Grav's Proposition Revision Draft

Proposition:

More or less, another bar and title to be added under a member's Avatar. A "Reputation Bar" and "Zelaron Status" so to speak. Member's threads/posts will be closely examined by their peers and given a particular rating. The ratings cover a wide variety of areas, whose range and deciding factors will be discussed in the coming sub-topics to follow.


Ratings:

As of right now, there are three proposed ratings to be awarded:

• Stamp of Approval™

• Generally Annoying and Hard Headed™

• Black List of Infinite Stupidity™

These are known as SoA, GAHH, and BLIS, as of right now. More will subsequently follow, as to give more precise and accurate ratings for the wide range of member's present at Zelaron. These still need to be discussed and established by the consensus.


Council Makeup:

The Council makeup, as of right now, is an undetermined group of 5 or so respected, mature, intelligent members that are incapable of biased decision making. Stipulations on this will be discussed in more detail later. There is also talk of giving the Council the distinguished, unused as of right now User Group, Advisors. This is still under discussion as well.


Proposed Council:

At the moment, there are a number of members being proposed to makeup the Council. Granted, none of these members, other than GravitonSurge, because he is the founder of the idea are guaranteed to be on the Council. Also, if you are not on this preliminary list, that does not exclude you from being on the Council.

GravitonSurge
Medieval Bob
Raziel
Penny_Bags
Thanatos (Jizmo)
uncapped
Vollstrecker
mjordan2nd

Names in Bold are Council members set in stone.

There is talk of not allowing Staff on the Council, which would eliminate Bob, Raziel, and Voll, thus giving 5 members right there, which might be a good, or absolutely horrendous Council. This was also the reason myself or other Senior Staff members were chosen as representatives. This will be decided later, if this resolution gets passed. Possibly via vote?


Member Votes:

Not only will the Council members have the ability to vote on member ratings, so will every member that fits the set criteria. Of course, Council votes will carry more leverage over non-Council members, but everyone will be given the opportunity to vote. Just how the voting goes down, will again, be discussed later.


Non-Council Criteria:

Only members that have been visiting Zelaron on a regular basis, for a decent amount of time, will be given the option to vote on other members. The proposed criteria, which is not by any means set in stone, is as follows:

• Must be a member for at least 4 months.

• Must have at least 250 posts.

• Must have at least a 35% Activity Level.

This criteria is to simply ensure that a member has had an adequate amount of time, activity, and experience with the other members. This is to make sure each voting member is able to make an educated and well developed decision.


Voting Basis:

Voting will be based on many categories, and a member's status will be evaluated on the following:

• Grammar - (A)

• Spelling - (A)

• Vocabulary - (A)

• Content - (B)

The first three are self-explanatory. Content is based on how useful a thread/post is. If nothing useful can be derived, then the post is clearly pointless. Of course, not all posts can be useful, and Zelaron is and always will be a place for members to visit and have fun, but as an overall view, members need to input good topics, debates, discussions, etc. every once in a while.

I think a system of 0 to 10 would work. Everyone does a rating of someone based on (A) Language usage and (B) Content.

So let's say we have the 5 Council people.

Person 1: A) 8.5 - B) 8.5
Person 2: A) 8.5 - B) 6.5
Person 3: A) 6.5 - B) 5.5
Person 4: A) 8.5 - B) 8.5
Person 5: A) 5.5 - B) 6.5

A) Average is: 37.5 / 5 = 7.5
B) Average is: 35.5 / 5 = 7.1

So using your weighted system, [((7.5 * .35) = 2.625), + ((7.1 * .65) = 4.615)] = 7.24

Out of 10, that's a good rating, overall, but a SoA would be an 8.5 or higher.

GAHH would be 4.5 or lower, and BLIS would be a 2.5 or lower.

(Just random numbers, not set in stone or anything)


Deliberation:

Deliberation will most likely goes as follows. Council members will put a member "on the chopping block", so to say. When this occurs, a public vote will take place, and last for 3 days only. The members will have their chance to vote on the initial rating a member is given. Once that vote goes through, the Council will deliberate. If both the members and Council majority agree, the member rating will be set.

Of course, with the set criteria for member's able to vote, the Senior Staff will be in charge or tallying the final votes. Just because the vote might be 12-10, doesn't necessarily mean that is the final vote. After each person that voted is analyzed, a final vote count will be determined.

Once all the initial ratings are agreed upon, the member portion of the voting process will be done, for the most part.


Deliberation Content:

Members and Council members will strictly base their decisions on particular Forums. The Test Forum, Chat Forum, and WRT are deemed as not worthy content deciding Forums, and will be excluded from the rating process.


