RFC: New awards system

[Markus W]

RFC: New awards system

Now that the main components of TheBroth are finished, it is now the perfect time to revise the award system.

If you're new to the awards system, please review this post first: http://www.thebroth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=101

"RFC" stands for "Request for comments", and we'd like to hear your suggestions for an improved awards system. We have some basic ideas, but we want to know what you think is award-worthy.





== Introduction to a new points system ==

In principle, we're trying to change the system from a qualitative to a quantitative one. In other words, it won't count so much anymore whether you've one something, but how much of it you've done.

So instead of giving 50 points because you've moved 10,000 tiles, we rather just give you 10,000 points.

This means that someone who has moved 17832 tiles will also get 17832 points for that.

This means that the overall points that you can get will be much larger numbers than before, and it will be much more depending on your actual contributions.

== What to reward ==

In the past, we gave rewards for things that were misunderstood and abused, for example, you could get points to invite somebody to your room. Downside was that people were starting to annoy others with "come to my room, come to my room" when really this was meant for people you'd invite from the OUTSIDE of TheBroth to come to your room.

So, with the new awards system, we're rather trying to emphasize and reward art-creation and community-related efforts.

== What we want to reward ==

When you come to TheBroth
When you drag tiles
When you chat
When you post in the forum (in particular, when you make a bug report).
When you post in your user blog
When you make a comment on an artwork
When you make a comment on a user blog post
When you make a comment on a developer blog post
When you view an artwork
When you view a replay of an artwork
When you rate an artwork
When you have an artwork in the public gallery
When you have an artwork in the 20 highest rated
When you have an artwork in the 100 highest rated
When you have an artwork in the 20 best recent artworks
When you upload a texture that is used in public snapshots
When you view a texture
When you rate a texture
When you comment on a texture
When you send an email invitation (to somebody else than yourself).
When you send a greeting card (to somebody else than yourself).
When you upload your own avatar

So - got more suggestions and ideas? Please post them here!

== How to reward - How to score ==

Each of the above achievements will show some shiny colorful awards, depending on particular achievement steps. Ideas for what these awards should look like and at which steps they should be awarded are also welcome.

Example:

You could get a bronze-looking "speech bubble award" for having sent 100 chat messages, a silver one for 1000 chat messages, and a gold one for 10000+ chat messages.

We'll also need to determine how many points exactly each individual activity should be worth, quantitatively.

For example:

Each +/- rating of an artwork could be worth 5 points.
Sending a greeting card could be worth 100 points.
Sending a chat message could be worth 2 points.

Going back to the speech bubble award example, if you've sent 1324 chat messages, you'd have the silver speech bubble award and it would have contributed 2648 points to your total points.

So - I bet everyone has some ideas on this... let's hear your ideas and suggestions!

[Shehzeen]

How about awards if u win a competition? Or awards on having a room?
I think winning a competition requires a lot of effort and i know people are rewarded with prizes but maybe they should get an award here too.
oh and perhaps the room award could be given on the basis of how popular a room is. Like if it is being visited by a lot of members.
Just a thought.

[GO GO]

ya i think new award system would be better but i am kinda afraid of kids spaming every where for points.So whatever the new system be, it should be made so that most of the points u get is for constructive purposes or may be just to stop spamming u can add some "vote up or down repo(reputation) button" anywhere where there is possibility of spamming(comment abuse).

[smitaxue007]

Thats really good

[spicy sweet]

Thats coooooooool!!!!!!!!

[PanterA]

cool will you still keep the awards for things you have done before this

[misschatterbox]

I'm shooting for the Golden Chat award!

[Roman Centurion]

It's all too complicated for my limited brain power.

I'm sure whatever you do will be fine.

[Taylor]

I like the ideas for the new awards system. And how about getting awards for tagging artwork and adding artwork to your favorites list?

[thirty-seven]

You're thinking about giving out points when someone uploads their own avatar? That is not point-worthy in my opinion. What were you thinking? (A sincere question, not a mocking one)

You should get points for tagging snapshots and moderating tags.

[MorningStar]

[thirty-seven]

Thank you for the satisfactory answer
Anyone with other ideas

Edit: Oh, and tagging untagged snapshots should be worth more points than tagging one that's already been tagged.

[MorningStar]

Here's our current proposal for how many points are award for each award-worthy activity:

== Activity and points ==
Move a tile: 1
Visit TheBroth: 500 (max 1 per day)
Upload an avatar: 1000
Make a bug report: 5000
Invite a friend via email (other than self): 1000
Send a greeting card (to somebody else): 1000
Contribute to public artwork: Number of tiles contributed *5 (eg 5000 points for a 1000 tile artwork)
Donated: 2000 for each $1
Rate artwork +/-: 20
Finish 1/2/3 in a contest: 50000/pos
Tagging untagged snapshots: 100 points per tag
Moderating snapshots: 50 points per moderation

If an activity is not listed above, then we currently deem it not award-worthy or points-worthy. For example, we no longer want to reward making comments or posts in order to prevent abuse. Similarly, we no longer want to reward the taking of snapshots - that's just too easy and there's no skill involved.

Earning awards (for example, for adding 1,000 tags) may come with some extra points, say, 30,000 points on top of the 100,000 points that all that tagging earned you already.

We have also considered whether in the future, awards and points could be disconnected. For example, some awards may be given because you performed a certain number of activities, yet these activities by themselves earn no points and the award itself doesn't come with extra points. We were wondering whether this could be a way to acknowledge particular activities without making them too desirable to try to abuse the system just for the points. In my personal opinion I think we should do our utmost to not encourage abuse.

Another interesting question: With the current system, having high rating/ranking artworks in the top 20 and top 100 brings in nice awards. Should we continue to award high quality artworks or is the act of contributing more important, regardless of your ability as a TheBroth artist?

For example, we could add a (probably quite short-lived) award for being a contributor to the 20 best recent artworks, and there would be a points multiplyer depending on how many tiles you've contributed.

So, as you can see, there are few issues that need to be ironed out. For example, we wondered whether the new multimove feature could become a bit problematic too in this context, as it currently "stamps" your name on all the tiles you've moved.

I do think though that the community will regulate itself. If somebody repeatedly "steals" artworks by importing them and moving them around bit, he or she would be found out very quickly and probably feel the community's wrath as a consequence - thus I'm not very concerned that the multimove would become much of a problem. Typically only room owners can do multimove, and so if most of the honor goes to the room owner, I suppose that's ok and in the spirit of collaborating in somebody's room.

So before we get busy implementing all that goodness, once again, please make yourself heard and let us know what you think of this all.

[misschatterbox]

I don't know Markus, that sounds like an awful large amount of points. Couldn't we have kept it simpler? I mean, 2,000 per every $1 donated? Jesus, we're going to have people with an extremely large amount of points.

[PanterA]

cool will you still keep the awards for things you have done before this