Hey everybody,
I know I've seen threads like this before, but I feel like it's my responsibility to make one anyways, regardless of if the subject has been brought up, discussed, and summarily rejected for improvement by the staff, because it's been an issue that I've seen for a while, and having been now on both the positive and negative ends of the issue, I feel it needs reform.
Reputation: It drives most of what happens here on MCMarket. It's what gives a good developer the ability to get jobs, what gives a good client the ability to be trusted in transactions, and it generally represents standing in the community.
And yet, for such an important system to the site, it is, when you peel back the surface, somewhat poorly designed. That is not a slight to whoever invented the system, on the contrary it generally does it's job well in most cases, but it does have some inherent flaws that I feel need to be addressed and fixed.
One of the best things the system does is allows people who do a good job to get rewarded for it. A new developer who does solid work can rapidly gain standing by doing easy jobs in order to get reputation from another user. It's a good way to springboard your entrance into the community, and it often is a fairly accurate representation of your standing here.
However, this same benefit is also, by far, the largest downside of the system. I recently received a negative rep by a user who I interacted with briefly on a thread regarding wanting help with a plugin. The thread has since been altered with the typical "closed" message, but previously, the thread was a runon sentence with every word's first letter capitalized, stating that they were trying to compile decompiled plugins and were getting errors and wanted help. It was quite undescriptive, and as such couldn't really be helped with the information at hand. I criticized this, whilst also taking into account that English might not be their first language, and said that the thread wasn't likely to be helpable if the information wasn't improved.
After a brief exchange of posts on the thread in which the user simply ignored my criticism and accused me of "trashing", which I certainly wasn't doing (and had several more users in the thread agreeing both with my points about the content, and with my responses that giving accurate criticism wasn't trashing), I received a negative rep from this user for "toxicity". Now, I can certainly get sharp with people when I want to, but this wasn't one of those times, and in fact, given that this person was seeking help with developing, I made it a point to dull my comments a bit more to help ensure that the criticism was felt only on their formatting and content of the post, and not taken as a personal attack. And yet, here I was, stuck with a negative rep written by somebody I barely interacted with, and who certainly didn't know me well enough to make such a claim.
Now, in theory, the reputation system should account for this. After all, my net reputation is still in the high 90's, and if anybody bothers to read the negative rep, they'll see it's the usual trash that people give and likely ignore it. But that assumption, the idea that people actually read the reputations, is one of the fundamentally flawed assumptions that (I'm guessing) the system is based on.
How often do we actually read reputations? Not very, I'm guessing, and when we do, we're usually just skimming through it. In fact, most of the reps we give and get, both good and bad, are pretty much typical "good job" or "this person is trash", and usually doesn't really reflect much outside of our opinion.
Now, everybody has opinions, but the fact that one person's negative opinion, and an ill-founded one at that, can tarnish permanently your record, is odd to me. I saw it happen before, but I told myself that my approach to most people and my general positive reputation here (not just reputation score, but the fact that I give free advice to rising coders and have taken several under my wing to help develop), I would never be the victim of one of those crass people who decided they didn't like my comments. And yet I was, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the capability to permanently mar somebody's standing (and for a dev like me, standing is just about everything in getting jobs) on a whim was downright hilarious in concept. This is the internet. Trolls abound, 12-year-olds who decide to dislike every video on YouTube are everywhere. Yet have we stopped to consider that, if everybody who argued in the comments section on YouTube could all negative-rep each other in a meaningful way, many people who ever disagreed with anybody anywhere would walk around the web wearing negative comments?
So why haven't we changed this system? I know I'm not the only person who's realized this concept of open reputation is flawed, yet still there has been no reform. I'd like to think that it isn't due to lack of attention from the staff, and yet my recent report to the staff regarding the reputation was disregarded (although I have opened another and a support ticket, in the hopes that somebody will notice and remove the rep once they see the situation in which it was wrongly given), and I imagine most other people's too. I'd like to think that the reason is simply because the staff haven't found a better solution yet, a more fair system, and so I'd like to propose one, and I would greatly appreciate if some ranking members of the staff here would pay attention to it and offer comments.
In short, the present condition of the reputation system is good, with the exception of unchecked-repping, the ability to give reputation without any oversight or necessity of having dealt substantially with the user in question. In my opinion, modifying the rep-giving system to require approval from staff before giving the reputation would significantly increase the honesty of the system by reducing the quantity of reputation handed out carelessly or without good cause.
