Well, since there seems to be a modest amount of antipathy surrounding this new system, I thought I might mention another that recently came to my attention that, so far, looks like THE best way of dealing with things that I've ever seen.
It's incredibly complicated, requiring lots of math and lots of parameters. Basically, everyone has a rank, like here (Roachling, Goblin, etc). That rank is the final outcome of all the calculations that are done, taking the final number and generating your rank text based on which "
rank bracket"
it's in. The rank is the only thing that's ever shown to other people; only you have access to your total post count and other relevant statistics.
Before the parameters, the modding system, or as it is here, the rating system. In this system, everyone can always rate posts, without any "
cost"
whatsoever, the theory here being that the intelligent majority will override the few unruly raters. You can only rate any given post once, but should you change your mind, you can also change your rating. Posts can be rated on a scale of one to five stars; each new post starts off "
unrated"
with no stars at all, and thus the first mod to the post will decide its star rating. (an unrated post is simply not taken into account for calculation purposes) Afterwards, the star rating is determined by taking the average of all ratings rounded to the nearest whole star. The rating of the topic-starting post is displayed in a separate column next to the title on the main board, much like the "
Topic Starter"
and "
Last Post"
columns now.
So here's how your ranking goes. Stated simply, it's a combination of (going from most influential to least) your total post count, your average post rating, the amount of time you've spent on the boards, the number of topics you've read, and the number of individual topics you've posted in. Obviously, much tweaking must go into making this system work, both on the calculation end and the ranking bracket end.
Now for the abuse-prevention system for each factor. "
Amount of time spent on the boards"
cannot be upped by simply sitting at the forums while you go have lunch; you must be actively moving through the boards for your time to count. This system comes with an auto-spammer-detector that boots people off the forums for a while if they make too many posts containing too little content in a short amount of time, preventing people from upping both the first and last factors indiscriminately. Average post rating cannot be abused since you have no control over it. Number of visited posts is only increased if you visit a post made within the last month or so, so you can't get your count up by visiting every post that was ever made on the forums. Plus, it's far enough down the list that even just visiting every post made within the last month will not get your ranking significantly increased.
So... see any potential flaws in the system? If we were to transition to it, by the way, everyone would keep their current ranking, and the number behind it would be set to the midpoint of that ranking bracket, whatever it may be. I also think that we should use brains in place of stars for rating posts.
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How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?