Much Ado About Points

I think points for being recommended is a good idea too, and maybe different amounts for having a blog being recced and a story being recced.

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I would also like a way to know where all my points are coming from. Obviously now it's not an issue, but once we get points for more things, I think it would be handy to know I've obtained say 100 points from posting in forums, and another 100 for having my stuff being recced. Then I would also be able to tell that people like my articles more than my stories (for example).

If we have 50 points for articles and stories, I think we should have at least 30 for poems. It's unfair to devalue them when they're a bonfide creative writing medium and length doesn't necessarily mean effort. Poems can be very carefully edited even if they're extremely short.

Poems are already so under the radar on mibba, I feel that giving them such a low point value would only increase this feeling. It's also be unfair to the poets on mibba.

@ The Rumor
I agree.

@ fantail.angel
I like the idea of knowing where the points are coming from, but how would that work? If you got one point from posting in the forums, I think it would be a little irritating to get alerts for every forum post (of course, not counting the General forums and such). There would have to be some way to group them together - say, every 50 points you receive from posts, you would get a notification. Does that make sense?

Instead of notifications we could have a page where you can see where you get your points from. That or you only get notifications for reccomendations or the like. I personally think it would be really irritating to have alerts for all my points.

@ The Rumor
I love that idea - it would definitely be better than alerts.

You don't get alerts with points now, they just show up, which I personally like. If you do something worth points, you'll know that and the award is an automatic thing.

@ Kurtni
That is true. I don't know why I didn't think of that.

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I still like the idea of points for Mibbaverseries.

AmorarEsDeVivir:

On a web site where so many people are posting their work and not as many are giving solid feedback, I think a review should be worth more points than posting a story. I mean, if people are rewarded for posting stories, it will remain in the cycle it's kind of in now where people are more focused on posting their own stories than on helping other people with their writing, you know?

I don't think that would be fair to writers at all. Feedback is great, both giving and receiving, but I think it takes a lot more work and effort to write and complete a story or poem than it does to write a review.

Though I do agree that members should get some kind of point reward for giving good feedback.

* I don't know if you're talking about specifically feedback points vs points for simply posting a story, or feedback points vs the idea of points for completing a story and for word counts in stories.

@ Audrey T
I think the intent of users being able to give other users points is to reward for good feedback, like "Hey, your critique helped me make this chapter better, here is 5 points" type things. I don't think we need to incorporate it into the point system. (and how can an automated system recognize a review over a normal comment?)

@ Kurtni
I know it's possible to set parameters for what counts as review vs a comment. The site Scribiphole has a working system that allows users to get pounds for feedback. So it's definitely do-able.

Will there be a rule against bribing for comments with points or is that going to be okay?

@ Audrey T
What parameters though? Word count is all I can think of, and I think comment swap has shown that word count isn't a good enough measure, especially if users know they'll get points for x amount of words.

@ dru's hammer.

I think I'd look at that as rewarding, not bribing, but I don't know. Comments don't affect your story's rating anymore, and the author would be losing their own points, so I don't think we'd need to stop them.

@ Kurtni
I was thinking more about if the people didn't follow through with giving the points, like happens with comment swaps sometimes.

@ dru's hammer.
Personally, I think point sharing between users should solely be at their own risk. There is too much opinion/subjectivity involved, and I wouldn't want to moderate that. I also wouldn't want to make someone give away their points or make someone return points, that just seems like too much interference on my part. If someone says in their author's note "I'll give five points for any good comments," who decides what a "good" comment is if someone complains?

I think the points system is more of a reward and acknowledgement type thing, not a bartering system. That's just my opinion though, other staff members may feel differently.

dru's hammer.:

@ Kurtni
I was thinking more about if the people didn't follow through with giving the points, like happens with comment swaps sometimes.

There could be a way to make the transfer of points automatic - so that if a user says they'll give x amount of points for x amount of words in feedback, the points will be transferred once the criteria is met. And if it turns out that the person leaving the feedback tried to cheat the system in some way, the author could report that to a member of staff, who would then take a look and make a decision on whether or not it's legitimate. If it turns out the feedback is bull, then the points would be given back to the author.

@ Kurtni

I've seen point systems work well on other sites when it comes to points for feedback, and I don't think the people on those sites are any better suited for it than Mibbians - so with work, I see no reason why it shouldn't/can't work here for us.

