Bring back Ratings!! - A Proposal

[Coffee Pancake]

Another thread reminded me of ratings we used to have in the profile.

For those unaware, it was a simple system to give each other pretend points that directly affected how much free money (stipend) everyone got each week. The intent was a crude reputation system. Obviously we gamed the fire out of ratings by having parties where the goal was just to help people & alts max out the quota. LL finally wised up and took away ratings.

 

But what we lost wasn't just a way to game the system and get a few more L$ every week, it was an incentive to throw parties that invariably involved a lot of profile reading, chatting and making friends. All the good things we frequently lament SL not having anymore.

I met people at ratings parties, they were dumb fun, and the tiny amount of free weekly L$ on offer was enough to create a lot of activity.

Every party needs an excuse, this gave us one.

 

Proposal

• Bring back ratings as a premium members perk.
• Premium is required to give ratings.
• Base stipend as it is now remains unchanged.
• Ratings go from 0 to 100 and are reset to 0 on the first of every month for everyone.
• Profile shows this months rating score, and your all time running total.
• People may only issue 1 rating point per minute. They may not vote for themselves or the same person more than once per day.
• On stipend day you get an additional "bonus" that your rating score% of 10% of your normal stipend.

(so on stipend day. if you normally get L$300 a week, and have 50 rating points, you get 50% of L$30, which is L$15 as your "bonus")

 

 

• Basics can still receive ratings with no finical gain (100% of 0 is still 0), perhaps some other free perk ???
• People love dumb internet points, plenty of us will do it just to make sure our numbers are bigger !!
• An extra L$30 a week isn't a huge amount, but as we have learnt, people will go to absurd lengths for very tiny amounts of L$.
• The amount isn't so large as to punish people who don't care for this kind of thing.
• Oh No people will game it, how terrible .. !! *wink*
• It very much favors newer residents who have more time and patience for BS, and arguably they have the most to gain from the side effects beyond the extra L$.
• The limits acts as a huge throttle and makes botting pointless (it wouldn't be economical). If someone comes up with a creative way to work around, then caps that don't impact humans can be introduced (such as a max number of ratings a premium account can issue in a certain period).

 

• Any user whatever account level can opt not to receive ratings.

 

 

The big gain is the uptick in engagement, people will have dumb parties, some of those parties will be fun. The extra L$ ends up in the economy. Gives newbies who got premium something to do. Answers the age old question, how do I meet people, something else to do at regular clubs, a nice way of showing someone appreciation, bragging rights, shame points ... 

I totally get that plenty here will have no use for such nonsense. All I can say, it was actually fun back in the day, most people I knew kept going to the parties even though they didn't need or care about the points themselves. It's no less nonsensical than a belli trash service.

 

JIRA FEATURE REQUEST - https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233330

Edited February 6, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[Rowan Amore]

Please include an opt OUT feature.

[Coffee Pancake]

A check box option "allow other residents to give me ratings" doesn't harm anything.

Wearing a 0 points badge with pride is an entirely valid application of such a system.

[Istelathis]

I probably would not participate in the events, but I do think it is a good idea.  I wish I could find the post earlier, I think it was by @animats(sorry if I am mistaken) which I also thought was a good idea, which was achievements.  How that one would be implemented is beyond me, but people seem to really enjoy having them.  A lot of people want that social aspect in SL, and having objectives such as reputation points and achievements would probably be a fun thing for a lot of people.  

[Coffee Pancake]

It's a social application of game theory - what behavior do we want to see more of in SL, how can that be accomplished using only simple mechanics. Bonus points for systems that make people feel like they are "winning".

Achievements is another example of this in-practice, but tends to be more structured and instructional. Eg, an Achievement to "Find the 6 hidden mole postcards on Mt Mole" tells the user that there are mole postcards to be found and that there is Mt Mole to see. This falls flat for SL as people will inevitably document everything on a wiki and then collecting all the achievements becomes a passive activity to fill down time.

[Ceka Cianci]

Something like that I would hope was an opt in, and the only time your profile showed anything was after you opted in..

If you don't opt in, your profile doesn't show a zero or any change at all..

All I can hear in my head right now is, Don't forget to like and subscribe.. hehehehe

 

[Rolig Loon]

17 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Something like that I would hope was an opt in, and the only time your profile showed anything was after you opted in..

That's a decent idea. It would be unfortunate, though, if people who chose not to opt in were stigmatized as "unpopular" or "unlikeable". The whole concept favors people who are extroverted party goers, which I don't have a particular problem with. I'd just hate to see non-participants branded with the sort of DORK label that we had to bear in Jr. High School.

18 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

If you don't opt in, your profile doesn't show a zero or any change at all..

Edited February 6, 2023 by Rolig Loon

[Ceka Cianci]

1 minute ago, Rolig Loon said:

That's a decent idea. It would be unfortunate, though, if people who chose not to opt in were stigmatized as "unpopular" or "unlikeable". The whole concept favors people who are extroverted party goers, which I don't have a particular problem with. I'd just hate to see non-participants branded with the sort of DORK label that we had to bear in Jr. High School.

