- x Foman123 x
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- Master Forum Ninja
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As others have already pointed out, a lot of what's happening here is speculation. I know that I, and perhaps even most of the people posting in favor of something like this, do not truly believe that the idea will ever happen in its entirety, or at least its current structure as an idea. But it is good speculation nonetheless and hopefully will spark other ideas down the road -- think of this idea as a concept car created by an automobile company or a fashion design shown off at a high fashion runway show in Paris; the car or fashion design itself will never go into full production, but good ideas sparked by the original concept might eventually become popular in time.
At any rate, to state the obvious, there is a basic difference of opinion here: some people think that the idea of stratification or titles will be worth the extra effort in that it will improve forum culture, while others do not. I am one of the ones who is mostly of the belief that it will. I was convinced of that even before lukems did a little pre-experiment for us by saying "help the community and you might get recon armor." Have you seen what people are doing in the forums to try to get it? All of a sudden we have dozens, if not hundreds, of highly helpful, informative threads -- nearly all of them created by new-ish users who are subtly or not-so-subtly trying to get Recon. The incentive of a stupid little armor permutation -- merely because nobody else has it, mind you -- has inspired people to become more helpful forum members. Sure, there are a lot of threads about how can i has recon, but I wouldn't anticipate such a huge response for a forum title; it would probably be something similar to the numbers of "i can has forum ninja" posts that we see now.
To respond to evilcam's post:
Posted by: evilcam
This is from a totally selfish perspective, but I really don't want to suggest or approve members for something like this. There is potential for abuse on our end (the ninjas), since some of us would likely promote our friends without giving it a second thought. That may not be a bad thing exactly, but I still have a problem with it. I usually try to be objective, but I'd have a hard time doing it if this were implemented. Even if we did not approve people for this, we'd likely have to be relied on to suggest who should be rewarded, and the same problem exists in my mind.
I really don't want people breathing down my neck in order to be approved for "senior status" anyway. Be they friends or strangers, I would CONSTANTLY get PMs asking if I could add them or how one is added to that user group. I don't know about you, but I get enough straight PMs reporting things, just chitchatting, or asking how one does this or that. I really don't need the added distraction. I'm here to moderate and interact with the forums, nothing more. I've been having a hard enough time logging in lately, but if I had 20 more PMs a day asking about the senior status thing, I'd probably end up logging in even less. Again that's not exactly a bad thing, but I have my own selfish problems with it.I completely understand this. Even with a stickied warning at the top of the forum like "If you ask for <whatever> status, you will not receive it," I am positive that the moderators would receive requests and questions, and even pressure or offers for trades ("I'll create such-and-such a post" or "I'll help you rank up in Halo 3" in return for the status). Although I do not think that the numbers of these requests would be bad, there is really no way to tell ahead of time what the demand would be like. However, see below my idea about how to nominate, select, and enforce the senior member status, and you'll see that there is the possibility of little-to-no extra strain on the current mods. I am pretty sure that, although requests might be frequent in the beginning of such a program, they would slack off relatively quickly, especially if the process did not directly require the judgment of moderators or if inquisitors received no reply or a simple "no" in response. I think that the moderators can get a general sense of what the request load would be like by looking at their current levels of PMs now asking about Recon armor or Webcam MVP/Theme Master status.
One other small possibility would be to appoint more moderators, which would spread around the burden and which many people have argued Bungie.net needs anyway. But evilcam, you're right -- this issue IS something to be considered. The only problem is that we can't predict what the extent of the problem would be unless it is implemented.
Posted by: evilcam
CONS: There really is a capacity for abuse here. I honestly wonder if I'm talking to different people sometimes. I know that most of you are indeed different people, but that worry is still there. Alts are a MASSIVE problem on this site, and I simply can't bring myself to trust most of the people I see on this site.
CON: Sometimes elitism is a valid point to bring up. Elitism exists, and we have all experienced it in some way. This feature would at least cause cries of elitism were it to be implemented. If those accusations were untrue, no big deal. If they were true, I think we have a problem. How then do we deal with this problem? And on that note, how would they be selected in the first place? As I said earlier, I'd like to recuse myself from the selection process, if it were to work like the model I imagine it would have to use.
CON: What aside from a special title and possibly a custom avatar would "Senior members" or what have you get? A report feature? I think giving everyone a report feature would be a much better decision than giving it to only a select few. If everyone can report things (with a potential failsafe which would punish those who abuse it) we'd get a lot more done than if only a "trusted" few had it. Anything else?RESPONSE TO CON #1: There is the potential for a person with alternate accounts getting the higher status on his "goodguy" account and still having a separate alternate account for spamming. You never really truly know anyone on this site, and that's an issue. Of course, Achronos has been sufficiently secretive about his "trust rating" algorithm that we don't really know how it works. Hopefully, the trust rating takes into account those who log in on multiple accounts and automatically lowers their trust rating, regardless of warnings or blacklistings on either account(s). A person would have to have a high minimum trust rating and an established history of x number of months without logging in on an alternate account in order to receive the higher status.
This would not be a complete fix, but even the knowledge of such a system, combined with the secrecy of the trust rating's inner workings, would discourage any user who was serious about trying to be a good member from using alternate accounts. In this way, the system of multi-tiered regular members might even help to fight spam and flaming on more than one front.
RESPONSE TO CON #2: Accusations of elitism would be few and far between. The types of users who received this status would not be the types to abuse it in the first place -- just like moderators. Of course, the accusations would occur from time to time, and they would need to be investigated. How? Well how about this idea, which would take both the selection process and the enforcement process off the moderators' hands:
* The admin and moderators get together and initially choose, oh, say, 25 or 30 members who they believe would be good as "veteran members" (or whatever they're called so that the old people don't get offended).
* Once their trust ratings are confirmed to be high enough, Achronos makes them veteran/senior members.
* Those people establish a private group like HFCS. (the mods and Achronos could also be members of this group at their choosing). The members of this group would then be responsible for nominating, approving, and enforcing other senior/veteran members, all by majority vote. Achronos establishes rigid, objective criteria for nominations, approvals, and enforcement so that a subgroup of senior/veteran members cannot overwhelm the votes in any direction. Additional checks would also be in place to force fair voting.
RESPONSE TO CON #3: I think that the real question is: what is/are the minimum extra feature(s) that next-tier members need in order to make it enough of an incentive to encourage better forum culture? I would argue that the title alone and access to a private group that others don't have, plus perhaps a report feature, would be sufficient. Once again, I refer to the past precedent of Webcam MVPs, Theme Masters, and the Recon armor. Such little silly things like a title or a different helmet encouraged massive community participation (in the webcam games), fan content creation (for Theme Master status), and helpful/informative posting (trying to get Recon armor). I remain pretty sure that a title, a private group, and perhaps one other feature, like thread-reporting responsibilities, especially if easily obtainable by being a rule-abiding, helpful forum member, would be sufficient to improve forum culture in a very significant way.
CONCLUSION
9400+ characters... I think I'll shut up now.