Big One: Reputation And Rating System Coming

This is one of the larger updates to the Version 4 system in a long time. A new reputation and rating system will be added sooner or later.

This will be very different from the older Version 3 rating system of "Good/Neutral/Bad" and will focus on the content of the post.

Instead of just good or bad, you'll be given a few options to choose from and will be able to make a comment on why you are rating this way. Most positive options will be pushed to the rep and rating of the member automatically. Negative options will require a further moderation of the rating itself. ALL members will be able to moderate ratings.

This is Slashdot style, by the way. Meta-moderation means that you can see the rating and the post it was attached to, but not the member that made the rating. You'll be able to approve or disapprove of the rating. I'll probably add some functionality here and there, but the main thing is to have concurrence. If the meta-mod agrees with the rating, the rating will be "approved" and will be reflected.

Reputation and ratings are different. Ratings will be a rolling 30 day thing while Rep will be lifetime. Your rating will also control the posting flood control time. If you are spamming and receive negative ratings, your flood control timer will increase. If you get too many negative points, you'll be given a temporary leave of a day (unsure if this will be).

The point of the system is to put the members in control of the forums and leave out any need for dedicated moderation. I really think this could work if it is done correctly.

You'll be able to hide posts that don't meet the threshold of viewing and likewise for members.

I already thought of ways to mitigate the "I don't agree with you" type of ratings. There will be an option to basically rate the post down without dropping the rating of the member. This way, you can rate down useless posts without really rating the member down.

Comments are welcome and this will take a few weeks to even begin to take shape.

Just putting this out there, but I've always thought that "Your opinion is the same as mine so + rep" ratings are just as bad as "I don't agree with you" ones.

There will be an "agree" option that will only rate the post, not add to the rating or rep.

Reputation has been scrapped and the points system will be used in its place. This way, the points system not only gauges participation, but also reputation.

If you get bad ratings, your points will go down. I want to award rep for participation and the points system already does this.