Honestly, if someone was worried about that kind of thing they could opt in and  their worries are over.. Myself, I would rather someone like that expose themselves to me..Because in reality, I'm not the one getting labeled. They are labeling themselves. Cliques are for kids.

[Coffee Pancake]

That wasn't the case with the original system, everyone understood it was just a means to more L$ and if someone didn't have enough, then there was almost a duty to assist. Low "reputation" didn't ever mean "unloved". I'm a firm believer that the broader attitude in SL will always favor helping someone out over being a jerk, and maybe having an easy reason to thank a stranger is a good thing socially.

As a huge introvert I totally get not wanting to be forced to play the party game, that doesn't mean there wont be other ways to participate and a more nuanced set of social interactions to grow up around the same core mechanic. Ultimately we're all only going to do what we enjoy. Simple things like leaving a creator a point because you liked the thing they made, or how the customer service was. A non verbal thank you or like for anything. People will invent and add their own reasons for using the system.

Ratings as an excuse for a "party" is really just an excuse to bring people together under a superficial common pretext, the "party" can look like anything.

We're all grown ups, we can decide if the "party" we chose to visit is "gregarious friend dancing naked while we spam the hoo gesture" or "a causal debate about the ethical dilemmas faced by god emperor leto II" .. ps it's worth 25% of this months ratings .. pps you were just going to stand about at home meh anyway .. 

[Orwar]

   No thanks. 

   You already can socialise, throw and attend parties, read profiles, and chat interesting people up - in fact that's how most people I've met over the past decade on the platform have been doing it. The incentive to do so is in the desire to do just that. And with how people are 'struggling' to meet new people, a low rating as the result of 'shyness' would probably just drive people towards the conviction that they're unwanted in SL.

   If it's that you need L$15 to make it through the month, feel free to hit me up. I'm sure I could be inspired into a charitable mood if you ask very nicely. 

[Coffee Pancake]

I don't think you appreciate the lengths a significant portion of SL's population will go to for a very small amount of extra L$

So .. it is better to have them farming fish or plants or whatever the tokenized traffic scam of the month is, or to encourage premium with a social option to get an extra 10% over the entire month.

It's fair to say this isn't for anyone on the forums.

[Orwar]

   Maybe you should try fishing sometime, people who do actually do interact with each other on occasion, and even engage with it as a group activity - might as well fish up a few L$ if you just want to hang out and chat anyway, hm? Certainly beats clubbing, as far as social activities are concerned. 

   It seems awfully awkward to introduce such a wide-spanning feature to 'possibly maybe make a small portion of users engage less with existing penny-chores on the grid'.

[Gwin LeShelle]

Don't we have other...real problems to focus on? 

This system was a  bad idea back then and would be an even worse idea today. People behave much worse online today 😂  this would escalate so quickly that you better not blink.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Gwin LeShelle
Ugh English x3

[Coffee Pancake]

58 minutes ago, Orwar said:

 It seems awfully awkward to introduce such a wide-spanning feature to 'possibly maybe make a small portion of users engage less with existing penny-chores on the grid'.

The monetary incentive is not the point. 

This is nothing we haven't already had and is based on how we actually misused the feature when we had it.

The point is that misuse was positive, so this recreates that system in a way designed to solve the only problem it really had - That people could only game the system once.

 

Edit - To add, for those who weren't in SL back when we had ratings. The reason only being able to "game the system" once was the fatal flaw is the activity that resulted from that limitation. Once people got one account maxed, they would roll more accounts just to max them and pool the money. This is why LL killed it, not because of everything else we did - The overall impact of the system till it became a problem LL couldn't ignore was a social net positive.

This system is designed to be premium only and reset every month.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[EnCore Mayne]

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Proposal

JIRA FEATURE REQUEST - https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233330

i do really appreciate your compassion to enhance the SL experience. unfortunately, the Lab's recent heavy handed thuglike handling of our freedom to communicate here should be factored into any further demands upon them.

[Qie Niangao]

This is the first I've ever heard anybody lament the passing of the old ratings system, but maybe it's common in some circles.

It might improve the SL experience if there were incentives for pro-social behavior. This proposal is extraordinarily complicated, which could be justified if all the arcane subclauses are needed to achieve the objectives, but maybe all that complexity is because it's strapped with all the legacy baggage of "ratings".

Purely as a thought experiment, not as a serious proposal, consider how the OP proposal differs in effect from:

• every Premium member gets an additional 10% of their stipend reserved exclusively for L$ "tips" that can only be dispensed "in person": in-world, in the same region, avatar-to-avatar.

Both proposals have the (fatal?) flaw that they can be trivially gamed to benefit alts. I'd prefer not to limit recipients to Premiums but doing so, as in the OP proposal, does limit the alt-gaming to Premium alts. A rate throttle also has some anti-gaming effect (one rating per person per day, or one L$1 tip per person per day), so maybe that complexity would be necessary, but would substantially increase the development effort (for either proposal).

