Last week I have launched AstroBin Questions, a community driven, highly interactive, wiki-capable website that you moderate, thanks to a system based on reputation points.

I've just written down a meta questions that explains how reputation and votes work, what they are and how they should be used. You can read it on AstroBin Questions, or here below. And by the way, if you are still wondering what AstroBin Question is, and why it's so important for the astrophotography community, read this: What is AstroBin Questions?

Introduction

This website works a lot differently than a forum. A good explanation about how this is not a forum can be found in the first meta-question asked.

This meta-question talks about reputation and voting.

One key reason why this website was made, was to provide the astrophotography community with a way to get correct answers to question, not just any answer.

Reputation and votes are the way in which the community moderates itself, and makes sure the best answer is on top.

What is the proper way to vote?

Every question, and every answer, can be voted up or down.

You should vote up if:

• You think the question is interesting
• You think the answer is correct or informative

You should vote a question down if:

• You think the question is off-topic, or too poorly worded to be comprehensible
• You think the question doesn't bring any value to the community, for instance because an answer could have easily been found on Wikipedia
• You think the question has already be asked in the past (in this case, please also leave a comment with the link to the old question)

You should vote an answer down if:

• The answer is objectively incorrect
• The answer is not substantial enough to actually answer the question
• The answer is not really an answer, but it should have been posted as a comment or as a new question (e.g. follow-up questions)

What's the role of reputation?

Reputation points are a way to express how reputable a person is in the community. Reputation can be earned and lost, primarily because of votes received.

When a person has a high reputation, people will know that they can trust their answers.

These are the primary reputation gain and loss rules, but bear in mind that the numbers might change in the future, if the community becomes larger:

• Maximum daily reputation gain per user: 200
• Gain for receiving an upvote: 10
• Gain for the author of accepted answer: 15
• Gain for accepting best answer: 2
• Gain for post owner on canceled downvote: 2
• Gain for voter on canceling downvote: 1
• Loss for voter for canceling of answer acceptance: -2
• Loss for author whose answer was "un-accepted": -5
• Loss for giving a downvote: -2
• Loss for owner of post that was flagged offensive: -2
• Loss for owner of post that was downvoted: -10
• Loss for owner of post that was flagged 3 times per same revision: -30
• Loss for owner of post that was flagged 5 times per same revision: -100
• Loss for post owner when upvote is canceled: -10

As you can see, users are rewarded reputation for actively helping to shape the community. If you accept an answer, for instance, you are rewarded 2 reputation points. Also, notice how downvoting will cost you reputation: this is because downvoting should not be done lightly, but in the spirit of bettering the community when this is necessary.

What can I do with my reputation?

Besides gaining respect in the community, reputation allows you certain privileges. These are the reputation points you need to perform certain actions (remember that these numbers too might change in the future, as the community grows):

• Upvote: 5
• Downvote: 50
• Answer own question immediately: 5
• Accept own answer: 20
• Accept any answer: 500
• Flag offensive: 5
• Leave comments: 10
• Delete comments posted by others: 200
• Delete questions and answers posted by others: 500
• Upload files: 10
• Insert clickable links: 1
• Insert link suggestions as plain text: 1
• Close own questions: 25
• Retag questions posted by other people: 50
• Reopen own questions: 50
• Edit community wiki posts: 75
• Edit posts authored by other people: 200
• View offensive flags: 200
• Close questions asked by others: 200
• Lock posts: 400

As you can see, after 200 reputation points, things start to get serious and you are allowed lots of moderation tasks. This is all in the best interest of the community, so we can have a website that has good, legitimate and correct content!

What does it mean to "flag offensive"?

Finally, you have the option of flagging posts (both questions and answers) as offensive. This should be used if the post contains spam, vulgarity or is actually offending to the community for other reasons.

Tags : site-news

Discussions : 1 comment