Now, I'm not just arguing against negative reputation here. We positive rep too often as well, giving people who we barely interact with a positive rep just because they had something we wanted and we paid for it and got it. Reputation is often seen as "deserved" whenever we interact with somebody who isn't downright rude, and in my opinion that pseudo-assumption that a business dealing should result in a positive rep is an assumption that could be curbed by changes to the way rep is given.
My proposition, then, is that all reputation points need to have a thread or substantial conversation linked, and must contain at least several sentences of information about why the user is good, or bad, or neither (in the case of the not-often-permanent, but still present, neutral rep). These reps then go through a (brief) approval process by staff, essentially just them reading the information provided and the links to the conversation / proof of actual dealings with the user. This would eliminate the offhand rep-ing that most of us do, and significantly increase the quantity of errant, undeserved reputation points in both positive and negative directions.
My second proposition is that reputation have a much more through review process available should somebody decide to disagree with it. Now, to be clear, this system is not meant to be used every time somebody negative-reps you, and you would obviously only be able to dispute reputation that you received. However, in those cases, such as my present one, in which an errant negative rep is flippantly given for the sake of being rude just because somebody didn't like what you said to them, I believe a review process should be able to be initiated that doesn't simply end in a non-signed staff report saying "sorry, deal with it yourself, it's not our fault they don't like you" (this is of course a summary, and not a slight to the staff, but merely a representation of the current system), but should instead result in an actual review of the reputation and, if need be, sitting down both parties in a discussion akin to those that go on scam reports in which the person who has given the reputation must back up their reasoning with solid evidence.
In my opinion, these changes would help to greatly improve reputation, one of the most impactful systems on Minecraft Market, and give users, both developer and customer, a better and more reliable way to represent both good and bad work, and not simply shallow opinions that most of us recognize mean little but matter a lot as that little magical reputation number below your profile.
I am, as always, happy to discuss any points I raised here with anybody, either on this thread or via a PM. And, should it happen that a staff member reads this and wants to go review the negative reputation I received and, perchance, remove it as it should be, that would also be appreciated. By no means is that the express purpose of this thread, but it is one of my primary reasons in creating it (the fact that I could not get such a negative rep removed expediently due to the structure of the system, and the fact that it wound up there in the first place), and as such having attention shown to it would help to represent that the staff of this great site are, in fact, paying attention to the system and value the opinions of those using it. Thank you for reading (assuming you were crazy enough to read all of this
), and I hope that some good can come from this thread in reforming the reputation system.
I know I've seen threads like this before, but I feel like it's my responsibility to make one anyways, regardless of if the subject has been brought up, discussed, and summarily rejected for improvement by the staff, because it's been an issue that I've seen for a while, and having been now on both the positive and negative ends of the issue, I feel it needs reform.
Reputation: It drives most of what happens here on MCMarket. It's what gives a good developer the ability to get jobs, what gives a good client the ability to be trusted in transactions, and it generally represents standing in the community.
And yet, for such an important system to the site, it is, when you peel back the surface, somewhat poorly designed. That is not a slight to whoever invented the system, on the contrary it generally does it's job well in most cases, but it does have some inherent flaws that I feel need to be addressed and fixed.
One of the best things the system does is allows people who do a good job to get rewarded for it. A new developer who does solid work can rapidly gain standing by doing easy jobs in order to get reputation from another user. It's a good way to springboard your entrance into the community, and it often is a fairly accurate representation of your standing here.
However, this same benefit is also, by far, the largest downside of the system. I recently received a negative rep by a user who I interacted with briefly on a thread regarding wanting help with a plugin. The thread has since been altered with the typical "closed" message, but previously, the thread was a runon sentence with every word's first letter capitalized, stating that they were trying to compile decompiled plugins and were getting errors and wanted help. It was quite undescriptive, and as such couldn't really be helped with the information at hand. I criticized this, whilst also taking into account that English might not be their first language, and said that the thread wasn't likely to be helpable if the information wasn't improved.
After a brief exchange of posts on the thread in which the user simply ignored my criticism and accused me of "trashing", which I certainly wasn't doing (and had several more users in the thread agreeing both with my points about the content, and with my responses that giving accurate criticism wasn't trashing), I received a negative rep from this user for "toxicity". Now, I can certainly get sharp with people when I want to, but this wasn't one of those times, and in fact, given that this person was seeking help with developing, I made it a point to dull my comments a bit more to help ensure that the criticism was felt only on their formatting and content of the post, and not taken as a personal attack. And yet, here I was, stuck with a negative rep written by somebody I barely interacted with, and who certainly didn't know me well enough to make such a claim.
Now, in theory, the reputation system should account for this. After all, my net reputation is still in the high 90's, and if anybody bothers to read the negative rep, they'll see it's the usual trash that people give and likely ignore it. But that assumption, the idea that people actually read the reputations, is one of the fundamentally flawed assumptions that (I'm guessing) the system is based on.
