I'm pretty sure Editor is a rank just because opening up the database completely means risking trolls screwing it over. I'm pretty sure that - unlike with "real" wikis - there is no decent history system so a rampaging editor is a lot worse than on, say, Wikipedia.
Being an editor just means that you're trusted on not changing all ability descriptions to kitchen ads when you get the chance.
That said, I don't mind, and I'm pretty sure nobody minds, being relieved from his/her title of editor. I have no need to do the dirty work for commercial institutes, and I'm pretty sure nobody will be sad about being forced not to.
I think the whole "rank" problem (though I don't feel there's a real class system going on here, just some private fora) comes down to a broken reputation system. I have been able to +rep for only a small part of the contributions that actually matter to me the past year(s), and I can imagine it being even worse for the real oldtimers.
If someone who joined today were to become a veteran by the book, this person had to be fully +repped by thirty people. Assuming almost all +reps are given in the forums, which I think is a safe one since most visitors / non-forum users don't know or care about the rep sytem, that means that this forum community should consist of at least 30 active members who care about the rep system and actually use it. New vets are now just selected by whoever does that, and then I suppose you still need to pass some majority vote by active veterans as well.
In other words, the system doesn't work. I'm not even sure if it ever did, I wouldn't be surprised if most vets were appointed before the 10-rep limit became a thing, though I have no idea.
I'm interested to hear the perspective of the reds.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the people with editor rank that don't do any editing.
Disclaimer 2: I'm not even active here.
Being an editor just means that you're trusted on not changing all ability descriptions to kitchen ads when you get the chance.
That said, I don't mind, and I'm pretty sure nobody minds, being relieved from his/her title of editor. I have no need to do the dirty work for commercial institutes, and I'm pretty sure nobody will be sad about being forced not to.
I think the whole "rank" problem (though I don't feel there's a real class system going on here, just some private fora) comes down to a broken reputation system. I have been able to +rep for only a small part of the contributions that actually matter to me the past year(s), and I can imagine it being even worse for the real oldtimers.
If someone who joined today were to become a veteran by the book, this person had to be fully +repped by thirty people. Assuming almost all +reps are given in the forums, which I think is a safe one since most visitors / non-forum users don't know or care about the rep sytem, that means that this forum community should consist of at least 30 active members who care about the rep system and actually use it. New vets are now just selected by whoever does that, and then I suppose you still need to pass some majority vote by active veterans as well.
In other words, the system doesn't work. I'm not even sure if it ever did, I wouldn't be surprised if most vets were appointed before the 10-rep limit became a thing, though I have no idea.
I'm interested to hear the perspective of the reds.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the people with editor rank that don't do any editing.
Disclaimer 2: I'm not even active here.
********'s a pretty good fertilizer
Of course it's not a good idea to open up the Database completely, I meant for it to be some sort of perk for Veterans instead.
I'm kinda sad you think about it that way, though I can kind of understand it.
That said - you're not forced to do it, you just have the tools to do so if you feel like it :)
For Editors and Scouts there are welcoming threads, for Veterans not so much. I just browsed through the Scout forums and found that in 2016 (so far) 3 people have been promoted to Scout, and in the entirety of 2015 only 1 person got promoted.
While I agree that before this rule the system was being cheated and way too many people got promoted, the current system is making it super difficult to reward super helpful people.
But that's going kind of offtopic - just let me say that it's also been discussed before :P
Latest Legend wrote:
That said, I don't mind, and I'm pretty sure nobody minds, being relieved from his/her title of editor. I have no need to do the dirty work for commercial institutes, and I'm pretty sure nobody will be sad about being forced not to.
I'm kinda sad you think about it that way, though I can kind of understand it.
That said - you're not forced to do it, you just have the tools to do so if you feel like it :)
Latest Legend wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if most vets were appointed before the 10-rep limit became a thing, though I have no idea.
For Editors and Scouts there are welcoming threads, for Veterans not so much. I just browsed through the Scout forums and found that in 2016 (so far) 3 people have been promoted to Scout, and in the entirety of 2015 only 1 person got promoted.
While I agree that before this rule the system was being cheated and way too many people got promoted, the current system is making it super difficult to reward super helpful people.
