i may, or may not have pressed the wrong button.

 

No big deal.. Looks fixed now. Thanks.

 

Now that you have had this to use for a bit, what kind of feedback do you have for me?

cheers,
robb

 

Can you explain activity %? What does that mean?

 

It means the amount of time you've spent posting to myg37 during 'work' hours :-)

 

Ha! Posting here is a big part of my work. I should have 110%.

 

What exactly determines when you gain and lose experience via posting? We've already noticed inactivity, even for 24 hours, results in huge losses.

I've made both informative posts that result in 100+ point losses, and BS/useless posts that result in good gains.

 

I have two problems with this new endeavor:

First, it seems to encourage posting in order to increase one’s activity rating or to earn more experience points. It’s my view that excessive posting is not a good thing as it just waters down posts in general and encourages post whoring. For example, right now we have two active threads on members’ ages, an unnecessary redundancy in my view.

Second, the system may unwittingly discourage healthy debate, lest a poster who has some valid criticism or minority opinion gets slapped with negative experience points. I’ve already noticed that in my case, and whereas I choose to ignore it, others may not. Sucking up and agreeing to the prevailing opinion on a topic can easily stifle honest discussions, which is not in our interest in the long run. Older members often hold minority views, but they should not be discouraged from doing so as long as they obey the forum rules.

 

Please elaborate on how valid criticism or a minority opinion earns negative experience points. I sometimes find myself in that category, maybe that's why I've been bleeding experience points lately. How does the system punish posts that run against the current more than any other post?

 

On the following thread for my last post I apparently lost 10 experience points for my opinion on the Michael Vick issue.

https://www.myg37.com/forums/sports/...ou-eagles.html

And on the post whoring topic, I lost one point on 1/14/11 apparently for doing nothing, i.e., not posting enough.

 

I do have to say that the point system is a little weird. I made a oil change reveiw for my FI car and didnt get nearly the points I did when I was just messing around on the forum. I like what you are trying to do and I think it betters the forum but the dang point system is confusing me so much just my 2 cents

 

Ok, I think there is some big misunderstanding. Your posts are not critiqued or graded by an actual person. You could post your disdain for Michael Vick or that the sky is blue and it makes no difference. If yours is the last post in a thread, you are awarded Discussion Ender points. When someone posts another post after you do, it could be the secret of world peace or pictures of their grandma, and you will lose the points and they will gain them. The content of the post, the value or worthlessness of the post, your personal viewpoint, age or experience in life, or the color or your underwear or anything else about it are inconsequential. So nobody is being penalized for their opinions whether "good" or "bad".

You will sometimes gain points and not fuly understand how or why it happened and lose them in the same manner. I'm active every single day and my activity level decreases. I've lost at least 1500 points since this system was instituted and I'm not completely sure exactly why. Personally I don't really care, but some people will. Obviously the system isn't perfect and everyone won't agree with everything or like how it does what it does.

 

BB,
I appreciate your explanation and find it enlightening as to why I lost points on that post. But it seems to show how irrational, impersonal and arbitrary this experience point system seems to be. With no actual person grading a post, what possible purpose do such scores have, and how can it possibly improve the quality of our forum?

At any rate, I’m with you, I don’t really care now why I gain or lose points. Until these systematic bugs are eliminated, or the whole thing scrapped for that matter, l will continue to express my viewpoints as I see them and will ignore any arbitrary attempts to stifle my opinions. But thanks for making me feel better about the whole thing.

 

my activity is beast as hell

 

That post was worth -24 points while the next post was worth +82.