Initial Ratings:

Initial ratings are currently undecided upon. Either a set date, or set amount of post count history will be used to get initial member ratings. For example, a member's previous 25 or 50 posts will be taken into deliberation, or possibly all posts within the previous 2 weeks will be used.


Judging Upkeep:

After the initial ratings are set, the Council will be the sole provider of the upkeep of member ratings. Meaning, there is no set time frame judging will be made, but rather, Council observations will be used to determine whether or not adjustments need to be made. If a Council member feels as though a member is suddenly undeserving of a particular rating, he will put up the alternate rating for the rest of the Council members to vote and decide upon. If a member rating is changed, it will be made as a public announcement, as to get member feedback. For the most part, these ratings will not be overturned, but if enough member opposition is present, a re-vote on the member will be conducted in the same fashion as the initial ratings.


Rating Stipulations:

Once you have received a particular rating, it will not be easy to move within the ranks. If you are BLIS'd, you will basically have to make a complete transformation if you ever want to become SoA'd. Of course, once the final outline for member ratings is introduced, a better understanding of member transitions will be seen.

Wow. Great job, Titus. I pretty much agree with the whole thing except for the 50% activity part. Say a member comes back after a hiatus and he/she becomes a regularly active poster again. It will take some time to get back up to 50%.

Maybe we just forget about activity %? Let's just look at the actual active posters and go from there?

Well, people who have left for a long period of time and come back, may not be familiar with a newer crowd of members. This may cause a bias of some sort for their voting, i.e. a first impression may really piss them off, so they hate that member. I see where you are coming from though.

The basic idea that I had that he incorporated above is that there would be some sort of member polling first, and if that vote passes, then it's passed to the council who will agree/disagree, if agreed, it's put into effect; if disagreed, it's vetoed.

Titus, that was awesome work. I agree with pretty much everything that you wrote.

What don't you agree with? Everything needs to be fine tuned.

I like most of it Titus, except the part where a members approval rating is based on his proper usage of the English language. Although some of you might find it aggravating when a member doesn't use proper English, I don't believe it should reflect upon how a person is rated. I think that a person should be judged solely on the content of their posts, and if their posts, due to their misuse of the English language, are difficult to comprehend then they could be gahhd or blisd.

Also, I would just like to let it be known that if I'm voted in I'm up for this council member thing.

Although some of you might find it aggravating when a member doesn't use proper English, I don't believe it should reflect upon how a person is rated. I think that a person should be judged solely on the content of their posts, and if their posts, due to their misuse of the English language, are difficult to comprehend then they could be gahhd or blisd.

Well, if some1 is typing lik dis then dey dunt rely desurve 2 be soa

I see no harm in it if they can be understood.

Hmm, this should be interesting to add to the board's features in terms of coding. I may have compretended one thing a bit wrong though; if only one member will be in the limelight at a particular time, and later replaced by another member to be judged, it'll still take half of forever with the current amount of active members to loop through everyone. And if someone would be BLIS'ed and want to improve his rating, he'd surely be queued for a rather long time. That is, unless multiple users are put on the "chopping block".

Yeah, I was actually contemplating that exact notion as I was typing this out. I was figuring a Forum could be made that restricted only Senior Members to view it. Then, say 3-5 members at a time would be put on the block at a 3 day stint. Of course, to be fair, the decisions could be made public, so all non-Senior Member would be made aware.

Either that, or just do it in GC, and have Senior Staff sift through the voters and make sure they are all Senior Members (If Senior Member criteria is the way we end up deciding to go).

Now, for the rating system. Is the judgement of posts going to be from here on? Or is the judgement of posts going to be based on the members lifelong posts. Because if were going to count past history into this... I'm going to have a score of like .3....

Like I said before, that is still undetermined. We have many possiblities. We can (1) At the start of this system, base a rating on the next 2 weeks, (2) take in the prior 2 weeks or so from when the system starts, (3) take in the members last 50 posts or so from when the system starts, etc.

That will be determined, but first, the coding and everything for the system must get set up. After that, the Council will get elected, and we can figure this out from there.

Of course, to be fair, the decisions could be made public, so all non-Senior Member would be made aware.

Couldn't a new forum be made to where all members can VIEW it, but only people in the Senior Member group could post in it? That should be simple, it'd be ran similar to most forums' Announcement forums...

Yes, it is possible, though making the access be based off of member level will take a bit of coding.

Sorry if this sounds a bit noobish, but wouldn't it be the same as, say, a news poster usergroup? Or is member status handled differently?

Just curious. Knowledge is power.