Remove the “opinion” part of the reputation system

[Flipora]

Since all of your comments in reputation need to be objective, why is there a space to put your opinion? This always leads to staff members removing reputation anyway, why not just take out the section where you write your opinion?

 

[Mick]

I don't really understand, are you suggesting that we make our reputation system for deal-based, or that we should just remove that one particular field?

 

[Sloth]

Writing a review for any sort of product or service you have purchased is ultimately going to be objective. You're personally explaining how the deal went and whether or not the product or service you received was as expected and satisfactory. Yes this field is often misused to trash users, but when used properly it is fairly helpful.

 

[Justis]

Your reputation literally is a collective opinion of you. By definition.

Might as well remove the “positive” and “negative” aspect if you want to remove opinions from feedback, since whether an action is a good or bad thing is entirely subjective as well.
Hell, might as well remove the content field, since authors intentionally frame reality in the way that best illustrates how they personally see it, and is most likely to evoke the emotional response that they had or are having.

Reputation is everyone’s opinion. You can call it something else, but you can’t remove it without removing the system entirely.

 

[alice]

Your reputation literally is a collective opinion of you. By definition.

Might as well remove the “positive” and “negative” aspect if you want to remove opinions from feedback, since whether an action is a good or bad thing is entirely subjective as well.
Hell, might as well remove the content field, since authors intentionally frame reality in the way that best illustrates how they personally see it, and is most likely to evoke the emotional response that they had or are having.

Reputation is everyone’s opinion. You can call it something else, but you can’t remove it without removing the system entirely.

It's still possible to strip subjective aspects off of the current reputation system.

One thing I would recommend is adding a new field for "Middleman" or "Condition" or something. If a MM was used, the MM's profile would go in the field, but if no MM was used, the user would select either "Seller Went First" or "Buyer Went First".

A user with 30 vouches in non-MM deals where others went first will establish a much higher level of trust than a user with 30 vouches where a MM was used, and this is also far more informative and less opinionated than the current system where most opinions are arbitrary like "kind guy, trustworthy, reliable" that doesn't really mean anything. It would be more helpful for staff as well to know who went first or who MM'd the trade.

Furthermore, you could theoretically entirely remove the subjective/opinion aspect as well while keeping the concept of reputation. Remove "positive" and "negative" rep and just implement a sort of neutral system where you gather "reputation points" from doing deals with other users as long as some amount of funds were transacted, so the only fields would be transacted funds, evidence, thread URL, middleman/trade condition, and done. Do 10 trades = get +10 reputation points.

And just like that also goes all of the workload staff have to go through to deal with reputation disputes.

 

[Flipora]

I don't really understand, are you suggesting that we make our reputation system for deal-based, or that we should just remove that one particular field?

I would just say remove the opinion field. Whenever I leave my opinion, it gets removed.

Your reputation literally is a collective opinion of you. By definition.

Might as well remove the “positive” and “negative” aspect if you want to remove opinions from feedback, since whether an action is a good or bad thing is entirely subjective as well.
Hell, might as well remove the content field, since authors intentionally frame reality in the way that best illustrates how they personally see it, and is most likely to evoke the emotional response that they had or are having.

Reputation is everyone’s opinion. You can call it something else, but you can’t remove it without removing the system entirely.

I don’t see entirely what this has to do with the rules. Maybe people put their opinion into how they explain the deal, but that doesn’t mean the reputation format has to contradict the rules on reputation. If we strive for more objectivity, things will get better. There is no reason to just blow it off because humans naturally say things say things in the frame of their opinion. If you want reputation to be more objective, don’t have a field asking for people’s opinion because that is the exact opposite of objective..

 

[Cold]

Any opinion I have cannot serve as a reputation. I need a 10 ss’s as proof.

 

[Mick]

Back about a year ago we introduced some pretty radical changes to the way that we handle reputation. We made all reputation left by banned members be marked as uncounted in your reputation totals and disabled the reporting functionality to reduce abuse and targeted. The changes that we made were certainly controversial at the time, but looking back I'm a firm believer that the changes we made back then were the best that we could have made.

Our reputation system is very far from being perfect in its current state, and we fully recognise that. Since it's introduction we've changed many policies and spent countless hours developing new custom systems, such as disputing feedback.

At the moment we aren't planning to do any more development for our site until we can migrate to XF2. We're also not going to be making any changes to our policies surrounding reputation. Our system is stable at the moment, and making a change now when we're going to be redeveloping everything shortly isn't beneficial. Perhaps once we move to XF2 and have fixed all the bugs that come with that and have more time for some new development and to consider the impact that instituting new policies will result in.

Until then, I'll move this to denied. Once we migrate to XF2 if you feel that this is still relevant please create a new suggestion thread and we can look into it once again. Thank you to everyone for your support and criticism of our systems, it is definitely the best way for us to improve.

Thank you,