Shoutbox

Good idea.

Some points (didn't think much time about them, and i might be a bit biased , so feel free to add)

Mybb Reputation System:
Pros:
-Handy to vote on each post.
Cons:
-As it is based in a fixed image meter, it won't be shown if there is not a high number of votes and it's not representative of the number of users that voted about the user.
-As everyone can vote on every post, the system can be abused in order to put someone's reputation down if he is hated by another user. The same happens with positive reputation.

My suggestion
Pros:
-People can read exactly what people think about someone and why they rate them positively or negatively.
-Neutral reputations are useful for kind "warnings" when you see someone is not behaving very well or something bothers you.
-The rated user can go and check the comments other users made about him/her to see how (s)he can change in order not to be banned or constantly hated
-As only one vote counts for each user per user, it can't be abused.
-The rating/comment can be changed at any time reflecting the personality or behaviour changes over time.
-As it would be displayed as a number, it's easier to instantly spot if people like the user or not, and how many people think that way.
-The system is usually known by many people because similar ones are used in online auctions sites.
-As there is a comment system, people won't just rate without reason -- and if they do, their comments would be removed. In the standard reputation system, there is no way to know if someone rates because he just hates the other user or with a real reason.

Cons:
-It's not coded
(Open to more suggestions about cons.)

And to explain each system, i guess posting these two posts (plus the objective pro/cons of each one) is enough:

quote:

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Originally posted by WDZ

quote:

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Originally posted by Jeronimo
I see there is a reputation with a little green square. Is a simple case of good reputation or bad reputation? Or are there levels of reputation?

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Every user has a "score," a positive or negative number based on the number of votes for/against them. If you have many votes in one "direction," you can have up to ten of the little or images. There haven't been many votes on the community forums, so you can't see them yet.

quote:

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My thoughts are, with so many members, are people going to vote for each other??

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I think only elite members and forum staff should be able to vote, so there's no abuse, and the reputations are given by trusted people. When they see a post they like or don't like, they should vote. If you disagree, please say so.

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[more information should be added about Mybb's system]

quote:

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Originally posted by Guido
However... I just came up with an idea (and please read it till the end): making a sort of "comments" feature for each user, so we could leave comments (1 per user, of course) about a certain user, and qualify it as positive/neutral/negative just like in Ebay and those kind of sites. So, basically, the reputation can be a number:

Patchou (34)
Guido (0)
Batchou (-12)

I think that's more fair, plus the text comments are useful to know more about the persons' character and attitude. It's a good extension to the reputations system. Additionally, if someone is constantly flamed and doesn't really understand why, he can read his comments by other users to see how he/she can change his attitude in order not to be banned or just ignored.

So, back to the example, if next week I find out Patchou... erhm... has been logging in as another user and spamming all the forums... I can go to his profile (or click on the link in his reputation number), update my comment to "This guy started being nice, but now he's spamming all the boards" and setting my opinion on him "Negative".

Thus, Patchou's reputation would be 32 (two less), because I had previously voted him positively.

Neutral comments would be just "gentle warnings" to the users that are evidently making mistakes but maybe not in purpose.


Here again, we can make admins/mods/elites/members/newbies' comments count as 1 point, 2 points, 5 points (or whatever), depending on the group. Or just make all groups count as 1 point per comment, to make it more fear

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