User talk:Pirakafreak24/Persuasive Essay/Rating

FYI, Daiku had the idea for the rating system in the first place, Im pretty sure. (Our lazy admin mentioned in the story, Legodude760)

Not a bad piece of writing. Of course, if I were examining it critically, I'd probably demand sources and point out your use of the second person, but that's neither here nor there.

I'd say, and I'm sure others would agree, is that when it comes down to it, one of the two problems (the second one will show up later) is that we have yet to establish a purpose for the rating system. Why do we have it in the first place? It can't be used as a punishment, because vandals and such aren't gonna care if they have a -5 rating. Giving them warnings and deducting points doesn't do anything more than give them more time to vandalize. And yes, we know that any any old user can change their rating. When we first put the system into practice, we thought about making a protected template for each user, and putting it both on their page/talkpage as well as a rating collection page, but figured that'd be too much hassle, with new users and such showing up and leaving. I think, ultimately, we need to focus the purpose of the rating system: A badge of honor that respectable users can have on their pages. It's a little feel-good reward. The excitement of getting the point (or points) should be the reward, not the numerical value. The thrill comes from having an admin say "Congratulations; you're doing a great job," not jacking your own rating up. And you have to work hard to get that encouragement; therefore, you edit more articles and improve the Wiki. I'd say we need to tweak the system a bit to get results more along these lines. A quick idea that popped to mind: The admin in charge keeping a Word document of ratings of active users, and checking Recent Changes users and making sure their ratings line up. Not a lot more work.

The other problem is subjectivity. In the past, we've said So-and-so hands out points when they feel like it. We need some hard, fast guidelines for points, while still allowing for some subjectivity. Because we can't make a set of rules that would cover everything adequately - For example, I'd probably give a rating boost for writing this essay (Which is terribly ironic, considering it's against the whole system in the first place), but it'd be difficult to write a rule concerning essays. So, we could use some set guides - a base rating per Article edit count, for example - then fill them in with some rules like "Welcoming new users is a plus, Tagging articles for deletion is a plus, insignificant article edits is a minus, Lots of userpage edits is a minus." Then, have two or three points a week given out (maybe more or less depending on the user flow - it won't be perfect first time out) and have the governing admin assign those points to whoever deserves it the most. That way, it guarantees points are getting out, unlike what's happening before. I'd probably do a point Monday and a point Thursday, or something like that. Negatives would be under current rules - an admin hands out negatives whenever they see that somebody needs it. I don't expect we'll see a lot of negatives, though.

Now, if LD is correct, then this was my idea in the first place (which it may have been, but I think somebody else brought up the idea initially: I just got the ball rolling). So, I'll take charge of it this time - rather than saying "Hey, who wants to try to work it?" I'll make a system beforehand, then submit it to community vote. Don't forget: we've had two (or is it three?) votes, all of which leaned towards having a rating system. And remember that nothing like this has been attempted before, to my knowledge. We haven't got anything to work off of, and it hasn't been going on for too long. Let us work the kinks out. Give me a few days to draw something up (since I've got a busy week and weekend). Give us one more chance - I promise I won't disappoint you.

And one thing about the new users voting: We had been having a lot - and I mean a lot - of problems with new users popping up out of nowhere and doing nothing except voting against the current majority. So we were a little suspect of people who had just joined. - Daiku { Whine Here } { Look what I did! } 02:59, 16 October 2008 (UTC)