Much Ado About Points

@ Kurtni
Maybe we could have it so you can change the year, but not the day and month? Users could conceal their age while still receiving birthday points.

I really like the idea of losing points if you change the date of your birthday, though. That seems like the easiest way to go about it, and also "matches" with the point gain/loss system on the rest of the site.

Maybe it could be once you've been on the site for a year you get some points? Since then you would have had one birthday and you can still conceal your real birthday/age and not receive a penalty for changing it once you're more comfortable with the site.

^Points for mibbaversaries? I like that.

And then we can just get birthday balloons back cough DO IT cough

@ battalions
Yeah, Mibbaversaries :)

The birthday balloons were cool though....

@ battalions
That would be nice! I was never on when there was birthday balloons, but at least we could have that back as well as have points for Mibbaverseries.

Mibbaverseries would be a good alternative to birthdays, I think. That can't be changed.

@ dru can fly!
It would all be less complicated, definitely, and we could still recognize birthdays if we brought the birthday balloons back!

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As a better alternative, I'm going to change that option on the list to 'Mibbaverseries,' not 'birthdays.'

What about points as prizes for the monthly contests, contest monsters, etc?

@ dru can fly!
Do you mean the Mibba Magazine hosted contests?

@ water's cascade.
Does the Magazine host comment monsters? I knew they hosted the other ones, but yeah. Anything official, I mean.

@ dru can fly!
I'm sorry, what are comment monsters?

@ water's cascade.
It's a contest to encourage users to leave lots of feedback on the site.

@ water's cascade.
That's the contest we do every so often to see who can comment on the most stories (it might include poems) in a month.

@ Kurtni
@ dru can fly!

Oh, okay. Hmm, I've never seen that. I'll keep an eye out next time! haha. I like the idea of points for the official contests, and if we establish the idea of users giving points to other users for any of the countless reasons, that can also be used as contest prizes.

I've honestly never heard of comment monsters. If users were to get points for it, I think it should be put up more around the site. Like, on the homepage or something... Maybe someone could write an article about it? O.o

@ water's cascade. @ ladyschrei

Link to Comment Monsters.

@ dru can fly!
Thanks :)

@ dru can fly!
Oh, okay. Wow, that looks intense X3
I think points would be awesome as a prize for that.

I'm going to use this thread to write the next featured suggestion article, in case anyone had any new ideas or old ones they wanted to throw their two cents into =]

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One thing I'd really like to get opinions on is point value. If an article is worth 50 points, how much is a story worth? A poem? A post on the message board?

I think stories will be kind of complicated to assign point values to. Dujo and I were brainstorming one day, and decided that perhaps stories should get two types of points: word count points and completion points. So, the word count points would be proportional to how long your story is. The completion points would be awarded by a story editor, and would be a set amount every user who posts a completed story (checks the completed box) gets, so long as it follows all of Mibba's rules.

I like this system because it takes into account that quantity doesn't necessarily equal quality. A 100 word drabble can be just as good as a 50,000 word novel.

@ Kurtni
I think having two kinds of points for stories is a really great idea. But, it is tricky to figure out how to assign points to everything else.
I don't exactly know how to reason with this, but of course, I think completed stories should be worth more than articles.
Maybe poems could be worth 50 points as well, more or less. (Just throwing ideas out there - I'm terrible with things like this!)

A question, though - once the points system is in effect, will stories that are already completed be counted, too? Like, every completed one-shot that I wrote before this goes into effect - will there be points for those, too?