original post was that it was rather opinionated. I tried to remove most of the "opinions" and just keep the facts.

The post has been cleaned-up again. So let me know if you have any additional comments/corrections.

-El Cid

[| Red Devil |]

Fixed the last paragraph to put the correct info there

[dan7]

Originally Posted by OmegaShin

This took me a lot of time to implement but it works almost completely now, i must just refine it.

From now on there will be different levels of users on these boards. You all start as normal registered members, but your membergroup will automatically change depending on certain statistics.

Basically you get "promoted" depending on your post count and your reputation level. You can also be demoted in case of a big amount of negative rep.

The usergroups levels are as follow:

- Registered users: Your starting group. No special priviledges.

*Requirements have been raised for all User groups. You now must have a certain amount of rep, post count and days registered on the forums to achieve each level.

- Level 1 Groups: These groups have not very high requirements. They display a light blue color on your username and grant you a higher pm box limit.
Admired Req:
Rep: 500
Days Registered: 60
Post Count: 500


- Level 2 Groups: These groups have medium requirements. They display a bold light blue color on your username and grant you a much higher pm box limit and a higher picture uploading limit.
Worshiped Req:
Rep: 1500
Days Registered: 60
Post Count: 1000

- Level 3 Groups: High requirements groups. Display a purple color on your username and grant huge pm box plus a variety of forum priviledges (i.e. the possibility of opening and closing your own threads at your wish)
Super Poster Req:
Rep: 1500
Days Registered: 300
Post Count: 10000


- Level 4 Groups: Very high requirements groups. Display a bold purple color on your username, grant all forum priviledges of previous groups plus a few more.
Ultimate Poster Req:
Rep: 2000
Days Registered: 300
Post Count: 16000


- Level 5 Group: Only 1 group for this level (I don't know if anyone will ever reach the requirements). Info on this special group is secret.


The promotion system is still something very new to be seen on a forum, so let me know if you encounter any bugs. However i tested it all night and it looks like it works well. When you reach the requirement don't expect to be passed immediately onto the special group since the forum automatically runs the promotion system every hour.

Enjoy.