Reputation System

Various ideas I've seen that I've liked:

1) A broad variety of rating categories, in which a person giving a rating can say "this category fits this person" or "this category doesn't fit". For example, I rate Joe Bloggs as "builder, scripter, leader": this gives him a rating point in the builder, scripter, and leadership categories. Likewise, a particularly skilled griefer might get "scripter, pest". Include several categories with negative associations. Yes, this means griefers will compete to see who gets the highest score in them. It just makes the griefers easier to identify.

2) Rating decay. After a month or so, someone's rating of you will be expired, and will be subtracted from your total. This means that if, in the past, you've racked up quite a score in the "pest" and "troll" categories, and you've mended your ways, you don't need to go around to everyone and ask them to rescind their ratings. Or if you're not going to as many parties as usual, your "socializer" score will go down.

3) The L$1 payment for changing a rating goes to the person you're rating.

I LOVE this idea.

Lordfly's suggestion is my favorite at this point. I don't think that should be tied to ratings, but I do think that we should have more options in our profiles based on our building, scripting, socializing abilities, and I think in a positive future we'd be able to look people up based on these abilities. That alone would be a great "bonus" for people who work hard.

But if you tie it to stipend, people will again hold "rate my ability to build" parties.

I think if the rating system is thrown out.. we ought to get some kind of reimbursement for "given" ratings. I know I'm up to 1200 or so and I'd be thrilled to have that money back instead it scrapped with the system.

Stipend bonuses need to be based on something new and unique, perhaps separate from a ratings system which can easily be abused.

Also, ratings would be abused a lot less if they were less visible. I like some of the Leader Board concepts... but I dunno, it does make me feel competitive every time I look at it, and I'm not sure I like that.

Not sure what else I can add to this thread.

There should be NO system at all. NO ratings. NO leaderboards. NO nothing! I don't even agree with the current dwell mechanism... and I'm one of those that benefit from it a lot.

This is NOT a conventional game. You can't win. You can't and shouldnt keep score against anyone.

Any system at all for rating, reputation or scoring can and will be gamed/mined. Any system for rating or scoring people's abilities will leave *someone* out of the loop - just like the current system neglects scripters, for instance. Forget it. Really.

There would be a helluva lot less bickering and DRAHMA if people weren't able to affect other people's games by trying to ruin their ratings/reputations/score/stipend etc.

I do have some thoughts on some systems that could kinda be considered a rate system for specific purposes, but they shouldn't necessarily be linked to anything other than the 'find' dialogue, really. I don't know if this is even the time or place to discuss it, so I won't... because it will just muddy the waters, and I do enough thread hijacking already.

I am a 9.95 lifer. I flat out depend on bonuses for income - I do have a shop, and a lot of people move through it, but no one buys. I put stuff in the GNU store, and it sells, but $3-4/day is not exactly encouragement to continue work.


I quite like the idea of weighted ratings, where the significance of the rating given to you, is based on the number of ratings recieved by the person rating you

True, this can still be gamed, but its going to make it quite a bit harder to game than the current system.

I strongly like the award mechanism mentioned earlier.

Prehaps this could be tied to lordfly's idea, as well as Linden Approval/bonuses which can be applied like the top picks. (as in, people/groups that the Lindens have seen/noticed recently, not that they get a special dialog page.)

-Adam

I strongly disapprove of any system that allows anyone to rate an unlimited number of persons - for the obvious reason of inflation; ratings don't mean anything if there's an abundance of people willing to rate you positively. See rating parties for instant proof.

See my previous post for my preferred solution; the principle could be applied to any rating system regardless of it being a system to rate friends or cool people or building skills.

Ratings are bad in any form and rewards are too.

You know what my reward is ...I get to play in a world where I can create anything...I can admire others creations, or I can just talk with a very creative mind.

Why are you people so resistant to lose your little ratings wand...you're acting like junkies now looking for the fix ...: ok , so, no out right ratings....maybe we can reward their builds or socializing".


We'll find out now how serious Phillip Linden and LL are about the Metaverse or if this is just a game where everyone gets to be queen for a day.

I posted a thread a while back. Basically, I had the outrageous opinion that the rating systems aren't broken.

