Reputation System

the new rating system is perfect. there are 3 ratings and they are thrown around like dirt!

ratings shouldnt be given for simply existing near eachother, like they have been doing in the club scene. It would be better to have 1 rate at a time that corresponds to one of the three actual topics.

I am sad to hear about stipend reduction, that money was needed for all new players and ESP. for the new system to flurish it needs to be affordable. I feel for those who now get less weekly and pay more, but ratings should be more important, we shouldn't see the leader board with 700+ a week in each.

yeah i said im sorry cut and paste it LOL it may be the last time you read those words from me I hate apologizing especially when im passionate about an issue but its my passion that led me to speak about Torley out of turn. And it was bad form on my part. I could have expressed myself just as easily without takin a jab at the Pink One. I have alot of respect for MOST Lindens. And i know their jobs can be really difficult and i try to cut them slack. But I pay to play this game. sighs. and i have my own talents. And, Ive had Lindens tell me i didnt belong in SL if i didnt intend to design or get a "job" (whatever that means). And that really disturbed me. I felt really unwelcome and offended. Thats not an excuse to put words in the mouth of a well liked and respected SL player who contributes im sure a great deal more than i do to this game. So i apologize Torley for sayin you were supporter of the new economic changes when i never bothered to ask you and only assumed. Im pretty sure i dont have the confidence in the new system you do sweetie. But i have gotten it off my chest by posting in this thread and i hope my meaning wont be lost on you. I worry for the future of SL. Its not just the ratings system but the general direction they are takin the game in as "world builders" I feel they are neglecting a vital segment of the population and alienating them when they dont make room form easier ways to expressive creativity, especially among our newer players. And i feel the new rating stipend cuts play a part in that. And i also disagree with the last poster who said that ratings abuse was more important an issue than a safety net for newbies. We need accessable funds for less talented new players. If you get any message from my posts please for the love of Goddess can you hear me when i speak up about that. You have no idea how easy it is to give up on SL if you cant find reasonable source for income.

I also believe that the ratings system is very useful. The rating system was a draw for me to come to SL. I liked the fact that I could be actually rewarded for being nice and helping others. I do also think (like many of you) that jumping from 1L to 25L to rate was overkill.

I have noticed also that at events...the events are rather quite. There is not the same effort given by people to be expressive. I truly feel people need that extra incentive to push themselves to say hello and be nice and open with others.

Just my opinion...but I can only hope that the Lindens redo the ratings system as it has a strong purpose in this world of SL. Thank you.

Sophie Boffin

Set all ratings to zero. Start fresh when starting with a new pricing scheme, or new rating system all together.

Hmmmm, I could brainstorm about this thing continually, but I have a few ideas that might fly.

How about if you rate someone. You make a comment on why you would. And somehow monitor the feedback, say through scripts looking for certain words. Somehow encourage those who would otherwise rate blindly without other meaning than to make L.

Or how about social bonuses? Show up at an event, get some sort of rating system available only then, and that goes towards your stipend.? There are many ideas i can think up that would be more feasable and workable. I'll post some later.

The raise from 1 to 25L is a huge change.... but I'm sure it was intended to make huge changes.

So if rating someone is a way to increase what they make, then raising it to 25 severely decreases what income they will make... but by how much? I'd like to see some numbers.

On top if this, what they lose in ratings is multiplied (or is that divided?) by the decreased stipend per rating.

So what does this mean besides income-wise? Truly?

For one it means an end to frivolous rating, though many of us feel that could have been done with a smaller increase in price.

But it also raises value depending on how you measure it.

It raises the VALUE of the validity of each rate. Now if someone gets a rating you think "hey.. someone had to pay 25 for that".

This of course, is diluted by those with high ratings achieved in a pre 25L rating system.

As far as my behavior.. rating was something I always gave out honestly, and if everyone had done that, there would never have been such a jack in price.

Now... who do I rate?

Teachers of great classes,

Makers of great buildings,

and helpful and polite people going out of their way.


