Reputation

[Local]

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I think we should have a reputation system. Its kind of like a way of saying thank you to someone when they provide helpful information. It doesnt really hurt anyone, unless maybe they have a negative reputation and they cry over it. Anyone know if there's a reason why we don't have a reputation system.

 

[MilkmanAl]

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the idea is to judge comments on their content rather than how many tick marks the users who posted them have.

 

[Az1698]

If the person had many tick marks, most likely they are good posters.

 

[Local]

I think it could help readers identify if the post is by someone who they know to post quality information.
"Welcome to the Student Doctor Network forums.

The staff would like to offer a word of caution about the advice you will receive on these forums. Users providing feedback on this site are anonymous. Other than the Advisors in the Mentor's forum, the credentials of the people providing you advice have not been verified. You should use your common sense if someone's advice sounds like it might not be on the level.

If you're not sure about the advice you're being given, the best course of action is to wait to see if other people agree with it. A second/third/fourth opinion will generally give you a good clue.

As always, if you think someone is deliberately trying to mislead or harass you, you may report them using this button

to the left of their post and the situation will be reviewed.

Thanks,

The SDN Mod Staff"

 

[HumidBeing]

Once upon a time, back when I was just a pollywog swimming about in blissful ignorance that SDN existed, there was such a system in place.

People who are going to try to be helpful and give solid advice will do so, with or without a merit system in place. Friends wind up "voting" for friends to boost their status, and certain portion of the group will gleefully compete to see who can get the most negative points. 😱

If all else remained exactly as it was without such a system, it could be somewhat helpful, but those programs wind up changing the dynamics of a forum, and don't always work out the way they were intended.

 

[yaah]

There used to be a system here called "karma" (maybe in 2004-5 or so). It was cute for awhile but it was basically worthless. What happens is that, given that this is a site for people in the medical field who are competitive individuals, users start to compete. Who can get the most karma? It wasn't based much at all on quality of post or reputation. People would trade karma votes with each other. They would give negative points to people who were higher than them. Groups of people would get together in a big thread and give karma to each other. I suspect people were even trading karma for favors or even money (sad but true). The awarding of points was also based partially on seniority and partially on post count, which made the above problems even worse. Then, of course, there were the individuals who took it as a source of pride to have the most negative karma (they all thought they were being clever or unique and didn't seem to realize there were dozens of people like them), so they would purposefully insult people or be unhelpful.

The other annoying feature was that when you gave karma points (either positive or negative) you could leave an anonymous message. So people would give negative points and then sign it with the name of someone whose score they wanted to lower (because you were limited to how much karma you could give out per day).

Example thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=115330
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=117563
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=115630

 

[Local]

People make me sad 🙁 Such an easy system and they still manage to mess it up.

 

[Trail Boss]

There is a point system. It's called "who has made the most posts without getting thrown out". You play on here long enough you will get the urge to go trolling. If you don't get the boot after a few years and 1k+ posts your probably good people.