Details here:
/120/19/12642/1.html

What I really want to say is basically, don't change the rating system. There's no system out there that can't be gamed or griefed. Reputation systems are HARD. PhDs work on these sorts of problems all the time.

My favourite 3 options are (in order of preference):
1) Keep the system
2) Have no rating system.
3) Do away with negative rates

As to the numbers not being meaningful - that's not entirely true, you just need to learn how to read them.

Someone's build rating: build rating / max(appearance, behaviour)
Values near 1 or more mean they're probably a good builder.

Griefer rating: total neg rates / total pos rates
Values >.1 is a warning sign

Appearance rating: appearance / behaviour
Values near 1 or more that they're probably aesthetically appealing

Behaviour rating: total negatives given / total positives given
Values < .01 means that they're probably a reasonably patient person

Socialite rating: number of rates / amount of time they've been around

Already posted my thoughts months ago. They haven't really changed.

/13/33/11121/1.html

but assuming we're not gonna totally toss thing thing out (which I am in favor of honestly) there are some basic changes that i think could be done fairly quickly, and easily, to the ratings system to help 'calm' it down somewhat.

the first and most basic one is no more 'easy three' ratings. If someone can give someone three negs, it doesn't mean they are bad in all three things, it generally means either the giver, or reciever, is a jerk, and WAY too often its the former.

We need a way to make giving somoeone 3 ratings either outright impossible, or progressively more costly.. aka 1 attribute costs $1, rating the second attribute costs $10, and rating the third would cost $100.

This would help cut down on alot of 'white noise' both on positives and negatives, as people would tend to get recognized more on the thing they do better, since they could only get rated in one or two catrgories for the most part.

Also 'nagging' negs would be something i'd like to see, if we are stuck with the current overall reputation system. Aka if you neg someone, it nag you about that neg until eventually you rescind it, and/or charge you again to sustain it... the longer you want to go without a 'nag' and repayment, the overall more expensive a neg would be.

the exact timing of the nag windows for negs given, and how much a sliding scale would cost could be minor, to somewhat more severe.


If ya dig back through some of Kex Goedel's original threads on theres there are many *MANY* more ideas, that have gone through several layers of revision for varying things... Catetory name changes, better ways of accounting for ratings... such as avatar name color changes or warnings.


The basic problem is the 'neg' is now being used as a griefing tool, and overall jerk bludgeon that alot of unsociable people are whipping out to attack the long time residents, its simply too easy for someone whos been in game 6 hours to 'ruin' the reputation of someone who's beein in the game 12 months (and i wish i could ounly need one hand to count the number of less than day old players i've seen with 'given to others' in the -30+ range

These numbers never have nor ever will represent anyones reputation. They are just that arbitrary numbers. I Don't even look at anyones rating anymore I listen to what they say and watch how the act.

If someone truly believes that their reputation has been marred by a negative then they really need to rethink why they are playing this Game ( yes I said game, until the ratings and leader boards go thats all SL can be).

Basically what eltee said: progressive cost to discourage 'easy three' and the 'nagging negs'.

I'm in Francis's camp, and don't believe the rating system is as broken as people want it to be. It's just a mite bit easy to muck up.

So, some other random thoughts for small improvments:

Transparency - Show us the rating history for an avatar (who gave the rating and what they gate), along with the message given. No more hiding. As someone on the community radio station this morning said "If you shine the light on 'em, the cockroach runs".
Neg Message - Require a message for negative rating. Works in conjunction with the Transparency, so you can see, and summarily ignore, a negative marked "priec to hi" or "dddddddd".
Stop showing negatives - Don't split negatives on the overview screen. Instead, show the aggregate number (+100 -10 shows 90) and give some sort of color coding for the number of negs relative to positives. That way someone who had say more negatives than positives would show a red number, but the vast majority of people would be a green number.
Rename Building - Rename building to include Scripting talent. I think most people use it this way anyhow.
Rename Appearance - Appearance is rather superficial, and again, I think most people use it just as a general "Avatar Skill".

Ultimately I would like to see reeducation that negative ratings are normal, and someone without any is aberrant. People use negatives for punishment, and reading the various SL related literature, especially the research papers, it doesn't seem like that is the intended use. Previous to 1.2 ratings served their purpose decently: distribution of resources via tax breaks. In the post-1.2 world, US$ handles that, so ratings have become trivialized.

