Please Abolish Member Rating

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I'm going to repeat just a little bit of information about how the rating system will change, but please keep in mind I can't commit to a date. There's only one of me.Our post-of-the-month system is manual, and the new rating system option will automate this. Rather than rating a message you'll nominate it for post-of-the-month. The number of nominations will be displayed with the message. Nominated posts will appear in the post-of-the-month forum. Winners of post-of-the-month will see a little icon (a star or some such) displayed with the rest of their member information. The star would also be a link to that message. Someone who acquired a bunch of stars would be an amazing individual.The software will make possible other time periods than just a month. There could be post-of-the-day, week, month, year, decade. I'm unsure how best to take advantage of this possibility right now.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

When I change the rating system over to the Post of the Month option, the current system will still remain an option, but one we won't be using here. However, the current system will also undergo changes that take into account what I've learned while it has been in place. In fact, it is so I could learn its strengths and weaknesses that it has remained in place despite complaints. Some of the changes to the current system:

• There will be a time horizon settable by board administration. Ratings older than the time horizon (3 months, 6 months, whatever) will be dropped from a member's rating, though they'll remain with the message ratings.
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• Indiscriminate message ratings will be detected (don't ask how quite yet, but I have some ideas) and the member's message rating permissions removed automatically by the software.
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• You'll be able to get a list of who rated a message and what rating they gave it.

When complaining about the current system keep in mind that discussion boards survive by making themselves into interesting places to be. In that light ratings systems can be one source of interest and even controversy that keeps people coming back (just for the record, here at EvC Forum I prefer to avoid using approaches that inherently generate controversy). This board was never as active (about twice as active as now) as when we had unlimited discussion of moderator actions, and much of that extra activity (about 50,000 posts per year) was moderation-related.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director