I've been getting and reading some really worthy replies on the forum and I kept thinking about why there's no appreciation button. There should be something like "Thank you" or "I Appreciate This" or something like that button to really thank users for the time they took to write and to help other people.
Kinda like "Askers choice" Yeah I mean it may show which answers helped, but how would this be displayed? Also who could pick this anyone? IF anyone then anyone could be picked... The Idea may be helpful, but one of the ways you can see the "best answer" is look and see if there are links to something, or see if an admin/mod/knight replied. I like the Idea, we just need to flesh it out.
I went to a forum before and they had something kinda like this, it was like a 'thumbs up/down' sort of thimg. You could only do it for one post and you have to explain why you chose this post for it to be thumbs up/down. It could probably work, it could even be in that empty space under the username, armatar, and number of posts. Look at it... so empty.
Oh I see kinda like it would show thumbs then the number by up and down... Yeah thats pretty good. And you only choose one per forum yeah I do like the tally idea. That way if a stupid one gets picked by someone the others that are better can be more voted upon.
There could also be a Rep system, where you can give someone rep for a good or helpful post. I've seen this before.
This feature, though somewhat easy to abuse, could actually play out well. I've seen it on other sites, and for the most part, it seems to work just fine.
That is, it works fine on two conditions:
1. There must be a limit to how much rep you can give someone at a certain time. This seems pretty obvious, but if you give everyone unlimited rep power, anyone can give anyone else as much rep as they want, and pretty soon you'll see people with sky-high rep for no reason, and it will defeat the entire purpose of the feature.
2. There cannot be a button for negative rep; only positive. You may be wondering what the point of a system like this would be if you can only give positive rep and not negative rep. The simple answer is, you don't have to give negative rep for the system to work properly. The people with less rep given to them already have the lowest amount of rep, so there's no reason to give those people less than they already have (assuming that they would be the people to whom others would give negative rep). And if you have a grudge against somebody, you might be inclined to send a negative rep that person's way as often as you can, so in a way it's much easier to abuse than a positive rep button.
It won't surprise you to hear I'm usually and instinctively against all these innovative gadgets and widgets & things (strong believer in keep it simple & don't fix what's not broken, and keep it acessible if you can to those of us who communicate by homing pigeons still), however I've seen this to work to an extent, indeed after my initial misgivings; in that it offers a way to express one's appreciation of posts, without feeling compelled to add the dreaded "Me too!" comment.
The option to dislike/downvote I'd be dead against, for obvious reasons. Another thing is that it will tend to have people read more into it than there is, and so getting competitive about it, commenting on or complaining about it out loud, etc. Whereas really it's so random as to be meaningless, and no deeper meaning should be read into it.
But so it does get a highly cautious and reticent "yay" from me (Does that matter a bit? No idea, really.)
Well a system could be made if a user rates more than 5 comments within an hour it gets some timed restriction from rating any more comments/replies, or something like that.
Thanks for the feedback on the suggestion, guys! :3
I like the idea of giving positive reinforcement, but as @MacII pointed out, it could turn into a competition, and people could start to feel entitled to receive this reward and complain when they don't. What also could happen is that people will work out deals with their friends so that they just give each other as much reinforcement as the site allows them to, regardless of what aforementioned users actually did to earn this reinforcement.
.. true that. And I would also hate to see on the bottom of the post " please rep if it helped ". How about it to be possible to be given only to knights/mods/admins?
I could see a like/dislike system working out, not perfectly though. I think as R2 said the system of rep or whatever should be located underneath the name and armatar in that creepy bare space.
Heh, I'm glad to see positive feedback on this, but it's still up to the Administrators to decide whether this is good or not. I just hope they will do something like this, though.
It could be like the creator of the thread can pick which one is the correct answer, and the person with the correct answer gets a few armor points or something.
Speaking of armor points, they should bring those back, it encouraged people to stay active because everyone wanted to be that guy with the shiny king badge.
Ever since it's removal I've noticed drop in activity of all members, including myself, I used to come on here and be like "Just 500 more points till I can get silver!". Now I come on and am like: "Umm... What now?".
And yes there are quests, but they get you nothing. Yes, badges didn't give anything either but they were just more... fun.