More long term, I'm in agreement with some of the posted ideas about SL being prime space for social networking. However, I would make this entirely separate from the ratings system. For an example of a system I'd like to see, look into Slashdot's Friend/Foe system. This would open up the door for some categorization of calling cards too. For example, control online notification for friend/foe/other separately. But that's ultimately nothing to do with ratings (hopefully) and has been expanded on in some of the other linked threads.

I've always liked this idea... i think showing the 'negs' as a seperate category has done way more harm than good. having just the agregate and then color coding the percentages gives a much more subtle, yet powerful indicator of how 'bad' someone is.

another idea i would toss out there would be some kind of system where you earn 'rates' and can spend them to rate other people. That way you couldn't easily have 'neg parties' where groups of people get togehter and start randomly negging people for the sole purpuse of causing trouble for them.

At the same time you sholdn't be able to hold 'positive rate parties' to game the system, by getting 30 people to come rate eachother... a depressingly common event these days

Well, what Eltee and Cienna said on the hiding of negatives. But also not, in a way.

Cienna and Francis: Perhaps ideally, "re-education" that there shouldn't be a stigma on negative ratings would be utopian and ideal, but it's not going to happen. The social body has decided that there is a stigma to that row of numbers, and no amount of prostheletyzing is going to change that with SL as a whole.

Of course, a hidden-neg system could also be gamed, but it would also would put it more in line with what LL intended it to be.

I also don't neccessarily agree with the permanence. Once someone tags you, you're tagged forever.

Let's say a griefer, after a year, turns over a new leaf and really does 'grow up' and change their ways. They could never live it down.

However, in the converse, a good player gets cynical and jaded - ratings WOULD reflect that change. So essentially, because negs are shown, your 'reputation' can go down, but not really up.

This is because everyone "knows" that positives are given out freely, but not everyone is "absolutely sure" that every negative was arbitrary.

(Though more and more, they are, too. I remember someone saying in these forums that 'in some way, every negative is deserved'. For this exhibit, I submit this: My favorite instance was when I was standing in Welcome, and some guy with a deformed av came up to me shouting "CANADA! CANADA!" and proceeded to triple-neg me. I IM'ed him as to why he felt my building, appearance, and behavior was negative, and he responded "CANADAAAAA!". Now, Francis and Cienna - I gotta ask, could this guy be re-educated? I dont think so. Luckily, the guy didn't keep his account - but why should anyone have to bear a mark from someone who has such an informed opinion as ... "CANADAAAAA!" ?)

(edit) I'd also like to say that I like Lordfly's suggestion pretty well, too.

(P.S., I am not in any way saying that Canada or Canadians are in any way related to negative rates, deformed avs, or negative reputations. Perhaps this guy thought I was Canadian and that's why he negged me? Who knows.)

I'm in favour of keeping the rating system the way it is. All the other systems are kind of interesting, but they all have their drawbacks.

Kex's system:
Very good, but there's no incentive to use it. I know who my friends are, I'm not going to fill out a survey unless there's a payoff.

Some implicit heuristic:
As soon as someone figures out how it's done, the system will be gamed. On a related note, I am really not in favour of rewarding people who sell a lot of stuff. People who sell a lot of stuff already get rewarded with L$. This is why I hate dwelloper incentives.

No-negative system:
Baby with the bathwater. The number of positives/negatives given and received contains a lot of information. Throwing out/hiding negaives means you're left with not very much interesting information. Also, you're removing someone's power to say "I dislike you", without getting uncivilized. I'm sure removing negatives will bring rise to more push-gun abuse reports and even more complex revenge schemes.

More expensive/impossible to give more than 1 rating:
I can live with this, but it doesn't address gang-rating, which seems to have people up in arms.

No rating system:
Some people actually depend on ratings for pocket money. They don't have dwell parties, and they haven't got any markettable building skills. Ratings are a very easy way for newbies to earn a little money. This is a good thing.

Why I like the rating system as is:
I can infer a lot of information from it.

Example 1:I sell scripted items in-world. This means I deal with a lot of tech support questions. (*sigh* My first question is always, "are you standing on a no-script plot?" So I have a high amount of very brief encounters. I have approximately 4 seconds to judge how to react to someone. If the person I'm talking to has given out a high number of negative rates, I'll probably be polite and curt, because I don't really want to "set them off". On the other hand, if I'm not very busy, I might be a bit more chatty with someone who seems friendly.

