News : Experience Points System (vBExperience) - Saxperience

Simo^p · 21st August 2008, 03:38

Today, a new experience points system has been implemented and will be tested for the next week or so... during this time, edits will most likely be made (currently on edit #2) and therfore you may see scores fluctuate, or even disappear from time to time.

So, what is vBExperience??

vBExperience is an advanced Level and Activity System (with Shop - currently not enabled) and Awards. It calculates an activity and experience score for every user based on their activites on the forum. Users will see how their level is increasing by participating within the community.

This system is a much more advanced 'points system'... previously we had ranked ourselves based upon number of posts and reputation level, but this isn't a true reflection of how members interact and participate within the community.

Communities are not only defined by post count, they need many more parameters: Are the postings the user creates helpful? Are the threads frequently read? Does the user participate within the community by posting pictures, attachments, leaving visitor messages, tagging threads?

I'm sure you get the idea...

Before the doubters shout 'this is going to promote spam'... No, it shouldn't do! The system only looks at posts made within certain forums... so posting spam all day in the general chat forum or jokes section, etc will not earn you any 'experience points' at all.

The system is setup to promote use of some aspects of the community, which get ignored, or which are not utilised to their full potential. In that sense, the introduction of this system 'may' improve your experiences within the Saxperience community. It should not be negtive at all.

The way it looks... that can be changed. DOnt want to see bars at the side of posts? Not a problem.

Hot links can be seen in the top navigation bar and also within the quick links drow down... info in displayed within user profile pages and also via advanced stats and league tables.

Have a look around the system before judging... it's pretty funky once you can see its positive's.

'Some' of the things this system is scoring are as follows... (points per item purposely not discussed!)

Taken into calculation are these things:

Threads

- Created threads
- Thread views of own threads
- Thread replies of own threads
- Thread votes of own threads
- Thread tags
- Replies to own threads
- Sticky threads

Posts

- Created posts
- Views on attachments

User

- Days since registration
- Referrals
- Received infractions (points deducted!)
- Reputation / Use of reputation system
- Visitor messages on profiles
- Members of own social groups
- Albumpictures
- Friends

Misc

- use of Blog system
- more to come...

Calculation of user activity
The system calculates the activity by taking the average post count of the ten most active users and comparing it to the individual users post count. This can be set to count only the last X days, e.g. last 28 days.

Coloured Bars Explained...

Three bars displaying user experience can be seen (as shown in attached image).

The red bar indicates current experience points and graphically represents user level on a range of level 1 to level 100.

The blue bar represents your current percentage of the number of points required to progress up to the next level. ie, if you are promoted to the next level up, your blue bar will start close to zero and slowly increase as your experience points increase.

The green bar indicates your activity within the community, bench marked against the average activity of the top ten most active members. (see above)

In a nutshell,

This system attempts to promote constructive use of the community. ( so that we all benefit)

Basic examples.

- if you linger in general chat all day every day and dont contribute to any other aspect of the community your experience score will be very low.

- if you reply to peoples threads, make use of social networking tools, submit blogs, use the attachment system, use friends area, submit thread tags, etc, etc (things that enrich the community) your experience score will be higher.

Simo

Pat_Vts · 21st August 2008, 03:42

good idea

remove the rep system also

it gets on my wick tbh people neg repping lol...

NickB · 21st August 2008, 03:48

same as above last time i checked iv got 2 or 3 neg reps for nothing, no reason given or thread originated from, good work on the new system though Simo !

Sutch · 21st August 2008, 03:50

No harm in trying new things, so hopefully will turn out positive.
In theory it should 'appreciate' more members, for example I've been on here well over 2 years or so, with only relatively few posts.

I'm personally not fussed about rep and that jazz, but can see how people with small post counts but who often visit to read for technical help etc will feel more included, and maybe even encourage more interaction as they will have nice big colourful bars even though possibly only a small post count

Edit: with regards to rep, people seem to ask for it and get it wayy to freely, defeating the object of it, I see it as being there for providing useful help in some form or another, letting other forum users know who may be likely to help you with a certain problem.

Certain users get associated to sections of the forum, bland example, AdSayer and Jungle_Jim in the photography section, and deservingly should get rep for that help, but you see other members with similarly high rep and I fail to see what it was for. Possible to get a rep for e-love, and a rep for help or something somehow?

Steady_Eddy · 21st August 2008, 03:52

this is quality
should get users more involved

Simo^p · 21st August 2008, 03:57

'we' may decide the bars on the left is a little too cluttered looking... if you click on someones username on the left, you get an overview of experience points in the drop down bar. try it to see what I mean. (too tired to do a screen dump)