Here's an idea I thought about after posting here about how stars should have another way to be earned besides quests and merits. How about a system where you can upvote a post? That way only quality posts can be rewarded. This clearly rewards quality posts instead of spam. A point one time brought up to me by @nichodemus was that what about the users who ask for upvotes? and for some reason users upvote the post anyway?
for example
"Upvote this post if you're bored"
"Upvote this post if you think there should be a change in the way..."
Those posts can simply be negated by having them deleted by a moderator. This means a rule must be added to the list of forum rules:
No "begging" for upvotes Users aren't allowed to ask for upvotes for their posts. Any post considered to be "begging" will be removed right away.
Limiting this to only the forums makes it much easier to maintain. There are enough mods who frequent the forums to keep it clean. Yes there's a risk for more spam, but surely enough it will reward quality posts and attract more users to the forums. Making it lively again yay.
Why not implement this idea to comments too? because the comments system is too hard to monitor due to the huge amount of users who frequent games.
Can I also note that this idea just came to my mind, so I'm well aware it has many holes, and many more advantages I probably haven't thought off yet.
The key problem, as far as I am aware, is that few people will properly look at and see what is in fact a good post and will just upvote any nonsense or meaningless posts.
I like the idea, some posts realy deserve this, but there should be some kind of filters to choose forum topics like last active, last created and most liked/viewed. There should also be an option to downvote posts that users don't like.
@swarmlord2 I think the line between a good post and a bad one is pretty clear. There aren't actually that many bad posts, there are mostly normal ones and good ones. A good post is subjective though, but to me, that only adds an interactive element to the forums. It's up to people, that's the point.
A good post can be measured by how many likes it has, and it should be looked at in this perspective.
To a lot of people here, it's easy to tell the difference between a long post, and a good post.
What I mean is that some people, upon seeing something of little worth or significance, may just upvote because they can. Normally, I wouldn't care about that, but if this would be used to give stars, a valuable thing, then the fact that a silly or simply stupid thing which draws attention and is on a more active forum could get a bunch of upvotes, and therefore give the person stars, is something which I would find wrong.
hmm... stack exchange is a q&a network that has a voting system and very effective rules to regulate it. by taking a look at some of those rules, we can create a rough sketch of the system, and then improve it until it's ready to reward quality posts without allowing spam:
You have a limited number of votes per day, so use them wisely.
what about 50 votes per day?
When a single user continually votes (up or down) on many of your posts within a short period of time, the system considers these votes to be invalid and removes them.
this prevents users from creating alternate accounts for the sake of upvoting their own posts by invalidating their votes. speaking of alts, should they be unable to upvote or downvote altogether?
If such a voting pattern continues to happen between two users mutually or from one user towards another [i.e if a user keeps rapidly upvoting/downvoting posts of another user], or otherwise falls outside of normal voting patterns, moderators and/or developers may investigate the matter; intentionally voting merely to reduce or inflate another user's reputation [this is the equivalent of stars] is considered abuse.
probably we don't have to ban alts from voting. this rule can get a user who upvotes his/her own posts with an alt banned from voting, alongside with his/her alt
All the reputation [star] changes from a single user's deletion are rolled into a single event... labelled "User was removed".
i disagree with this. upvotes & downvotes coming from a specific account shouldn't disappear when the account gets deleted or banned from something that doesn't involve voting or posting
