Usergroups and Promotions

[digitalwanderer]

Well i'm off to Rome with my man so you'll have 5 or 6 days of freedom!!!

Please send me regards to the Pope, and have some fun!

 

[RussSchultz]

Please send me regards to the Pope, and have some fun!

OT: I still don't think of Ratzinger when somebody refers to the pope.

 

[t0y]

I'm one of the people who got a fair amount of unsolicited rep from Silence. He genuinely seemed to be enthusiastic about the rep he gave, but I was surprised by the quantity of rep. He must have been giving rep all over to get around the "you must spread more rep around" limitiation. I got the impression that there were people he wanted to rep, maybe people who would rep him back, and in order to do so he had to spread a lot of rep around to a lot of people in order to get around the rep limitations.

Having said that, when someone gives you a lot of good rep and leaves you encouraging comments, it's natural to want to repay the favour - it becomes a positive feedback loop. Silence may just have been handing out so much rep to so many people, that he simply got back a lot of rep from those who felt they wanted to recipricate.

It's possible there was some organised plan for people to rep each other up as much as possible, but I think it's more likely that Silence simply liked handing out rep all over, and liked the fact that people felt they had to pass that good rep back to him when they had the opportunity. Silence worked hard at spreading rep around, and a lot of that came back to him in spades.

I don't know how or why you could stop such a thing, unless you know it was an organised campaign to break the rep system, or can get inside Silence's head and know that he really didn't mean the rep or the enthusiastic comments he gave, but was merely participating for selfish reasons.

I have to say I totally agree.

Yes, sometimes he goes overboard with his rants (mostly in RPSC) but I believe he genuinely acted in good faith when using reputation controls. In fact, IIRC, he was enthusiastic about this feature when it was enabled and, as dave said at the time, it was our job (the board members) to make the system work to its fullest so he was just playing his part.

He was so serious about this, being one of the most participating members, that he flipped out when the post count rules changed, slashing his hard-earned proof of commitment to the forum. I didn't care when it happened even though I halved my post count, but then again, I don't put out so much energy in the forum as he did.

I don't recall ever using reputation (I might have sparingly, I just don't remember) since I feel it's useless and fuel for trolling. The reputation is earned, not given. Geo, digi, and john reynolds don't need those blinding green dots for me to remember their names and tag them with "good" or "bad" posting habits, and Russ wouldn't deserve all the red dots in the world for me to acknowledge I don't agree with him for the most part because I've never seen him trolling and/or disturbing the normal flow of discussion (maybe he's just a bit stubburn, but that's it .

As I said before, reputation and post will always be a flawed metric from where we can measure merit, and this becomes even clearer when we realise this is a 3d tech forum, not a popularity contest where people that expose themselves more have bigger ratings.

Or.... you could do it as I do and ignore this completely (I'd turn it off if I could).

 

[chavvdarrr]

maybe too late... but can someone be so kind to explain me what's this all "fuss" about/with "silence" and London-boy ?
silence was found guilty for abusing rep system or? and iwas wondering why there are no more interesting discusions in politics forum

As for rep system , my IMHO, I can't remember using it (and should I ?!), but the rule of the dumb is that everything can be hacked one way or another, peole tend to forget that getting 1 green or 1 red dot somewhere is not a Real Life.
Once we start thinking " omg someone will give me negative rep", more chances that we'll start to be more... polite? soft? turncoat? opportunist ?
You know , one of BIG problems with socialism in Eastern Europe was that kind of mentality "A bowed down head won't be hit by the sword" . Too much opportunism, keeping mouth shut and telling only good news and what those above want to hear...

ehm , back to the point, I have no idea what silence made, but knowing how and what he posted, and knowing he is from Croatia, I think that for him posting/making things/posts more harsh, or doing things on the edge of the forum law, is/was his way of claiming "I'm not a number, I'm a free man"© . I myself feel this way from time to time

 

[London Geezer]

maybe too late... but can someone be so kind to explain me what's this all "fuss" about/with "silence" and London-boy ?
silence was found guilty for abusing rep system or? and iwas wondering why there are no more interesting discusions in politics forum

I'd tell you but then i'd have to kill you.
Kidding, basically silence and myself were found guilty of conspiracy to cause gross reputation harm to people who obviously DESERVED it... Not that i'm saying we were doing it, just saying that if we were doing it, the "victims" would have deserved it......
err...

