Because a lot of you have low attention spans, a TL
R can be found here: Split reputation into two subtypes (Opinions and Transaction Reviews). Opinions don’t count towards your overall total, but are still permitted and can be read by other users. Transaction reviews are strictly for services/products and count towards your total.
If you disagree, state why. Constructive criticism is appreciated
R can be found here: Split reputation into two subtypes (Opinions and Transaction Reviews). Opinions don’t count towards your overall total, but are still permitted and can be read by other users. Transaction reviews are strictly for services/products and count towards your total. Welcome to MC-Market.
A forum dedicated to buying and selling goods.
Yet, there's an issue. Reputation. Ah yes, good old reputation. Currently, reputation is defined as the following (According to MC-Market's Rules): "Reputation is otherwise handled by the community, and is there to gauge the community’s opinion of you."
This seems like a brilliant idea for literally any other forum, except MC-Market. In terms of being a "market", a user's opinion of you is nowhere near important as your buyer-seller relationship. A market is there to allow buyers to buy items, and for sellers to sell items. That relationship between a buyer and a seller is much more important when it comes to providing potential buyers a legitimate review of your services before purchasing.
In any circumstance, when you go to buy an item, you expect to read reviews such as "Brilliant phone! The quality is amazing, the camera is stunning and overall worth $500!" not "The phone wasn't as dark as I wanted". When providing services, your credibility shouldn't be "gauged [by] the community's opinion of you". That is absolutely ridiculous.
Now, I understand one hundred percent that "vouches" exist and are there to serve this exact purpose, to allow users to leave transaction reviews, and not opinions. But, there's a flaw. If I'm browsing services (Take this thread for example: https://www.mc-market.org/threads/265820/, a brilliant example of browsing to purchase a service on MC-Market), I see this awesome number!
Holy cow! This person has 138 reviews, his Setups must be amazing! A 100% rating? No way! I should definitely buy from this person because 138 other people think his services are amazing! But, in fact, that is wrong. The number advertised so prominently throughout MC-Market is not a credibility number to prove you are a legit seller offering quality products, instead, it is a number representing how many personal reviewers(opinions) you have received.
I hope you are beginning to see the issue with this. Why are opinions so prominently advertised on a market-based forum, rather than reviews of a seller-buyer relationship? As I stated before, personal opinions work fine on community integrated forums, but when you're entire forum is dedicated to buying and selling goods, you must ensure that potential buyers are seeing transaction reviews.
Let's take a more MC-Market based example:
"User provided me with a super high-quality plugin in under two days!"
"User is nice. Vouch"
Two totally different reviews, but both are allowed as reputation. Now, of course, this poses an issue. The second option ("User is nice. Vouch") will be counted towards that green number users love so much. And the higher that number is, the more "credible" other users think you are (Not entirely, I do know some users who don't consider reputation credibility). But overall, the idea of advertising personal reviews over buyer-seller reviews is absolutely not how a market forum should operate.
So, a simple solution?
Well, Mick has declined multiple.
One would be to remove opinion-based reviews, and rebrand the entire reputation system as is to how the vouch system is supposed to work- entirely deal based. But, this poses an issue, because as Capaldi stated: What if someone is stealing builds, does that not call for a negative review? (Summarazing, lost the exact quote). And that is a valid point.
Onto solution two (my solution )
Integrate "reputation" into both opinions and buyer-seller reviews.
I'd like to thank YourPanda for this wonderful screenshot:
You could leave transaction-based reviews. These would function how "vouches" are intended to function. The Deal URL is required, and viola. Transaction based reputations would count towards your reputation total.
Case number two would be user reviews. Exactly the same as the current system. Deal URL is optional, since it wasn't a transaction (but could link the service you intended to buy), and could leave a review not based on the transaction and quality of the product, but on the experience with the seller. User review reputations would not count towards your reputation total but will display when browsing the user's reputation at https://www.mc-market.org/feedback/UserID.
Overall, implementing this system of dual use for reputation would help the forum out tremendously. It would finally give a prominent display of vouches for users, as any market should do. It would still allow users to leave their own personal experiences, but it wouldn't affect the user's reputation score as a whole, because opinion-based reviews do not equal the quality of the product. On a market forum, I believe product reviews should be more important than opinions, as it is a product you are buying, not opinions. Advertising opinions so prominently, compared to the discrete product reviews (typically on user's walls or threads) does not help potential buyers in choosing a product. Instead, it misleads them, as many new members to MC-Market are tricked using the "I have high reputation, go first" when in fact, that reputation is 90% "nice user" or "made me a free thread design".
