Bring back guanxi OR adjustable ratings?

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1

Bringing back guanxi or adjustable ratings could make things better around here.

Personally, I like the old guanxi system. If you’re an idiot, you lose it and everyone can see it. If you are awesome, you get rewarded. You can give guanxi points to other people you like etc.

Hey, it seemed to keep things in order a while back.

The server looks stable, it could handle the mods, surely???

Something like this could be the sort of positive move that a site like Forumosa is looking for.

Or post ratings make sense. I’d be on my toes, that is, if I stay.

2

I like quanxi where I can buy cute items to add to under my names.

Also, if we can have quanxi to give out to a posters on a good respond or good topic that would be cool too.

sometimes I read a really good post and I wanted to maybe just quanxi to that POST instead of reply with a simple line of Agree

3

“I like their old stuff better than their new stuff” was a song by Regurgitator. I personally have no idea what “guanxi” is in forumosan terms. Some places of this forum are already tough places for newbies and irregular posters/visitors. There’s a lot of in-fighting and in-jokes and conversations that can be difficult to understand.

Is it really broken?

4

And I see your relevant Aussie icon quote and raise one:
“Ask if it’s fake or true, not ‘is it old or new?’” - TISM, The Birth of Uncool.

FWIW, I don’t like the idea of post or thread ratings, because they can be hijacked too easily. I’ve seen it in other boards. The Guanxi thing I’m not familiar with, but if it’s what I think it is I think it could have merit. But then again, it too could be hijacked or unnecessarily drive away posters who see they have a low rating, regardless of whether they’re a good addition to the community. (I say this as one of the board’s resident bastards, likely to get a shitcanning in this regard.)

5

I didn’t like the guanxi system when it was on Forumosa. Certain people had thousands and thousands of guanxi, while other people had to build theirs up slowly. Moderators or friend of moderators seemed to benefit from the transfer system. I think the site is better without it.

6

Guanxi was a points system. You got one point every time you posted, plus the moderators had an unlimited supply of the stuff to give out. You could transfer your guanxi to other people, in response to a good thread for instance, and also use it to buy stuff such as the right to an avatar, signature line, etc.

It worked quite well at first, but before long people started to accumulate massive amounts of the stuff. There was a ‘bank’ paying 10% a week(?), and also a lottery, plus some of the mods seem to have been a bit liberal with the stuff. Eventually it became a joke. I gave all mine away eventually.

Potentially it’s quite a good way to manage the site. If guanxi is in limited supply, and has value, then most people will work to get it.

It makes sense for everyone to start from zero, and for moderators to be excluded from the system except as 'administrators. I would suggest that the mods not have unlimited access, but a weekly/monthly allowance. They should be required to dispose of the entire amount, and have limits placed on the size of payments or number of payments they are allowed to make to one individual. I dunno about the idea of fining people. Thoughts anyone?

Individual posters have to be free to distribute their largesse as they see fit, and ALL transfers have to be publicly viewable so everyone can see that the system is not being abused.

The lottery and bank were fun, but ultimately I think they led to an oversupply. Guanxi has to be worth something, but it won’t be if it’s too easy to accumulate.

Stuff for sale:
signature line space
avatar privilege
country flags
chops
different titles (I don’t like the current system anyway)
viewing rights to the women’s forum :smiling_imp:
changes of colour, etc. for your name

I seem to remember that for a while under the old system you could also play tricks on other posters, such as temporarily changing their title, if you could afford it.

Also, why not seek ‘prizes’ of real monetary value from local businesses? I’m thinking of discount coupons, vouchers redeemable at HHs, movie tickets, etc. As our hosting fees are paid for this year is there any reason why forumosa couldn’t actually provide something of monetary value for people who contribute a lot to this site?

7

I thought it was a crock. Fluff. Nonsense. Filling. The value here is in what the users post, not all the garbage appended to that content. KISS.
IIRC this was also the consensus when it was decided to drop these systems in order to reduce system overhead.

8

[quote=“hsiadogah”]I thought it was a crock. Fluff. Nonsense. Filling. The value here is in what the users post, not all the garbage appended to that content. KISS.
IIRC this was also the consensus when it was decided to drop these systems in order to reduce system overhead.[/quote]
I agree. It had no value IMO when it was being used. It didn’t really give people an idea of post quality AT ALL – If I remember correctly, I had almost the highest amount. Since most of my posts are smartarse one-liners, my guanxi stash surely wasn’t representative of what it was supposed to be about.

9

^^^ Well Sandman, just think how many karma points you might have had if any of those smartass one-liners had actually been even slightly funny. :wink:

Of course I’m not biased in the least by the fact that I had almost no karma points at all… :blush: :smiley:

10

The guanxi system was nice in being able to buy privileges and it helped encourage good, quality posting. Unfortunately, it was also tied to quantity so some of the more prolific posters earned it faster than the “Talks the Least, Says the Most” posters. And some people became guanxi manwhores…no offense, Loretta.

I would give away guanxi points to newbies who were contributing to the boards to help them know they were appreciated. I remember receiving one of the largest donations from sandman of a then unheard of G$500. Then inflation rolled in and it wasn’t so uncommon to see G$1000 donations. I even referenced the guanxi lottery in my old blog.

