RWL is moving hosts

[Rakefur]

abartell, think of it as a car engine swap.
..........

This is a pretty great post

Well, if we had a voting system, you could 'like' that post.

[Durza]

Windhound your comparison was brilliant

*likes*

[Wolf Snare]

haha. Great analogy. Epic post, actually.

[abartell]

i love the analogy it sums it up ral well even though i dont have a car


*copies a good idea*

*likes*

[Wolf Snare]

A karma system would not work well with our small community.

[Neobaron]

If the small community needs 10 admins/mods then it can't hurt to have a karma system. :)

[Wolf Snare]

And what's your logic behind that

[Neobaron]

We're not using my logic, we're using yours.

If you'd like to hear my logic you'll have to wait till tomorrow.

[Wolf Snare]

haha outa commission for the night good sir?

[Neobaron]

Distracted. :)

[Peace Alliance]

Well if you can just hit a "like" button instead of responding, it might reduce the discourse on the forums to very short topics where everyone agrees or disagrees with the main point.

That kind of system is great for filtering through a very large amount of information. It deals with quantitative data. Here on RWL we are dealing with qualitative data. We have a rich dialogue that needs to be protected.

[windhound]

If the small community needs 10 admins/mods then it can't hurt to have a karma system. :)

That'd be five good sir.
Shael, Ollie, Shadow and myself are the admins.
Holbs is the currently active mod.  

I suppose if you were being pedantic you could count Stormclaw and Retto and such, who are currently inactive but have retained title.
And it would appear we are a tad top heavy admin-wise, but eh.  Distribution of duties and activity levels taken into account, its sane enough.

Karma systems do tend not to work as well with smaller communities.  
FAF has it, it never really added anything to the forum -- other than Devari setting himself at -1337, the anti-leet.  

[Neobaron]

FAF is a bad example. At its peak it had maybe 15-20 people active? And abuse is abuse. Most newer systems have post/rep requirements in order to +/- rep others.

It encourages activity on the forum, adds an extra level of identity, and makes standouts easier to spot for new folks to look at for help and ~role models~ if you will.

When there are interesting things happening on this forum, we get 10 people active at a time, most of whom never say a word. Surely it isn't coincidence that when things heat up or something is being discussed, RWL gets its biggest numbers. When MSN crew was at its most active, we regularly had 12-15 a night. The last 2 days were rather spicy in the UMD and general, and someone made the comment that we had 10 people in. Tonight almost nothing happened and we had 5 at a peak, with none of them being active for more than a half hour (myself excluded since I basically live on forums this included. And wolf snare because hes a closet nerd.)

---

If you are convinced that having a system for giving rep will reduce overall activity, then you don't get out much on the internet.

I would say it has the opposite effect. The rep/like/whatever system is more and more becoming an essential feature of online communities, and for good reason. Validation of opinions from people who are less eloquent or able to express themselves with ease will cause them to be more interested since having an outlet to express their opinions, even silently, will encourage them to follow along more and ultimately get more involved. As a personal example, I didn't really start trawling reddit on a daily basis until I realized that my contributing to +/- helped interesting topics (or at least those interesting to me) float to the top. Granted a personal rep system here would not be anything like that, but the mental effect would be unchanged.

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To dispel the :effort:/apathy escape tunnel, it is pretty simple to enable the system, is it not?

I also realize it isn't vital.

But neither are 9 mods/admins (I miscounted the first time), custom titles, the shoutbox, avatars, signatures, or any of the other non-essential features of the forum.

[Peace Alliance]

You make a good point about activity, but you can't argue that just because the rest of the Internet has a like system that we should. They don't increase discourse, they allow users to click a button instead of typing a post. They are used to filter massive conversations, and reduce posts. In our community we want to encourage posting because it let's us get to know each other.

I'm open to trying it though, the forum keeps stats on activity so we can see who's right (though not beyond a doubt unless I apply some of the qualitative research methods I'm learning, lol)

[windhound]

I don't think a Karma system on a small site is a harmful thing, more of an indifferent thing.
We have post counts to differentiate between long-timers and newbies.

I have a feeling that as soon as a Karma system in introduced there will be 10 topics in the spa room begging for points, and an exchange setup.  "I'll up you if you up me" and so on. 
On larger sites like Reddit and Slashdot this happens, but its just signal noise which is drowned out by the sheer number of active participants.

Also...  I mean, the RWL game has always had more people than FAF, but even at our peak I'm not sure we've had more than 15 - 20 active forum users. 
Maybe forcing people to signup for a forum acct w/ Global logins will help with that, maybe not.

Anyways.  Five staff Neo.  5.
And those other features are less susceptible to meaningless abuse.
If there's interest in turning it on I don't really care, when the site moves we're upgrading the forum to SMF 2 anyhow.