So here's an idea that wold be better than clearing. Take existing ratings (paid at 1L each) and take them down to 1/25th so that they match people coming in.... rather than clear.

No one, no matter how much the loss, is making as little as a newbie with no rates.

after a recent failure big time in the rating system i see no point in having one. it is judgemental to easy to negatively rate people.. i recently filed not sure how manyabuse reports in a row of someone who constantly and massively negatively rated me for no reason. starting it himself by putting his nose in a matter he had no business being in as it was passed onto a Linden yet he came out uninvited and chose to negatively rate me along with all his avs and cronies the next day too over and over.. how many abuse reports did i have to file????? I lost count and it kept continuing over and over and over again. i did nothing and was doing nothing to agitate it i did not know the people who were even negatively rating me..

no, the rating system needs to go away permanently no need for it. rating people on behavior would still be up to the individual what he/she thinks how a person is behaving and what happened to me can happen to others still. just jerks in sl that decide they want to do it for no reason.

if a person wants to tell another person something positive or negative make them have to IM them that way if it is a negative comment it takes a special effort for anyone to do it and less likely for a false negative or abuse type mass negative rating to happen.

And would not we want to hear a positive comment from someone not just a circle checked saying you are positive rated? and IMs are free so why should we have a rating system period and one that costs us big time. Why should we have to pay 25 bucks to check a circle when in IMs it is much more personal people to people.

Take it from someone who was at the blunt end of this rating system being massed negatively rated for no reason by people who i never even knew. Now tell me is this a perfect rating system. Why can
't be we IM each other its free and personally tell each other good things? if we did that it would take extra effort for people to negatively say things or mass say things that are bad.
and did you know all those people originally rated you for the money not for you? how perfect was it then? it is true the only thing the original system did was to get people out in sl to mingle. i agree this i think was the best t hing about the original rating system.

if the Lindens insist on having a rating system. then only let people rate each other positively in the three original catagories for a buck each as in the original rating system. and the person raiting doesnt get paid. This way people will rate people positively cause they agree the person is good not for the money. i met alot of people by attending events i never would have done if it were not for the original rating system.. change it back to the original rating system even minus the ability to negatively rate someone. make a person who has to negatively rate it do it IM to IM.

Honestly I think there should be a better way of making your basic paycheck every week. Who really needs a ratings system? If I need to make some linden one week and decide to do a few builds, I have my little circle of contacts that I have that usually laugh at my funny builds or what not and recommend me to others. I build freebie armor and swords sometimes in dark life for the fun of it, and later on someone contacts me to do an entire house. Word of mouth is the best way to go for "ratings".

Personally I am very disappointed with the change in the rating system. The reason being is if you change the foundation of a system, you need to reset everyone so they are building on the same foundation. Regardless of if the stipend is cut by 50%, those at the top still make significantly more than the majority of the population. And why? Because they were in SL earlier. I'd like to have the same advantages that have been afforded to our "older" residents.

Since the increased cost to rate, I have been rated exactly one time. People just can't afford it and I do understand. It would be just as well if they cut the whole thing anyway. Cause guess who can afford to rate???

I've rated quite a few people .. if you are going to wipe the slate clean I want all my money back of the ton of people I rated over time. I didn't realize I was throwing all of it down a hole that would be wiped clean soon after or I'd have saved it.

We don't have any plans to wipe ratings -- we are looking at ways to level the playing field though, and that is one option.

There have been a lot of good ideas in this thread to take into account before we make any further changes to the rating system. Whatever we do, we'll try to make it as painless as we can and give you some advance notice.

I think this would be an excellant way to not only balance out the econamy a bit, but also give the well deserved, there do..

I am unhappy because as a new member I was just beginning the ratings. I thought it was also a great way to meet people the rating system should stay. I was really unhappy at the amount of rate $$ changed and still recieve one point for each rating costing 25 lindens. The rating increase is so high someone like me who is just starting out cannot even begin to compete. I can't understand the rational because in real life if you would not sell anything from one day to another for a 250% increase in cost........unless you talking scalped tickets maybe.