But that's going kind of offtopic - just let me say that it's also been discussed before :P
DuffTime wrote:
ok ok plz carry me omg
i was only waiting for you to ask
Temzilla wrote:
Too hot to be icecream.
Luther3000 wrote:
He looks like a hair gel advert on legs
Toshabi wrote:
Icecreamy, with hair as slick and smooth as the ocean waves of Cocobana
I appreciate your response, but my post was in no way meant as a response to yours I'm afraid ^^' . I understand that you didn't mean to open the database up completely.
Grim conclusions for a company that relies on fostering a community.
IceCreamy wrote:
For Editors and Scouts there are welcoming threads, for Veterans not so much. I just browsed through the Scout forums and found that in 2016 (so far) 3 people have been promoted to Scout, and in the entirety of 2015 only 1 person got promoted.
While I agree that before this rule the system was being cheated and way too many people got promoted, the current system is making it super difficult to reward super helpful people.
While I agree that before this rule the system was being cheated and way too many people got promoted, the current system is making it super difficult to reward super helpful people.
********'s a pretty good fertilizer
Just wanted to add to this conversation with how I understood the roles:
Editor - created to reward active users and give them a more important role on the site by being able to edit Wiki pages and update the database. Also created to ease the pressure on the vets/mods who were keeping the database up to date at the time.
Scout - created when dissent occurred regarding vet rec's (vets were accused of only rec'ing each other's guides). Scouting was supposed to give more power to people who had a certain amount of +rep. Because they gained this +rep from the community, they were supposed to be respected in the community and have a good idea of what the community wanted from guides. Scouts have the powers of editors.
Vets - created to reward frequent posters and loyal members. Users were originally promoted from normal user straight to veteran when Matt or other mods suggested their promotion in the vet forum. This system was replaced with automatic promotion on a certain +rep threshold. Vets have the powers of scouts and editors.
Thoughts on these roles:
Editor - there are some people who enjoy helping to update the wiki/database and don't want higher recognition or promotion. Keeping this rank for those people wouldn't tax the system, so I don't know why it needs to be removed.
Scout - like people have said, Comment 2 Scout and elo threshold Scouts have been suggested and wanted for what seems like forever. Nothing has really been done about it, except scout points have been reset a few times.
Vet - the vet title is merely a reward for long-time users with a lot of +rep. As the site grew more popular and more users became active, Matt and co no longer had the time to actively watch and manually promote people to the title. So they now rely on +rep. However, +rep is harder than ever to obtain due to +rep thresholds (only 10 to one user from any one person), so there have been very little vets auto-promoted over the last few years.
Editor - created to reward active users and give them a more important role on the site by being able to edit Wiki pages and update the database. Also created to ease the pressure on the vets/mods who were keeping the database up to date at the time.
Scout - created when dissent occurred regarding vet rec's (vets were accused of only rec'ing each other's guides). Scouting was supposed to give more power to people who had a certain amount of +rep. Because they gained this +rep from the community, they were supposed to be respected in the community and have a good idea of what the community wanted from guides. Scouts have the powers of editors.
Vets - created to reward frequent posters and loyal members. Users were originally promoted from normal user straight to veteran when Matt or other mods suggested their promotion in the vet forum. This system was replaced with automatic promotion on a certain +rep threshold. Vets have the powers of scouts and editors.
Thoughts on these roles:
Editor - there are some people who enjoy helping to update the wiki/database and don't want higher recognition or promotion. Keeping this rank for those people wouldn't tax the system, so I don't know why it needs to be removed.
Scout - like people have said, Comment 2 Scout and elo threshold Scouts have been suggested and wanted for what seems like forever. Nothing has really been done about it, except scout points have been reset a few times.
Vet - the vet title is merely a reward for long-time users with a lot of +rep. As the site grew more popular and more users became active, Matt and co no longer had the time to actively watch and manually promote people to the title. So they now rely on +rep. However, +rep is harder than ever to obtain due to +rep thresholds (only 10 to one user from any one person), so there have been very little vets auto-promoted over the last few years.
Hey guys, thanks for voicing your opinions on this matter. There are a few things I'd like to touch on from our point of view.
