[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III Windows Mobile ROM De] BennTech:
vBulletin's "User Reputation"

The fact is that we will always have redundant posts, off-topic posts, and loads of thank yous. What we need is a way to filter through the garbage. However, I think there is a silver bullet. What about "User Reputation" already included in vBulletin? I'm not sure of its full capabilities, but here's what I have in mind:

What NOT to do

DO NOT require minimum posts to start a new thread. This is just going to cause more hijacking problems and bogus posts to reach the minimum. Popular threads are already overburdened as it is. Absolutely do not do this! In fact, let's never mention it again.

DO NOT require a long wait time to post. It's elitist and unwelcoming to think that no one outside of XDA could have anything worthwhile to contribute for the next 30 days. It will ultimately dry up the forums because new members (including experienced users from other forums) will move on to other forums where they can contribute before they're ever allowed their first post here.

DO NOT charge money for membership/posting. If we charge membership, we're going to increase redundant posts because the people who buy it will feel they've paid for the right to have their questions answered without all the tedious searching. If we charge per post, who is going to pay to answer someone else's question? Or pay to post a review? Or pay to post their nifty free utility? In addition, we will loose a huge volume of users with this tactic, including talented individuals we want to attract/keep. And as the userbase dwindles, the developers will have a smaller following from which to draw praise and donations and will seek to greener pastures elsewhere, and then we will loose even more users and more developers, spiraling downward into the ultimate collapse of XDA.

What TO DO

DO have a 24 hour registration-to-posting delay. I personally don't like the idea of a posting-delay at all, but I think 24 hours should be a good enough compromise to filter out the worst of the non-searching redundant-posting users while not overly restricting those with legitimate needs/offerings.

DO rate individual posts/users. Here's the silver bullet and basis for the rest of my ideas. This takes the load off the moderators by letting XDA members police posts. As the forums grow, so do the number of police. Then...

DO prohibit users with bad ratings from posting. This is how you weed out the bad seeds! Politely assume people are good and let them post. If they consistently post crap and get horribly lousy ratings, then they get automatically prohibited from posting for some preset period of, say, 30 days. We could also ban them after a warning or two, since the XDA community is consistently voting that these users are hindering the forums.

DO use this rating system for member status instead of shear volume of posts. Higher rating gets higher status (based on a minimum number of votes). Those with really high ratings could even be given limited mod power--maybe the ability to sticky threads, lock threads (like nikagl's KaiserTweak XML thread that gets posts despite the huge red letters saying "DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD"), etc..

DO set the initial thread rating to the user's rating. Essentially, the user's own rating would be the first vote for the thread. Unrated users could start with no vote or maybe the neutral "Average" rating. But the key point is that posts started by undesirable users (those with low ratings) would automatically get rated low, which would then be easy to filter out and ignore.

DO let users filter forums/posts based on rating. E.g., 5 only, >=4, >=3, etc.. This should be a filter, not a sort, so users can still view forums by their particular sort method but exclude "unhelpful" threads. Likewise in the threads themselves--give users the ability to hide unhelpful posts.

DO start a ratings campaign. This will help kickstart the ratings system, which is virtually unused in XDA. This should be easy to startup if ratings are the basis for things like user status--just ask people to show their appreciation by with their vote, which reduces the pages of thank you posts while still bolstering the good developers.

Again, I don't know how many of these suggestions can be done using vBulletin's built-in "User Reputation" functionality or if it can be extended (does vBulletin include source?), but it's at least a good start. Other than the technical aspect, I don't see a downside to the rating system. Worst case is that users are competing for a good rating by answering other users' questions, posting useful information, not flaming, developing better ROMS and tools, helping developers test...wait a second...isn't this the whole idea behind XDA anyway? :)

Any comments for or against a rating system?