How often do we actually read reputations? Not very, I'm guessing, and when we do, we're usually just skimming through it. In fact, most of the reps we give and get, both good and bad, are pretty much typical "good job" or "this person is trash", and usually doesn't really reflect much outside of our opinion.
Now, everybody has opinions, but the fact that one person's negative opinion, and an ill-founded one at that, can tarnish permanently your record, is odd to me. I saw it happen before, but I told myself that my approach to most people and my general positive reputation here (not just reputation score, but the fact that I give free advice to rising coders and have taken several under my wing to help develop), I would never be the victim of one of those crass people who decided they didn't like my comments. And yet I was, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the capability to permanently mar somebody's standing (and for a dev like me, standing is just about everything in getting jobs) on a whim was downright hilarious in concept. This is the internet. Trolls abound, 12-year-olds who decide to dislike every video on YouTube are everywhere. Yet have we stopped to consider that, if everybody who argued in the comments section on YouTube could all negative-rep each other in a meaningful way, many people who ever disagreed with anybody anywhere would walk around the web wearing negative comments?
So why haven't we changed this system? I know I'm not the only person who's realized this concept of open reputation is flawed, yet still there has been no reform. I'd like to think that it isn't due to lack of attention from the staff, and yet my recent report to the staff regarding the reputation was disregarded (although I have opened another and a support ticket, in the hopes that somebody will notice and remove the rep once they see the situation in which it was wrongly given), and I imagine most other people's too. I'd like to think that the reason is simply because the staff haven't found a better solution yet, a more fair system, and so I'd like to propose one, and I would greatly appreciate if some ranking members of the staff here would pay attention to it and offer comments.
In short, the present condition of the reputation system is good, with the exception of unchecked-repping, the ability to give reputation without any oversight or necessity of having dealt substantially with the user in question. In my opinion, modifying the rep-giving system to require approval from staff before giving the reputation would significantly increase the honesty of the system by reducing the quantity of reputation handed out carelessly or without good cause.
Now, I'm not just arguing against negative reputation here. We positive rep too often as well, giving people who we barely interact with a positive rep just because they had something we wanted and we paid for it and got it. Reputation is often seen as "deserved" whenever we interact with somebody who isn't downright rude, and in my opinion that pseudo-assumption that a business dealing should result in a positive rep is an assumption that could be curbed by changes to the way rep is given.
My proposition, then, is that all reputation points need to have a thread or substantial conversation linked, and must contain at least several sentences of information about why the user is good, or bad, or neither (in the case of the not-often-permanent, but still present, neutral rep). These reps then go through a (brief) approval process by staff, essentially just them reading the information provided and the links to the conversation / proof of actual dealings with the user. This would eliminate the offhand rep-ing that most of us do, and significantly increase the quantity of errant, undeserved reputation points in both positive and negative directions.
My second proposition is that reputation have a much more through review process available should somebody decide to disagree with it. Now, to be clear, this system is not meant to be used every time somebody negative-reps you, and you would obviously only be able to dispute reputation that you received. However, in those cases, such as my present one, in which an errant negative rep is flippantly given for the sake of being rude just because somebody didn't like what you said to them, I believe a review process should be able to be initiated that doesn't simply end in a non-signed staff report saying "sorry, deal with it yourself, it's not our fault they don't like you" (this is of course a summary, and not a slight to the staff, but merely a representation of the current system), but should instead result in an actual review of the reputation and, if need be, sitting down both parties in a discussion akin to those that go on scam reports in which the person who has given the reputation must back up their reasoning with solid evidence.
In my opinion, these changes would help to greatly improve reputation, one of the most impactful systems on Minecraft Market, and give users, both developer and customer, a better and more reliable way to represent both good and bad work, and not simply shallow opinions that most of us recognize mean little but matter a lot as that little magical reputation number below your profile.
I am, as always, happy to discuss any points I raised here with anybody, either on this thread or via a PM. And, should it happen that a staff member reads this and wants to go review the negative reputation I received and, perchance, remove it as it should be, that would also be appreciated. By no means is that the express purpose of this thread, but it is one of my primary reasons in creating it (the fact that I could not get such a negative rep removed expediently due to the structure of the system, and the fact that it wound up there in the first place), and as such having attention shown to it would help to represent that the staff of this great site are, in fact, paying attention to the system and value the opinions of those using it. Thank you for reading (assuming you were crazy enough to read all of this
), and I hope that some good can come from this thread in reforming the reputation system.
