Much Ado About Points

@ ladyschrei
I was thinking that you'd get them for a certain time only, kind of like with custom ranks.

Audrey T:

If it's done, I think each author should be awarded points for the overall word-count. Since not all co-writes is done on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Yeah, that's probably best. Both authors put work into the story as a whole so should both be rewarded for it.

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I think the ranks and the extra signature characters should be temporary, as that would encourage people to do things that earn points and be active on the site.

Perhaps at the end of the time (for example one week), they could get a notification saying something like "Your extra 50 characters on your signature is about to expire! Would you like to renew them for another week?" And then they could obviously click yes or no afterwards.

I have a question about the custom ranks. What exactly are they? Like, an example?

@ whomping willow.
You know where it says "Story Editor" under your username, or where it says "Member" under mine? Those are our ranks--with custom ranks, you could customize those ranks. Like, instead of "Member", I might have mine say "is delicious", or instead of "Story Editor", you might have yours say, "jkfhjhrkg", or something like that

I hope that made sense.

@ chai latte
Oh! Okay. That makes a lot more sense now. Thanks! :)

What if someone who wasn't a story editor made a rank that said Story Editor. Would there be any type of rules against that?

And would staff still be allowed to change them? I think it's important that staff are still easily recognised, even if it was just that they had colours and other users didn't, or that they weren't allowed to change their rank to a custom one.

@ kea.angel
Maybe staff custom ranks could be put underneath their staff ranks?

@ kea.angel
Do you mean that staff be allowed to change others' ranks, or their own?

I remember a few staff custom ranks that used to be like, different versions of their job (like, mine could be board mod. extraordinare). I don't think staff should get random ranks but that's something that could be sorted out between us, I suppose.

Users putting their ranks as job statuses should be against the rules in my opinion but I also don't remember that being a problem.

@ The Rumor
I feel like as long as the colors stay the same it wouldn't be a huge problem. We do have the members tab that shows you all the staff by their job, although it does seem like a lot of people don't realize that's there.

I guess I could see it being very confusing for new members, though.

@ The Rumor
I really want custom ranks, though D:

@ whomping willow.
No, just their own. What I'm meaning is that a Blog Mod might delete someone's blog (for example) and then message the user to say why, but if that user is new or doesn't recognise/know the Blog mod and sees "is delicious" as their rank instead, they might be a bit confused and wonder why some random user could delete their blog. Also as it's been mentioned, not that many people seem to be aware of the staff members pages.

I think only allowing staff members to have colours would solve the problem, or the staff members having to have their job somewhere in the rank, like "Board" or "Blog" or "Article", like how The Rumor suggested "board mod. extraordinaire".

@ kea.angel
Oh, I see now. :)
That makes perfect sense. Like battalions said, as long as they're the same color, I think it won't be a problem. Also, like it has been mentioned, the custom rank could be underneath our official rank.

The Rumor:

Users putting their ranks as job statuses should be against the rules in my opinion but I also don't remember that being a problem.

it wasn't an issue, and their ranks aren't colored so they wouldn't fool most people.

@ whomping willow.
They were the same color before.

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I also agree with using the whole total for co-writes. Isa and I co-wrote a story together and alternated every other paragraph.

I was looking through the old points thread for the article I'm writing, and I stumbled upon this, which makes me reconsider wanting to give points for comments/forum posts

Dujo:

The main problem with this idea [giving points for forum posts] is that we can't give points to people without checking what they did to "deserve" those points.

We can't give points for each post on the board. People will just post anything to get points.

I think that's a valid point, and I think it might be better if the point system focuses more on the creative writing aspects of Mibba.

@ Kurtni
What about the role-play threads? Or the threads under the Writing section that help people develop their writing skills and whatnot? And discussion/debating topics? I don't necessarily think that points should be given for posts in everything, but maybe a select few that are related to writing would be good and encourage participation there.

Board Mods could just spend a bit more time in those areas just to check that people aren't spamming and then delete those posts that aren't purposeful. (Or we could have some more Board Mods.)

@ kea.angel
There isn't any rule against posting something that isn't purposeful though, its ok to post something silly/not serious on the forums and joke around. Board mods diligently check for spam already, that's not an issue.

Most of the threads in the writing tips forum are actually game threads or advertising threads.

I post almost exclusively in discussion/debate topics and I'm fine with not getting points for it, because the posts vary wildly.

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I mainly just brought that quote up because Dujo already said no to that idea once before, so we don't waste time on it.

@ Kurtni
What if, for posts on forums, whoever created the thread gets so many points per reply. So like, every five or ten posts in the thread, or whatever the number, the creator could get like, two points. So long as the posts aren't spam, or the author spamming their own thread, stuff like that. If that happens, their posts could be revoked. Just a thought