So about skill...

[photon]

You may have noticed that the skill rating is gone.

After much discussion amongst the moderation team, we decided that unfortunately the skill system was making far more work for the moderation team than was reasonable.

The positive feedback to users who contribute a lot to the forum is great, but the negative feedback to users really wasn't having much of an effect, and the extra moderation time to try and address the complaints that would come from some users whenever they received a negative skill rating was too much.

So for now it's gone. The social networking feature of the new software may replace some of that; add people that you like to your friends list, and maybe we can see if we can add an indication on each post that will display if that poster is on your friends list, then you can decide who gets more of your attention.

Keep reporting posts, we'll address the negative ones from a moderation point of view, and I'm looking for something to highlight or reward good posts in the software.

I can't decide if I should keep this open or not.. I guess I'll leave it open, you can discuss the system objectively or discuss ideas for something similar, or discuss what the goals of such a system should even be. But please don't use this thread to discuss your grievances with the skill system, we are well aware of its shortcomings, or a particular skill.

[FanIn80]

Perhaps a profile-flag that allows a person to auto-ignore anyone of a certain skill threshold? That way, people with multiple blue squares might not be as eye-poppingly agitating to those who hate bad posts.

I mean, when you think about it... If I have a red square, then you must have to be a super-crazy-hella-nasty poster to get multiple blue ones...

[photon]

Yeah, that, stuff like skill auto-expiry, etc.. There's lots of ways we could improve on the system.. unfortunately all those ways require changes to the forum software. Which might not be that difficult, but it's time consuming and I just don't have the spare cycles for it.

So we either have to check vbulletin.org and such for pre-made addons for the software and use those, or roll our own. I think it'd be cool to come up with something that works really well, but we'd need someone who knew vBulletin and PHP and MySQL and would commit to making and maintaining a system.

[HelloHockeyFans]

Good idea. Always thought that some times, skill points were awarded for reasons I didn't necessarily agree with.

[FurnaceFace]

Skill seemed to be a bit hit and miss. Some had negative skill for very minor infractions but there was no difference between that person and someone with a grievous infraction. They both ended up with one blue square and were looked upon negatively. I can only imagine the amount of admin and headache this system caused.

Could you not "police" through the report a post function? Amend the rules to include an escalating path for infractions? x number of infractions results in 1 day in the sin bin, 2 days, week, month, all the way up to a permaban?

[photon]

That was just a result of there being a bunch of different skill givers, everyone's going to have a slightly different level, plus sometimes I know I would let a number of small things build up and then give a negative for something small, but really it was for a bunch of small things.

Yeah we kind of have an unofficial setup like that for infractions, but I want to put it in the actual forum software since it's setup for that. I've seen that on other forums. Kind of like a system of strikes.

[HalifaxDrunk]

Meh, doesn't bother me very much that they are gone (and I had 2 red squares). I pretty much ignore the people/posts I want to.

It was however nice to get the positive feedback on what I bring to the board in the way of a red square.

[driveway]

I had mixed opinions of the skill system - though going from a blue to red certainly made me feel good.

I liked that it encouraged good posting behavior, though CP is an unusually heavily self-moderated community.

I worry that lack of skill points will result in more comments like "I've been here since '02, n00b", though people are pretty good at recognizing decent comments regardless of how long the poster has been a member of the community.

does vBulletin have anything set-up so that the skill-giving could be completely automated? Perhaps posters could have a percentage rating based on other user's opinions of their posts.

[FanIn80]

I notice, now, that I had gotten quite lazy with regards to learning other people's posting habbits. The multiple blue squares made it easier for me to gauge who can be taken with a grain of salt vs those with multiple red squares who tended to have better things to say.

It's kind of like standing in line at the grocery store and seeing a "Man Eats Alien Babies and Lives to 307" headline. You're initial response is "Riiiiight," and if it's on the cover of Enquirer, then you're right and you just ignore it completely - but if it's on the front page of the NY Times... well...

Know what I mean?

[photon]

Yup, and that's both good and bad, because there are definitely cases where someone was in the blue but probably overall didn't deserve it if you looked at their entire posting history. And that's the greatest flaw of the system is that the rating is a commentary on their overall posting history when the actual ratings are based on a subset of that, the subset of posts that a skill giver had looked at and consciously evaluated.

At the end more positive skill was given out than negative, but perception can be as important if not more important than reality.

[SteveToms]

I am so not going to miss my blue square!

[Azure]

I don't miss the square I didn't have.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by Azure

I don't miss the square I didn't have.

Don't worry, you're still a square. [/dad joke]

[Yeah_Baby]

Pff CP is moderated by Communists now!

[Barnes]

My red square is gone but my infraction remains for life. Sigh..........

[photon]

Heh, infractions aren't public though, only mods can see them. They're just there so we can keep track of who does what, there's enough people that we can't always remember who's a chronic problem so the infractions will remind us. Infraction is a pretty strong word, in most cases they're just reminders of the rules.

[Barnes]

^LOL.

My infraction was totally worth it. Even though I was drunk, the guy really was an idiot.

This gives me an idea for a thread. (Dont worry, it's not a post your infractions thread.)

[stang]

I went from 2 blue to being so close to neutral.... Oh well

[Azure]

I have my infraction too. All the way back from the Anaheim/Calgary playoff series.

[Locke]

My squares...my beautiful squares...