T
Tech Admin
Guest
Hello TamaTalkers!
As many of you have noticed, the user rank system has been changed a bit... And by change I mean more like removed. The Guides and I have been discussing a change to the user rank system based on this poll. Our discussions ended up leading us into the issue of spam posting and the quest of many to increase their post counts/user rank for the sole purpose of seeing it change. This is usually done by posts consisting of single words, smilies or "ooh look I'm almost a TamaMax" type posts and topics. This leaves the TamaTalk Guide team with the job of cleaning house to get rid of these posts. As the site has grown so has the task of cleaning up. It gets difficult to read through and filter 1000 posts each day. So the thought of getting rid of the user rank system came up. The idea is that, in reality, user ranks really don't serve much of a purpose. Just because you become a TamaMax or TamaElder does not mean you have contributed hundreds and hundreds of useful posts. In much the same way, just because you have 200 posts doesn't mean you haven't contributed/participated as much as somebody with 5 times as many posts. The quality of the posts is not reflected in the post count and user rank. I have yet to find a system that easily tracks the quality versus the quantity.
So now what? We'd like to test out TamaTalk without user ranks for a while. If the "goal" of reaching a new rank is no longer available, will people still spam the forums as much? Let's go without it for a little while... See what happens.
We hope you understand that this was not a simple decision to make... It took a lot of discussion. I really believe it is worth trying out. After a short period without user ranks, we can create a poll to see how people feel about user ranks. Let's give ourselves a chance to get used to it and see if it is still missed after a few weeks without them.
I look forward to hearing your comments on this... Please feel free to reply to this topic and add your thoughts. As always, we are always open to suggestion and love to hear your thoughts.
As many of you have noticed, the user rank system has been changed a bit... And by change I mean more like removed. The Guides and I have been discussing a change to the user rank system based on this poll. Our discussions ended up leading us into the issue of spam posting and the quest of many to increase their post counts/user rank for the sole purpose of seeing it change. This is usually done by posts consisting of single words, smilies or "ooh look I'm almost a TamaMax" type posts and topics. This leaves the TamaTalk Guide team with the job of cleaning house to get rid of these posts. As the site has grown so has the task of cleaning up. It gets difficult to read through and filter 1000 posts each day. So the thought of getting rid of the user rank system came up. The idea is that, in reality, user ranks really don't serve much of a purpose. Just because you become a TamaMax or TamaElder does not mean you have contributed hundreds and hundreds of useful posts. In much the same way, just because you have 200 posts doesn't mean you haven't contributed/participated as much as somebody with 5 times as many posts. The quality of the posts is not reflected in the post count and user rank. I have yet to find a system that easily tracks the quality versus the quantity.
So now what? We'd like to test out TamaTalk without user ranks for a while. If the "goal" of reaching a new rank is no longer available, will people still spam the forums as much? Let's go without it for a little while... See what happens.
We hope you understand that this was not a simple decision to make... It took a lot of discussion. I really believe it is worth trying out. After a short period without user ranks, we can create a poll to see how people feel about user ranks. Let's give ourselves a chance to get used to it and see if it is still missed after a few weeks without them.
I look forward to hearing your comments on this... Please feel free to reply to this topic and add your thoughts. As always, we are always open to suggestion and love to hear your thoughts.