My thought is that there are many with very high rating due to time in and length of time they have been in the game. I think you should store these in thier profile, however and if you start something new start everyone at "0" so we can start fresh since the entire rating system has changed.

I have always hated the rating system! It is not about good or bad + or - It was about money! That is all it ever was to me about money. Out of it did come one thing. It was good to get people out and "Play the game" If you go to this event and rate people then they rated you back most of the time. This helped them and it helped you. It gave people a reason to get out in SL and enjoy things in SL. Now I see NO redeming value in this sytem. Now it is a wepion for abuse.

Before it was usefull (sort of) now it it is useless! SCRAP IT!


I know there are not alot of retired people in SL. Well some are and the extra income loss seems to only help those who sell L$ for US$ @ GOM and IGE. Guess I will be going there more so I can continue to donate stuff to good causes.

i would like to preface this with saying that i have read every single post in this thread.

has anyone else noticed that it has been a very long time since there have been any constructive posts? at first there were lots of ideas, some good some bad, some possible, some not as feasible sounding, some simple and some very complicated ones. there was also allot of discussion about the relative merits of some of the better ideas. recently it has all been about the rather minor change in the current rating system (minor only compared to some of the ideas stated in the earlier parts of this thread, i agree that it has had some large effects).

to my fellow SL residents: aren't there any other good ideas about a total revamp of the system? not just backlash against the recent changes?

to the Lindens: would it be possible to have an update on the posts that you found interesting, or that might be part of a major change in the rating system? possibly as a new thread as this one has gotten really really long with more and more people starting off by saying they haven't read it, which inhibits any new discussion on previous ideas



jester

Just to say that, as a new user who has just learnt how the ratings system works, it is fairly astonishing that when the price changed, no thought was given to keeping pre and post change ratings equal. I fully understand the motivation behind making it more expensive and so (at least in theory) more meaningful, but it would have been trivial to either divide all pre-price-change ratings by 25, or make it so that a new L$25 rating added 25 points at a time. As it stands there is a huge inequality in the system between those who were around before the price change and those who were around after.

That said, I don't really care, I'm here to play and learn and talk to interesting people, not make money.

Jonathan

Edit: I've just read on other forums references to a recent 'ratings erasure' to even up the system. In which case complete ignore the above. Ahem.

When all is said and done (after miles of typing), given the new prohibitive price for ratings, and how almost no one rates anymore, wipe all ratings out completely:

WIPE OUT ALL EXISTING RATINGS AND ABOLISH ALL RATING

It's over, it's history, it's dead.

I don't feel there should be a ratings system and certainly bonues should not be tied into them. The potential for abuse in nearly everything here is so great. The ratings system maybe encourages a few people to go out and be nice but for the most part it is (or was when it was cheaper) just part of the virtual handshake that occurs when people meet.

Lindens should have some non-Linden alts who mingle throughout the community and see who is doing good. I met one person last week who is by far, a newbies best friend. She interacts with newbies every day, gives them a place to stay and lots of free stuff to get them started in-world. Most of these wretches don't even know what the rating system is so she doesn't get a lot of ratings. People like that are the ones who should be identified as having a positive reputation and be rewarded accordingly. Not some ditz who runs around clubs trying to get everyone to rate her so she will get more money and somehow feel 'special.'

well what other choie do you have to punish those who steal or constantly greif you

a griefer is more than a person with a push script it also can be a person who harrasses you verbaly ,visually or steals some thing from you in which in most cases unless they repeat offending people with these media most likely they will just get a warning.

First of all, I'd like to say that I like the increased cost of rating in the new system.

