Strategies Why you should remove someone's high reputation today

[joelr]

Reputation, credits, or points are fairly common among forums. Most forums provide a simple gamification where you post a reply, you earn a point. You write a new thread, you earn 3 points. On Reddit, you can earn Karma.

These points are cumulative, and never disappear. However, the whole point of reputation is not just their overall sense of contribution, but their contribution in a period of time.

As an extreme example, imagine a user who was active and posted 10 years ago and who earned several hundred points. But if they havent posted or participated in the last 10 years, how useful or relevant do her points mean to the members today?

We should decay points or reputation over time. Reputation must offer relevance and timeliness to stay important.

 

[Nomad]

AJ has merged with multiple sites and there are users who have created a lot of posts, earned a lot of reputation points but are no longer active. How can we undermine their contribution on AJ even though they are not active? What if they return some day? Wouldn't it be an offense to someone who has done a lot for the community?

 

[Shortie]

I can see where decaying reputation or points over time could be a good thing for a forum, it would show that those who are still active and contributing were appreciated.

I do feel that it could cause issues if those who may be inactive instead came back and found that their points or reputation had gone despite them contributing a lot over the years before.

This is a good idea but one that would have to be done right to avoid issues further down the line.

 

[Darth Cognus]

If it was a slow decay of immediately visible reputation, with something like a history in their profile that can permanently recognize their peaks (and when), then I could see this being neat. I think there should be much more flex than models I've seen where if you're not absolutely prolific every other day, then your access to basic features earned with having too much time on your hands sharply declines on the spot. Having no permanence, ie something to your account that at least remembers where you've been even if there is a 'decay' in what is visible now, would be a problematic way to go about this easily matching the disadvantages of permanent profile bling. Basically the contributions should be remembered even if the postbit display is designed to reflect more current achievements.

It's hard to say about the value of old content, on one hand its value can decay if the information has been superseded or no longer applies to things useful to the modern internet. On the other it was that contribution that got the community this far, and it may be that the information has not decayed much if at all.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I would keep the person's reputation. Even if they haven't logged into their account in a long time, if their contributions to the community were helpful or impactful keeping their reputation number the same as it was when they still were active shows that they were important. That's my outlook on this anyways.

 

[cpvr]

I would keep the person's reputation. Even if they haven't logged into their account in a long time, if their contributions to the community were helpful or impactful keeping their reputation number the same as it was when they still were active shows that they were important. That's my outlook on this anyways.

Exactly. Their contributions were meaningful and had an everlasting impact on the community. They breathed life into the community in the beginning, and there’s no reason to remove anything from their account.

Every single user’s contributions to a community are important, and they were the backbone of the community’s success—whether they are around today or haven’t been for years.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I work a lot with paid online communities.

Gamification is a big feature to engage members and keep them interested in paying for their membership.

Competition or just being able to say that you're achieving success on a community of your peers makes you feel good.

But as you stated, removing the high reputation or credits of those no longer active, IMO is a good idea. Warn them first. Warn anyone who might be victim of a forum purge due to inactivity. That way if they come back upset, you can point out that the warning was issued.

Gamification features are made for member engagement. It's not fair to award those who no longer engage. It's not fair to your members, you, or the reputation of your community as a whole.

My .02