We always try to judge people we meet based on attributes like their age, their education & designation, their salary etc. We do this to adjust our behavior towards them before we are sure how to behave around them. Same goes for the forum world, age on forum, designation based on their post count or their achievements based on the reputation points or likes.
Now each of these have their merits and flaws.
Age on forum -
A high value may show that he is a seasoned user.
It can also be that he has simply registered before many others and is dormant.
A low value usually means a newbie but is it right to dismiss him entirely because he came to the forum later.
Post count
High value suggests a contributing member which is almost always good for all.
He can also be a spammer with low quality posts so you cannot always trust him based on this count.
Low post count is usually a lurker but he could also be someone who focuses only on detailed and quality posts.
Likes/reputation
A high number of likes is a good indicator that the posts are useful and likeable.
A low number of likes will help to identify user who has not participated in the forum but that may not always be the case.
Anyone who was a good contributor in early years of TE always had high reputation point and anyone new can hardly ever match up to that. This due to the fact that reputation points were no longer being used and the rep power of new users was not high enough to give sufficient rep points at a time. So we needed to do away with this non-functional system.
Now considering all of that, it is usually one or the combination of above that we use to build our opinion about someone. It then makes sense to have a metric which is a combination of all and goes further to reward participation.
Trophy Points
Following is the sample of how trophy points are awarded.
Going forward this list can be expanded upon to include reviews and guides, most helpful answers etc and it will become even more meaningful.
What makes it even more functional is the fact that trophy points does not discriminate between a member with 3k post against a member with 4K post. It is based on milestones and not ranks.
And that is why I do not want to have post count, age on forum or likes to be displayed on the postbit when we have a much more inclusive metric to base our opinion on (when we need to). Anyone who needs to do a deeper background check of a member can further open his member info popup by clicking on his name, we don't need to this all the time and it takes a fraction of a second. Or visit his profile to even check his recent posts.
Lastly, I understand it is a big changes from how most of us have been reading into postbit info but give it sufficient time. Also if needed we can of course look at bringing back the post count and other details.
Now each of these have their merits and flaws.
Age on forum -
A high value may show that he is a seasoned user.
It can also be that he has simply registered before many others and is dormant.
A low value usually means a newbie but is it right to dismiss him entirely because he came to the forum later.
Post count
High value suggests a contributing member which is almost always good for all.
He can also be a spammer with low quality posts so you cannot always trust him based on this count.
Low post count is usually a lurker but he could also be someone who focuses only on detailed and quality posts.
Likes/reputation
A high number of likes is a good indicator that the posts are useful and likeable.
A low number of likes will help to identify user who has not participated in the forum but that may not always be the case.
Anyone who was a good contributor in early years of TE always had high reputation point and anyone new can hardly ever match up to that. This due to the fact that reputation points were no longer being used and the rep power of new users was not high enough to give sufficient rep points at a time. So we needed to do away with this non-functional system.
Now considering all of that, it is usually one or the combination of above that we use to build our opinion about someone. It then makes sense to have a metric which is a combination of all and goes further to reward participation.
Trophy Points
Following is the sample of how trophy points are awarded.
Now go through this link and have a look at what all gets rewarded and you will notice that anyone who has crossed 50 reward points has been around enough and contributed enough to know the TE culture - http://www.techenclave.com/community/help/trophies
Going forward this list can be expanded upon to include reviews and guides, most helpful answers etc and it will become even more meaningful.
What makes it even more functional is the fact that trophy points does not discriminate between a member with 3k post against a member with 4K post. It is based on milestones and not ranks.
And that is why I do not want to have post count, age on forum or likes to be displayed on the postbit when we have a much more inclusive metric to base our opinion on (when we need to). Anyone who needs to do a deeper background check of a member can further open his member info popup by clicking on his name, we don't need to this all the time and it takes a fraction of a second. Or visit his profile to even check his recent posts.
Lastly, I understand it is a big changes from how most of us have been reading into postbit info but give it sufficient time. Also if needed we can of course look at bringing back the post count and other details.