Example 2: Suppose I'm a consumer. I see a car/outfit/whatever that I like. A quick glance at their profile - aha! This person seems nice/this person seems to be a jackass, so I can probably forget about tech support.

I completely agree with Talen. I can see no real worth in a ratings system at all.

The are so few metrics that are really safe from abuse, and those that do exist such as 'inworld age' are of little use when it comes to quantifying a person. I saw Robin make mention of the giving of a gift as being a 'good point', but of course 'gift giving parties' will very quickly follow.

As a community we have to each make our own reputation in world. We are all going to be judged by our actions. Anyone that has spent time inworld will soon begin to get a feel for who is good and who is not.


Anyway - that said, if we really must try to measure 'people and their peoply ways' - here is a very very simple way to do something that is fair.

[Edit - I just noticed Crays great post - so apologies if this is very close to that, nice post Cray]

1) Rather like the 10 Top Places we can all log in our profiles, we each have a '10 Fave Residents' list. No more than 10, although we may choose to nominate none. We can assign a name, position in the list, whenever we wish - move people up and down or remove them. The position in that ten should count. Only we can see our list.

2) A resident must be 6 months old before they can assign their own list but they can be added to others lists immediately. This at least attempts to halt the Alt voting scam as there is such a delay.

3) Assignments 'die' after 1 month automatically. The player gets the option to re-assign again just as the group vote boxes pop up now.

4) We can only see our own list, not anyone elses. The count of entries we have earned appears in the weekly stipend window but otherwise we should have no idea who has us listed.

5) A resident that does not log in for X period (say 3 months) is removed from others lists and cannot be added to any list until they begin playing again.


I dont like negative ratings at all, it is - well - negative. I would rather see SL being about the posiitive rewarding of bahaviour than about subjective punishment. If someone has no positive rating, perhaps that says enough.


Jai Nomad


[Edited after spotting Crays idea]

So far most people seem to either want the rating system removed entirely, or see something like what Lordfly suggested being implemented instead.

It is also apperent that most people wish to have an alternate way to get income if the rating system stops giving them L$.

I personaly think that both are correct.

Attaching L$ to rating will make people generaly tripple rate you for nothing just because you've been nice to them, or because you rated them and they feel that your effort should be returned.

I'd like to suggest the following:

Implement LordFly's suggestion with afew restrictions. The "build" flag can be enabled only when this person is actually present near a prim with a Created tag belonging to the rated person.

The "script" flag can only be enabled when near a script with a Created tag of that person.

The "Behavior" flag only when you've actually seen this person at any time for the last 24 hours.

Etc'.

Case-by-case flagging could help prevent tripple rates unless people really make an effort (I can see someone running around with a follower made of his own prims and scripts only to get rated on everything. Should make these Rating parties intresting. )

Overall... i'd go with Kris - For the last few years that i've been on Virtual Worlds, some had rates, some had non... and those that had non were still pretty much fun anyway.

Social reputation works well enough both here and in RL to require a set of numbers.

Just need to find a way to replace the weekly stipend that all of us want, and some of need and rely on.

Maybe this is what we should focus on instead?

cause yer profitin handily from it?

most of the other systems and tweaks would only enhance the reasons you 'like' the current one

other than a reset to 0 of course

Francis - Would you say that random and unfounded negging is not a problem then?

I would be hosting Mentor events right now if I didn't have to worry about 20 underaged newbies who slipped the credit card negging me because its "huhuhuh cool huhuhuh".

This is a problem. You can say "toughen up" - but when they absolutely are UNFOUNDED, i.e., given to you from someone you have never spoken to, or in some cases, seen, just because of their whim - that's an issue. It keeps people from socializing because there's a risk involved in simply being out in the open.

It has a chilling effect whether we want it to or not. You can't say on one hand that showing negatives are important, and on the other hand that they're so unimportant that we shouldn't worry about drive-by-random-neggings.

It's one or the other: they're weighty, or they aren't. If they are weighty, and a valid tool to judge someone on, they shouldn't be able to be given on a whim. Much less should they be permanent. There's nothing stopping someone from having a bad day and negging everyone in sight.