Now, on to something else. I haven't read all 22 pages of posts on this topic, so what I'm about to say may have been discussed already. Very early in this discussion, Cray Levy brought up an idea that I think was ingenious. Here's my adaptation of his idea:

Instead of a rating system like the current one, where everybody can rate as many people as they want, each person gets to make a fairly short list of people they admire. You can list your top 5 most admired builders, top 5 scripters, top 5 avatar designers, and so on; and there could be a few social categories as well: top 5 friendliest people, top 5 people I have a crush on, and so forth. As a user, I can change my lists of idols at any time, but if I already have 5 people on my "best builders" list I'll have to remove somebody in order to add someone else. Each person's rating is simply how many people's lists they're on. Editing my lists costs nothing. When my rating changes because somebody adds me to or removes me from a list, I am not notified of it automatically, and there's no way I can see whose lists I'm on, though I can of course see my own rating. There are global leaderboards showing, for example, the top 50 best builders in SL.

There are no negative ratings as such, though there might be negative lists, such as "top 3 most annoying people." To discourage competition for the elite position of "most annoying person in SL", there would be no global leaderboard for this statistic, or for other negative stats. The list would also be shorter to discourage abuse of negative ratings.

This system is extremely difficult to abuse. A group of 5 people might get together and all rate each other in all categories, but each will only get a score of 5, and as soon as they begin to meet other people who they genuinely admire, they will be forced to remove each other from their lists. Anybody who has a rating of more than 10 or so probably deserves it. The only form of abuse that can be performed is if a group of people all get together and add one person to their "annoying" list, but again, any group of people could only do that to up to 3 people, and the number of "annoying points" the person gets would be limited to the number of people in the group; and of course, the target could file an abuse report, which should be followed up on.

In addition to discouraging abuse, I think this system would be fun to use. Less abuse means that the ratings would be more meaningful, and increased stipends based on ratings would make more sense.

I believe several things should change for the ratings/reputation system:

1. No negative ratings
2. No cost to rate
3. No effect on money, either way
4. No decay, unless ratings aren't given using money
5. If there are negative ratings, people who consistently give tons of negative ratings are banned from negative ratings, with a time period depending on the severity of their negative spree
6. (off topic, skip to 7 for more about ratings) One-time $10 ppl should get a better stipend or something. Anything good costs 300-1000 dollars. A person with a paying account buying an ARMORD Infinity suit ($L1400) would take 3 weeks to get the money for it; A person doing the one-time $10 account would take 28 weeks (7 months!) to get it! This is way off-balance.
7. Amount of ratings period, not just for one person, should be limited for each day/week/etc, so that people really have to think about who they're rating.

I hope this helps in some way.

i disagree. people with a basic account get an awesome deal. for $10 they can play for the rest of their life without paying anything else and do everything but own land and buy expensive things. but on the other side they're sucking at the teat of LL bandwidth forever. LL loses money on basic accounts so you can't fault them for making it so some (not all) people will want to upgrade. giving better basic stipends means less reason to upgrade so less people do upgrade, LL makes less money and eventually goes bankrupt and SL dies and we all go back to playing Minesweeper.

if you got a basic account you can get the price of that armor suit for $5 on the GOM. or for another $10 a month you get a premium account and rent out your 512 meters of land and get at least L$2000 a month stipend. if you don't have $5 or $10 a month extra for eating out or renting movies or buying books that you could shift over to sl you prolly shouldn't waste money on broadband and sl in the first place hehehe. just skip going to burger king once a month and there's your bigger stipend and LL can stay in business.

Mmmh... minesweeper.

Leeeeeeeeeeet It Dieeeeeeeeee!

I agree that the rating system was heavily abused during the 1L$ rating days. But 25L$ seems a bit steep. I believe it should be reduced to 20, so people who genuinely want to rate someone based on their virtues are not so discouraged by such forbidding prices. Especially for new players, who hardly have any money, 25 Lindens is too much.

Also, I believe that either ratings should decay after 6 months, or you can check who rated you. It's extremely annoying to have a couple negative ratings still around from last year, when you don't know what they are for, or who they are from.

I don't always recieve notice that I've been rated, and this should also be fixed. I would also like to see a comment being required with each rating, positive or negative, to explain the reason for the rating. People could just bs the comment, but a mandatory comment would probably be helpful, especially with negative ratings.