A Premium-only recipient requirement would also curb "begging" which otherwise could be a big problem for synchronous tipping. (But would venues nonetheless have a Premium tip-collecting beggar bot? "Slip a tip to Bentley for a better table at the club" etc.)

I do kinda like the idea of having a little "use it or lose it" pool of L$s as an incentive to find and interact with a tip-deserving soul, somewhere on the grid.

The larger point is, to take any of this seriously, it seems essential to understand how the proposed "rating" approach better meets the objectives than might "tipping" or some other approach. That may also further explicate those objectives.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

Perhaps You have forgotten that you could downvote people as well. They system was removed because bullies gang up and downvote vulnerable people, just because they thought it was funny. With mental health issues as prevalent as they are, why introduce a popularity system into SL? 

7 hours ago, Orwar said:

   Maybe you should try fishing sometime, people who do actually do interact with each other on occasion, and even engage with it as a group activity - might as well fish up a few L$ if you just want to hang out and chat anyway, hm? Certainly beats clubbing, as far as social activities are concerned. 

   It seems awfully awkward to introduce such a wide-spanning feature to 'possibly maybe make a small portion of users engage less with existing penny-chores on the grid'.

There is a well known store, lets call it Sw!pe, that had a fishing hole where you could fish for parts of an outfit. Literally dozens of people standing around chatting while doing this all day. I hated the rating system. You bann one person from your store for causing a ruckus or griefing and they would gather their alt army and down vote you till you never saw another customer. 

 

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

A Premium-only recipient requirement would also curb "begging" which otherwise could be a big problem for synchronous tipping. (But would venues nonetheless have a Premium tip-collecting beggar bot? "Slip a tip to Bentley for a better table at the club" etc.)

Basic accounts finding they have points is deliberate, it begs the question "what are these even for".

It could easily be the most initially visible distinction between account types as aside from a home and stipend, most of the premium offerings is just bigger numbers more better .. which only carries weight if you care about the numbers you have being too small.

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I do kinda like the idea of having a little "use it or lose it" pool of L$s as an incentive to find and interact with a tip-deserving soul, somewhere on the grid.

The "it's a tip" is exactly the kind of social meaning that would develop around the use of points.

I prefer points over L$ as that does just beg to be immediately cycled in ones own alt pool. The limitation of 1 point minute - but only 1 per unique person per day is specific to mitigate that and also mitigate bots saturating their points quote in a single location & allowing the entire months points to be accumulated by camping one location for a day.

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The larger point is, to take any of this seriously, it seems essential to understand how the proposed "rating" approach better meets the objectives than might "tipping" or some other approach. That may also further explicate those objectives.

I went with "ratings" in an attempt to remind people of the absolute insanity we used to get up to in the quest to get ratings .. however it turns out I'm just old and few here were in SL back then.

I get that most of us on the forums have ended up bubble babies in one form or another, but that's not why we joined SL or what we found fun at the starft.

Addressing that particular infectious malaise is a much bigger long term problem.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Perhaps You have forgotten that you could downvote people as well.

Which is why there is no mention of downvoting in my proposal 😎

[EliseAnne85]

9 hours ago, Orwar said:

   No thanks. 

   You already can socialise, throw and attend parties, read profiles, and chat interesting people up - in fact that's how most people I've met over the past decade on the platform have been doing it. The incentive to do so is in the desire to do just that. And with how people are 'struggling' to meet new people, a low rating as the result of 'shyness' would probably just drive people towards the conviction that they're unwanted in SL.

   If it's that you need L$15 to make it through the month, feel free to hit me up. I'm sure I could be inspired into a charitable mood if you ask very nicely. 

yeah this.^^^  aka reads no further.  opts out of thread.

[Rowan Amore]

10 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

It would be unfortunate, though, if people who chose not to opt in were stigmatized as "unpopular" or "unlikeable".

This would actually be a bonus for me.  😉

[Love Zhaoying]

38 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

11 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

It would be unfortunate, though, if people who chose not to opt in were stigmatized as "unpopular" or "unlikeable".

This would actually be a bonus for me.  😉

We could start a club!

[Love Zhaoying]

I copied a few of the items I merely do not comprehend.  Just letting you know!

Bring back ratings as a premium members perk.

- Why Premium members only?

Premium is required to give ratings.

- Maybe I misread this - I thought it means, "require all Premium users to provide Ratings".  Upon re-reading however, I suppose it means "only Premium members can participate". ETA: But..why?

Basics can still receive ratings with no finical gain (100% of 0 is still 0), perhaps some other free perk ???

- Why would we exclude Basic members from getting a L$ award for Ratings?  I simply do not understand.  Yes, I get that if this is based on stipends, only Premium users get stipends.  But I do not understand why you would design a system that explicitly does NOT award Basic members.

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Drake1 Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Which is why there is no mention of downvoting in my proposal 😎

Unfortunately, LL would probably just reinstall the old code for voting rather than reformat it. Hence why this is a bad idea. Also, do we really need to add another way to turn SL into a popularity contest? 

[Arielle Popstar]

Sounds a lot like a Social Credit score which I think would potentially suck for residents but might be great for Creators and other sorts of commercial interests within S/L.