A forum dedicated to buying and selling goods.
Yet, there's an issue. Reputation. Ah yes, good old reputation. Currently, reputation is defined as the following (According to MC-Market's Rules): "Reputation is otherwise handled by the community, and is there to gauge the community’s opinion of you."
This seems like a brilliant idea for literally any other forum, except MC-Market. In terms of being a "market", a user's opinion of you is nowhere near important as your buyer-seller relationship. A market is there to allow buyers to buy items, and for sellers to sell items. That relationship between a buyer and a seller is much more important when it comes to providing potential buyers a legitimate review of your services before purchasing.
In any circumstance, when you go to buy an item, you expect to read reviews such as "Brilliant phone! The quality is amazing, the camera is stunning and overall worth $500!" not "The phone wasn't as dark as I wanted". When providing services, your credibility shouldn't be "gauged [by] the community's opinion of you". That is absolutely ridiculous.
Now, I understand one hundred percent that "vouches" exist and are there to serve this exact purpose, to allow users to leave transaction reviews, and not opinions. But, there's a flaw. If I'm browsing services (Take this thread for example: https://www.mc-market.org/threads/265820/, a brilliant example of browsing to purchase a service on MC-Market), I see this awesome number!
Holy cow! This person has 138 reviews, his Setups must be amazing! A 100% rating? No way! I should definitely buy from this person because 138 other people think his services are amazing! But, in fact, that is wrong. The number advertised so prominently throughout MC-Market is not a credibility number to prove you are a legit seller offering quality products, instead, it is a number representing how many personal reviewers(opinions) you have received.
I hope you are beginning to see the issue with this. Why are opinions so prominently advertised on a market-based forum, rather than reviews of a seller-buyer relationship? As I stated before, personal opinions work fine on community integrated forums, but when you're entire forum is dedicated to buying and selling goods, you must ensure that potential buyers are seeing transaction reviews.
Let's take a more MC-Market based example:
"User provided me with a super high-quality plugin in under two days!"
"User is nice. Vouch"
Two totally different reviews, but both are allowed as reputation. Now, of course, this poses an issue. The second option ("User is nice. Vouch") will be counted towards that green number users love so much. And the higher that number is, the more "credible" other users think you are (Not entirely, I do know some users who don't consider reputation credibility). But overall, the idea of advertising personal reviews over buyer-seller reviews is absolutely not how a market forum should operate.
So, a simple solution?
Well, Mick has declined multiple.
One would be to remove opinion-based reviews, and rebrand the entire reputation system as is to how the vouch system is supposed to work- entirely deal based. But, this poses an issue, because as Capaldi stated: What if someone is stealing builds, does that not call for a negative review? (Summarazing, lost the exact quote). And that is a valid point.
Onto solution two (my solution
)Integrate "reputation" into both opinions and buyer-seller reviews.
I'd like to thank YourPanda for this wonderful screenshot:
You could leave transaction-based reviews. These would function how "vouches" are intended to function. The Deal URL is required, and viola. Transaction based reputations would count towards your reputation total.
Case number two would be user reviews. Exactly the same as the current system. Deal URL is optional, since it wasn't a transaction (but could link the service you intended to buy), and could leave a review not based on the transaction and quality of the product, but on the experience with the seller. User review reputations would not count towards your reputation total but will display when browsing the user's reputation at https://www.mc-market.org/feedback/UserID.
Overall, implementing this system of dual use for reputation would help the forum out tremendously. It would finally give a prominent display of vouches for users, as any market should do. It would still allow users to leave their own personal experiences, but it wouldn't affect the user's reputation score as a whole, because opinion-based reviews do not equal the quality of the product. On a market forum, I believe product reviews should be more important than opinions, as it is a product you are buying, not opinions. Advertising opinions so prominently, compared to the discrete product reviews (typically on user's walls or threads) does not help potential buyers in choosing a product. Instead, it misleads them, as many new members to MC-Market are tricked using the "I have high reputation, go first" when in fact, that reputation is 90% "nice user" or "made me a free thread design".
If you disagree, state why. Constructive criticism is appreciated
- Type
- Suggestion
- Status
- Denied
Last edited:
