Incentives to post

The biggest thing that keeps any forum ticking is the posts, but one thing we really lack on Sythe is an incentive to keep posting. A lot of people come here and start to post a round a bit to appear more trusted in the market, but what about the people who don't use the market? And what about all those already trusted market users who don't post outside of the market at all? Those are a lot of members that we aren't getting a lot of discussion from. For example:



How many of those users do we actually see post? I'd say around 1/8th of them, and so we need to find a way to get them posting. I have a few approaches on how we can do that.

1. Levels. We already have a sort of level system with the UT's such as apprentice, grand master, etc., but those aren't really exciting and most people don't even notice them. A lot of forums have an actual level bar, and it goes up as you post more. Something like this is a little kick in the butt for people to start posting, because it looks cool, and is a little achievement to work towards. It would be simple to add because it would just need to be installed and added to the post bit, and I doubt there would be an issue switching from vb3-vb4. It's a cool thing to add, and if we get the right style it won't stick out.

2. Post unlocks. This is sort of on the DNS list, but sort of isn't. It would be really cool if people could unlock certain things by reaching a certain post count. For example, users can not use the classic theme until they've reach 1,000 posts (would only apply to users created after this was added, so new oldfags have to worry). People would be intrigued as to what the classic theme actually is, and it would give people a little thing to work towards. Maybe they won't even like the theme, but the fact that they can't obtain it until they reach 1,000 posts will make it all the more enticing.

Themes aren't the only thing that could be unlocked though. It would have to be discussed among the staff, but I am sure other things could be thought up. I just don't know what they would want to limit it to, but this suggestion is just for the basic principle.

You may not agree 100% with these, and so if you have some other ideas on how to make systems like these work please share. Thanks!

 

Some here are only for the market aspect of the site, and I don't feel like it's necessary to penalize them for not participating in the community.

I do in fact think we should do something with referrals, or inviting new members to the site. I know that it's easy to fake referrals, but we need to advertise or do something to get new people on the site.

 

Members who just use the market wouldn't be being penalized, unless you consider not being able to use a skin a penalization, in which case I would say that if they're just here for the market they don't care about the skin anyways.

As for the referral competition I am working on getting that going as well, but it seems that motivating the staff to get it going is a bit of a challenge

 

You've come up with decent aspects, I would support referrals without a doubt. In addition, a post count bar would be a nice feature as well. What would catch my eyes more would be logos for the various members. Seeing "Grand Master" as text is not that appealing, but seeing it as a fancy logo would grab eyes. Assuming this would have to wait until the near future once VB4 is integrated into the forums. Perhaps by then Sythe could create a "View The Latest Threads" tab at the top of the index so we don't have to click through forum after forum. I believe IP Board has that feature but that's neither here nor there. It would make posting much more convient as you can see every active thread in a mater of seconds.

 

I personally think post count (grandmaster, hero, etc.) instead of being UT should possibly become a post rank, maybe we can see the change in vb4, making them look better as we progress would be neat and give motivation to post to upgrade the rank.

 

Those are things that can be done before VB4, so I really want to avoid putting it off for an upgrade that doesn't have a definite release.

 

I see my name :3 .

Anyways, I do support this and I especially like the Post Count bar thing because I don't see it harming anybody, it would just draw more attention then the regular UTs we see "Grand Master, etc."

 

No, absolutely not. Incentives should be more related to post quality and not post amount.

People who post simply because they want a rank will most likely not participate meaningfully.

 

Thing is when you put things in place to encourage people to post, they just start spamming to get a certain post count rank. I'm not on level with 1 but 2 looks interesting.

 

Fairly sure once people start getting two or three infractions they'll get the point not to spam around. We've got a great staff team that catches nearly all spamming, and for the posts they don't catch most chances are someone's reported it.

 

As it is many threads are already spammed for "Trust" as it is.
http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?t=1440854 Being one example, the last 2 posters say they've read it when the video has been down since before I even posted.
Needless to say, it could be a possibility to give a UI to a VERY high amount of posts (2000+).
That's a real incentive, and rewarding to those who participate and support the community with a sign showing that they've achieved something.

 

I like this, but we don't want to have mindless posting do we?

 

Giving a visual rank to your UT post count would do nothing to inflate trust than it already does, it's just an aesthetic incentive to be active in the community.

Like I said above, once people get infractions they'll realize that they can't just spam all over the place, if they don't get the picture they will be temporarily banned, then permanently banned.

 

I think this would invoke tons of spam

 

I'd like to think that our 21 moderators who spend all their time on Sythe doing spam reports could get the point across pretty quickly that if you spam you'll be banned. Thats why we have the rules in the first place.

 

We've tried adding actual benefits to post count in the past. The end result has always been people spamming to reach those rewards.

 

Then we stick to the rigid spam structures we have in place already. If we follow through on that end then spamming won't be an option.

 

I like the idea in theory as an incentive to post would be great, especially for me (lol 2007 member with 300 posts). But I think that if it was implemented there would be a lot of people that just post meaningless stuff like "nice guide" "gratz" and stuff like that in things like the guides, pvp, achievements and goals forums and many others like that which could really degrade the quality of posting across sythe

I support this idea, but it needs to be done carefully

 

Honestly I think this would just lead to more spam, but if we can keep it under control with our moderating team, why not?

 

More people would post if we got some more interesting threads going. There is NO lack of posters on this site.