On other sites, the points are (a) automatically given once the criteria is met - whether it's the site giving out points or member's promising points, and (b) can be reported and efficiently dealt with if the system is abused.

I think the fault with the comment swap system we have up now lies in two factors:

1. The limit (which is a character limit, not a word limit) is just too short. If people are aiming for merely 200 characters, of course it'll be easy to reach that limit through BSing. If the limit were higher (the norm I've seen is at least 150 words), people wouldn't be able to BS through a review without it being obvious - and when that's the case, we can simply label it an abuse of the system and deduct the points.

2. Right now there's nothing we (staff) can do about people who are abusing the system (using it incorrectly). So, yeah, it's not successful if we can't deal with bad comments.

If the system isn't working fully, it's just not working. I don't think we can judge or use the comment swap as an example of success or failure until it's actually functioning fully and we can deal with abuse of the system.

@ Audrey T
What the criteria that has to be met is my concern. I don't think word count is a useful criteria.

There are junk comment swap comments that are hundreds of words long, far beyond the 200 character minimum, so I disagree that raising the word limit will solve the problem. The only thing that solves the issue is banning users from using the swap, and we can't ban users from commenting on stories because they don't meet some standard set by a user.

Would this apply generically to all comments left, or would you have to do something special to indicate you're leaving a review comment? I could quote a 500 word excerpt from a story just to tell the author I liked it/disliked it, and that's clearly not a review, but it would meet the word count standards. I'd be earning points for what the author wrote....

Audrey T:

There could be a way to make the transfer of points automatic - so that if a user says they'll give x amount of points for x amount of words in feedback, the points will be transferred once the criteria is met. And if it turns out that the person leaving the feedback tried to cheat the system in some way, the author could report that to a member of staff, who would then take a look and make a decision on whether or not it's legitimate. If it turns out the feedback is bull, then the points would be given back to the author.

How do you decide when someone was trying to cheat the system? There is no "system" if every user has individual standards and rules for giving out their own points. What you and I consider a good comment might not be what the author or commenter considers to be a good comment.

I don't think it's out place to tell users "Sorry, your comment isn't good enough" outside of the comment swap. I don't think we should be regulating general comments users leave voluntarily.

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I personally like the idea of one point per comment/forum post. It's simple and objective, and I think if we assign high points values to too many things, points will be meaningless.

Kurtni:

@ Audrey T
What the criteria that has to be met is my concern. I don't think word count is a useful criteria.

There are junk comment swap comments that are hundreds of words long, far beyond the 200 character minimum, so I disagree that raising the word limit will solve the problem. The only thing that solves the issue is banning users from using the swap, and we can't ban users from commenting on stories because they don't meet some standard set by a user.

Would this apply generically to all comments left, or would you have to do something special to indicate you're leaving a review comment? I could quote a 500 word excerpt from a story just to tell the author I liked it/disliked it, and that's clearly not a review, but it would meet the word count standards. I'd be earning points for what the author wrote....

From what I've seen it has been strictly word count which is the main criteria. An author can say, I'm giving 20 points for reviews over 200 words - and as long as that review is specific to the story (like we do with comment swaps) and reaches that word min, the points would be transferred. If a author looks at the comment and thinks the person is just beating around the bush to reach the word limit, if the comment isn't specific to the story or too vague, then the author can report it and we (the staff) can decided if the comment sticks or if it's no good. From what I've seen in the comment swap, it's not too hard to see which comments are real and which ones are too vague. It's not very hard to judge at all.

And, of course, quotes from the story wouldn't go towards the count. (This can easily be dealt with through reporting stories where people use quotes to fluff their word count, or through a special quoting system that excludes quotes from the system's word counts - again, Scribophile has a system that excludes quotes from the word count.)

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How do you decide when someone was trying to cheat the system? There is no "system" if every user has individual standards and rules for giving out their own points.

I don't think it's out place to tell users "Sorry, your comment isn't good enough" outside of the comment swap. I don't think we should be regulating general comments users leave voluntarily.

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I personally like the idea of one point per comment/forum post. It's simple and objective, and I think if we assign high points values to too many things, points will be meaningless.

Like stated above, it wouldn't be based on individual standards of each individual users, but one (a) the word count set up and (b) the final judgement of the story editors - if they're the ones who will be in charge of dealing with reports. And quality would simply be decided based on whether or not the comment is specific to each individual story, like we do for the comment swap.