That's it really. Punishment was taking off 700 points out of our rep count, which left us in the red (2 red squares actually, which was pretty cool as i was the only one to have it). Silence left, i'm still here cause i don't give a duck. And now my rep is in the green again.

 

[Fodder]

Have the usergroup prerequisites changed since the first post? I just noticed I ticked over the 1000 post mark today, but am apparently unable to abuse any of my Senior Member abilities.

 

[Geo]

Have the usergroup prerequisites changed since the first post? I just noticed I ticked over the 1000 post mark today, but am apparently unable to abuse any of my Senior Member abilities.

Wait until tomorrow. It's a nightly maint thing.

 

[Angelcurio]

I have one suggestion.

I think that registered users should be able to see user profiles, so we can track their posts.

I suggest it for registered users, since guest users are able to do it, so its kind of weird for a registered user to have less options than a guest user.

 

[nthd]

Yes please, if that is how things are working now. Logging out to become a guest in order to gain privilege seems wrong, somehow, given that I have taken the time to register.

 

[Geo]

This has been addressed by the Great and Powerful Oz.

 

[nthd]

I don't know how it's doing it, but it is doing it. I can now browse myself... yey! Thank you.

 

[Rolf N]

Will it be possible, once I have sp... *ahem* contributed my way up to 1000 posts, to use "Guest" as a custom member title?
Or is that title reserved by the board software?

Yippieh!

 

[London Geezer]

Yippieh!

Why be a guest when you can be a host and get to kick out ugly people?

 

[Rolf N]

Why be a guest when you can be a host and get to kick out ugly people?

I like to pretend I'm really modest. That way when I kick people in the nuts it's extra effective due to the surprise

*ahem*
I've resisted all day against abusing my new demonic powers. I even restrained myself from checking who gave me bad rep in the past. I think I'll just try to be relaxed and reasonable for a little while, see what happens then.

 

[poopypoo]

I like to pretend I'm really modest. That way when I kick people in the nuts it's extra effective due to the surprise

*ahem*
I've resisted all day against abusing my new demonic powers. I even restrained myself from checking who gave me bad rep in the past. I think I'll just try to be relaxed and reasonable for a little while, see what happens then.

Hmm, that doesn't sound like very much fun. Tell ya what, you smack me with red now, and I'll smack you with red when (if) I ever get to exalted status later! I'd hate to get there and not be able to red anyone. ;_;

 

[g__day]

I rarely used reputation points - as I think most folk in the past knew who had real substance and who didn't.

I did remember alot of psts getting lost once (about a thousand of mine - server crash or something) Dave tried to guess post count as good as he could. Last I looked 2006? I was a senior member here, come back after year off (doing some neat astrophotography) and seen I'd been demoted - making me wonder have posts been lost again - or reputation points or did the goal posts just move.

I remember how pleased I was to earn senior member - shame when its taken away...

Still that's been my week, father died, son almost drowned, cat leapt off house and almost died, its been a rotten start to the new year, here's to better luck for all forward!

 

[StefanS]

Still that's been my week, father died, son almost drowned, cat leapt off house and almost died, its been a rotten start to the new year, here's to better luck for all forward!

Sorry to hear, man. Hopefully the rest of your year will be a lot better.

 

[Geo]

I rarely used reputation points - as I think most folk in the past knew who had real substance and who didn't.

I did remember alot of psts getting lost once (about a thousand of mine - server crash or something) Dave tried to guess post count as good as he could. Last I looked 2006? I was a senior member here, come back after year off (doing some neat astrophotography) and seen I'd been demoted - making me wonder have posts been lost again - or reputation points or did the goal posts just move.

I remember how pleased I was to earn senior member - shame when its taken away...

Still that's been my week, father died, son almost drowned, cat leapt off house and almost died, its been a rotten start to the new year, here's to better luck for all forward!

/me is moved by the tail of woe, and sprinkles fairy dust upon g__day.

 

[Chris123234]

Still that's been my week, father died, son almost drowned, cat leapt off house and almost died, its been a rotten start to the new year, here's to better luck for all forward!

Oh wow, haha. Given no story context, I laughed at the cat part. What a crude sense of humor I have...

As for the usergroups, at this rate, its going to be 2020 before I get to senior member and I'll probably be dead before I'm a regular! I've never felt so hopeless.