It certainly had many nice applications. I would just cut out some of the frilly stuff and keep earning low and controlled. Changing someone’s or even your own title was cool.

11

Maybe there is a way to bring it back, but in a more thoughtful way.

For example, say we you do not get any guanxi for posts you make, but for other acts that help maintain the website. You get 100 guanxi when someone alerts the moderator that you gave good advice, 200 guanxi for writing a letter to the editor about forumosa, 300 guanxi for planning a happy hour or coordinating a weekly movie.

And we could start everyone off with 88 guanxi - just enough to buy the bare minimum.

We could set the guanxi bank to a realistic interest rate so that those who do get it – from the moderators or from fellow, grateful forumosans.

12

Real guanxi isn’t calculated and expressed in numerical units.

I tend to be nice and give the benefit of the doubt to posters who I believe have contributed to the site or who have been otherwise helpful or courteous or funny in a non-hurtful way.

I tend to be short with or to deny the benefit of the doubt to those who exhibit the opposite characteristics.

13

Nope, don’t like it. The first part adds unnecessarily to the workload of mods, the second seems far too… mercenary, I guess, and the third seems unworkable, since there’s only so many HHs that can be organized, and only so many movies that can be seen.

14

I never liked the guanxi system - I thought it was a distraction.

15

In my opinion, guanxi is nonsense; if you like the idea of getting guanxi, it’s a sign that you have been teaching kids for too long. :wink:

16

I think the guanxi system became suspect expecially when moderators could generate as much of it as they liked. That’s why sandman had so much of the stuff he was like a turn of the century German banker with his finger stuck on the on switch of the printing press. Ultimately so much inflation occurred that it became a worthless joke.

No…ok he deserved all the guanxi he got, but what about me I never got any and I thought I was pretty funny. I think mother teresa gave me some once out of pity or love. It was depressing. I felt unloved and to this day it haunts me still.

We could have some more organized online fun though. We should have a prize for the first person to come up with a winning idea other than guanxi.

Something that tracks, but celebrates what’s good about the site at the same time. One possiblity would be to have some categories or perhaps do it according to forums where moderators select a selection of posts and they get voted on by everybody. I think this idea would also help to move people around the site more instead of getting trapped in only one or two forums. It would also highlight what is perceived by the moderators as positive, but ultimately us plebs decide. Hobbes had his finger on the pulse often with his signature of what was smart, funny and insightful. He is a good arbitor of such stuff too. He’d be the Allan Greenspan of that job.

In additioon, people could get kudos for their nominations and for their winning a vote in any particular week. There is so much great stuff that goes on here every week and insightful stuff too.

It gives the moderators a profile that as Willie Nelson said:

accentuates the positive eliminates the negative allows you to latch on to the affirmative and not mess with Mister In-Between

17

I think Slashdot’s karma system works well.

It’s especially helpful for quickly searching for good, past posts and reading through topics that quickly accumulate many posts. Hot topics on Slashdot can attract thousands of posts per hour.

18

Alright, let’s bring it back, but don’t call it ‘guanxi’ call it ‘baby cards’ :wink:

I think one problem with a ‘guanxi/karma’ type system and many oft he other ‘bells and whistles’ that we once had, is that it sort of turns our focus inwards. We spend time talking about guanxi, chops and flags rather than about living in Taiwan. Then the site becomes less relevant and helpful to those who don’t give a damn about who has the most guanxi, as the proportion of posts with something useful and informative to say gets less and less.

In my opinion the proportion of ‘introspective’ posts - those continually arguing about moderating decisions, the otne of the site, how nasty everyone is being etc - is already getting dangerously high. I just imagine new people stumbling across the site and thinking “great a place where I can discuss life in Taiwan - wait a minute - they just seem to be talkign about somethign called ‘guanxi’ and arguing about why the ‘Star Chamber’ banned 'Comrade Stalin - forget it - this seems like a waste of time”.

My only suggestion is a very simple positive rating system. A single button on each post saying ‘I like this post’ or something to that effect. Every click on the button (and oeach user can only rate each post once) would add a positive value of 1. 5 clicks would add a star to the post - 10: 2 stars - 25: 3 stars - something like that in an exponential way. Then users could see at a glance which posts were the most useful. Then perhaps the authors of a certain number of starred posts would earn a star next to their name. I’m not really thinking of this as a system of reward but more as a pointer to readers so they can easily see the most useful posts (and perhaps posters).

Brian

19

This is roughly Slashdot’s karma system. However, you don’t earn “stars” that other users can see. Earning “stars” gives you the ability to spend them to “rate” posts.

20

I think we should implement a Sausage system. Every time someone makes a new post it’d be like a sausage in the sausage bank. Then at the end of every month we could cash in our sausages and have a barbecue.

I don’t think to much thought should be put into this. I’d look at other sites and see what works and doesn’t work. I also wouldn’t add something on a whim. It’d be best if it was a meaningful addition that survives the test of time (Guanxi obviously was not).

Besides, anything added now might not won’t work after the next upgrade (a new version of phpBB is right around the corner).