First, let's talk about a few things we agree with and discuss how we're planning to address those issues:
1. The Scout rank is not useful (enough) in its current form and should be removed/reworked. In all of the discussions we've had with the community over the years regarding the scouting system, our intent was always to look for a change which would make the current system both useful and sustainable. However, while some of the community members felt that only a few small changes were necessary in order to achieve this goal, we believe that the changes necessary to make the system more useful/reliable (elo-based selection of scouts, for example) are the exact same changes that make the system unsustainable for a site like MOBAFire, since they clash directly with some of our core principles.
Not until earlier this year have we seriously discussed the option of completely removing/reworking the system, which is an avenue we should've explored sooner. While some promising ideas resulted from these discussions, I don't think we've shared any of those in the Scout/Veteran forums yet, and there are a lot of things that would need to be fleshed out before it could be handed over to the devs for implementation. While we can't give you a time frame on that, I will make sure to work with PsiGuard and get the ball rolling again.
In the meantime, please feel free to offer your own ideas & feedback, as that's very valuable to us as well!
2. Gaining enough +Rep to be promoted is currently too hard due to the +Rep cap. As some very observant visitors of this forum have already noticed, this has in fact already been changed (very recently). Expect an announcement with more details on that soon™.
Regarding the other points which have been made, there are a few things which I'd like to clarify:
Hopefully, that clears up a few things for you guys, let me know if you have any questions! :)
First, let's talk about a few things we agree with and discuss how we're planning to address those issues:
1. The Scout rank is not useful (enough) in its current form and should be removed/reworked. In all of the discussions we've had with the community over the years regarding the scouting system, our intent was always to look for a change which would make the current system both useful and sustainable. However, while some of the community members felt that only a few small changes were necessary in order to achieve this goal, we believe that the changes necessary to make the system more useful/reliable (elo-based selection of scouts, for example) are the exact same changes that make the system unsustainable for a site like MOBAFire, since they clash directly with some of our core principles.
Not until earlier this year have we seriously discussed the option of completely removing/reworking the system, which is an avenue we should've explored sooner. While some promising ideas resulted from these discussions, I don't think we've shared any of those in the Scout/Veteran forums yet, and there are a lot of things that would need to be fleshed out before it could be handed over to the devs for implementation. While we can't give you a time frame on that, I will make sure to work with PsiGuard and get the ball rolling again.
In the meantime, please feel free to offer your own ideas & feedback, as that's very valuable to us as well!
2. Gaining enough +Rep to be promoted is currently too hard due to the +Rep cap. As some very observant visitors of this forum have already noticed, this has in fact already been changed (very recently). Expect an announcement with more details on that soon™.
Regarding the other points which have been made, there are a few things which I'd like to clarify:
- A promotion is as much a reward as it is an invitation to check out / use the new tools which have been made available to the user. Even if a user only ends up "using" the new color of their name on the forums, it should still let them know they've been doing a good job contributing to the community.
- Editors, Scouts and Veterans are never forced to help out. As has been rightfully pointed out by users within this thread, users who are promoted to Editor (for example) haven't exactly volunteered to edit our database for us, and it's completely fine if they don't. It doesn't change the fact that they've earned the rank by contributing.
The reason why we don't demote Editors who don't "do our dirty work" is twofold. One, it doesn't really make sense if a user never agreed to edit for us and it takes away from the sense of progress. Two, just because a user isn't an active editor does not mean they never edit. A simple example of that would be someone who notices a mistake in an item description while working on his/her guide and decides to fix it before moving on. That's still incredibly useful to us.
A way more important matter is to make sure we act whenever someone misuses the provided tools, which brings me to my next point. - Should a user be abusing their powers (for example to screw up the database as an Editor) or have a largely negative influence on the community as a result of their general behaviour, ranks can and will be revoked.
This is also the reason why the Veteran description mentions that Veterans are community representatives. We feel it has a much more negative impact for a new user to be confronted by an active Veteran who flames them than to see the profile of a Veteran who is now inactive, and these are the kind of cases we'd like to avoid.
Of course, if a user doesn't want to be promoted (e.g. DuffTime back in the day), they can also contact one of the community managers and ask to be reset to a lower rank.
Hopefully, that clears up a few things for you guys, let me know if you have any questions! :)
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