If they're a curious and interesting tool - then yes, it's open to interpretation. But if it is open to interpretation, then people will have different thresholds. It's easy to get a -10 -10 -10 simply for the crime of being in public areas often. Some may judge you then as a bad actor for recieving the triple-tens, even if you aren't. It depends on their judgement threshhold.

I really would like to hear your argument, Francis, for the ability to give freeform negatives without any justification, interaction, or transaction with the person -- and why these negatives should be absolutely and irreparably permanent.

I don't see the sense in it. I absolutely do not believe that most negatives are given "honestly". From social experience and what I have seen, most negatives are given to simply "get at" another person due to a disagreement where the recipient may or may not have been in the wrong. Furthermore, a large percentage of the 'noise' is from people who are happy on the negative trigger.

Honestly, the fact that the system is broken can be evidenced simply: How many people do you see who have negative ratings that are disparate in one of the three categories versus the others? The most I have ever seen is perhaps a -20, -21, -20. You never see -0, -35, -0, or even -3, -10, -3. You always see -5, -5, -5, or -30, -30, -29.

The last of which, by the way, could easily be obtained by simply being in Ahern for more than your own good over the course of a year.

Sorry? I don't understand what you're saying? How am I profitting from it?

I think I've outlined at length the reasons I prefer the system to stay as it is? Is there something I can clarify for you?

the reasons you gave francis... are the very things that fall short with the current system.

the information you claim to get from the profile doesn't often mean what it should. Someone with high negs *COULD* be mean, or they could have had an accidental run in with a neg party, or been the victim of a mass neg from some one with an agenda against them. Theres no way to tell without talking and as you yourself have said, you're not going to be conversational, yer going to be curt and hope they go the heck away before they get you

thats one of the major problems... and many of the alternative suggestions bantied around would FIX that.

Being so dismissive of alternative suggestions that would boost what YOU personally want out the ratings system from what i've seen tends to come mostly from older players who are comfortable sittin on their laurels, ignoring everyne, and enjoying their $L1500 a week bonses they 'earned' hanging around the welcome area for a few months back and ratin swappin with newbies.

Now if yer not one of them then join us, renounce the bonus, accept the zeroing out of yer ratings as they are now, for the greater good.

I'm not super high on the scale myself basically upper 250's, but thats high enough that zeroing me out would hurt. I'm willin to take it tho, if it means we can get a system that doesnt' cause so much anguish, mistrust, anti-social behavior and general mayhem of bad-intent, especially among the most pivotal of the SL community.

We have a system where 3 day olds *DO* often maraud around and attack, permanently in many cases, old and well respected members of the community. Thats just really not acceptable

I LOVE Lordfly's idea about ratings, but don't know how you'd prevent certain groups from manipulating even that.

Under the current system, I'm pretty much a ratings 'loser' and will probably remain so under any system that requires chasing votes/rates.

And therin lies the other problem with ratings. There are those that feel that they are special because they have 100's and there are those that feel bad because they have only a few. Then there is me that couldn't give a rats arse.

Increase the weekly stipend and eliminate all ratings. Its stupid, It's social engineering, and it will never work in any form. We already have the tools to let people know how we feel about them.

I've met a few people from the forums...I WANT to meet everyone from the forums...I find everyone here interesting in their own way. I don't want to meet any of you because of your ratings or leader board status rather because you've opened up communication and have been yourself.

There is so much more to the world than points on a scorecard. Again I have to say ...as long as there is a scoring system this can only be a game....only when the ratings and leader boards go will this begin to be a Multiverse.

I blindly toss out all 3's for those who I think are cool, ratings are very arbitrary and they've gotten to the point where the system's borked, abused, and flawed, it's one system I look at and I ponder the world without it, and that honestly seems a better place, use the AR if you have a problem with someone, because ratings just get abused.

The only value that shows you as a person are the ones you've given, because griefers abuse the rating system horridly, others, really don't care about ratings because of this, LL needs to really just... replace it with AR and, perhaps even voting.

Also you can only rate people within mouse range, or their property on a limited scale, what if it's someone over IM, this is truely the point where AR is the only thing that can show a negative person.

The rating system relies on a maturity that some lack, it should be replaced or removed entirely.

My reputation's not a number, it's how I interact with others, not a pie menu item.