Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

This might sound weird, but hear me out here, I'm going somewhere with this.

Now, as we all know, we've got problems with people's contributions. People are putting images in the wrong galleries, not tagging their uploads, or sitting around saying "+1 deadpool" without editing the entry themselves. I believe a big part of the problem here is lack of motivation to do so. While there are a lot of users here who enjoy helping just for its own sake, but there are equally many members who don't. They can't be forced to contribute, so what can be done to motivate them? My answer is, obviously, cosmetic rewards.

Users lusting after custom titles is so common here it's become a joke. Why waste this fervent desire for purely cosmetic alterations? Users' titles are already automatically changed when certain criteria are met, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to give them more unique rewards for contributing.

Some ideas in particular:
-Rewards are given automatically with certain numbers of image/video uploads (see below) and entry edits.
-Add a tag number requirement to rewards for image/video uploads so that it averages out to about, say, 3 tags per image.
-Images that are deleted or put in galleries that are locked later will lose their count toward total image and tag uploads, helping ensure correct use of the galleries.
-If an entry is confirmed, all previous edit counts for that entry will be doubled, encouraging constructive edits and research.

Potential rewards given with high ranks (collector, archivist, sr. researcher, etc.) in accordance to the above:
-Fully customizable user titles
-Differently-colored usernames that correspond to each rank (i.e. red for collector, orange for archivist, and so on)
-Images in place of usernames (seen this on some forums before, not sure if it'd work here)
-etc.

Thoughts?

Soooooo, basically the current title system mixed with the possibility of custom titles and a little of its own flair? I dunno… Sounds awfully too complicated for just a few cosmetics. People need to spend time coding all of this. Also, from how it sounds, it seems awfully easy (at least compared to now) to get cool titles. To reword Syndrome, "If everyone has custom titles, no one does". Once everyone has a flashy, multi-colored title, they'll lose their luster. Especially that one thing you said about certain users being able to edit their titles. At that point the titles lose purpose. They become a secondary username. Not sure if I'm misinterpreting what you're trying to say or not, which I probably am to some degree, but this needs some discussion. (Not sure why nobody responded for hours. Well, the Maintenance boards are usually ignored, nothing new.)

I remember having a thread a few months ago about reinventing the title system to have more automatically-earned titles and better names for the existing ones, but it died and I don't really think the staff noticed. I guess this could be a continuation of that.

Discounting Image Count unless the image is tagged is too complex, and with the Scrapbookers running around it would just undermine it anyways.

Images deleted or removed from a gallery do not count towards total contributions.

It's too easy to undermine a reward system for getting an entry confirmed. Just becoming the editor of a confirmed meme would cheat the system.

Custom titles would undermine anything special about the title system. Also, images in place of usernames would make people hard to identify. Different colored usernames however might be workable, but it's more effort than adding new content.

I think I will drop this bit of info to see if it generates any hype:

Extra titles to the current system are currently being negotiated (500, 5000, and 10,000 ranked titles). This also includes overhauling the Editorship Chain of titles to something more interesting so people actually shoot for Editorship Titles. On top of that titles related to Image Tagging are being negotiated, as well as all highest ranking titles a user has to be displayed on their profiles, even if they have a badge or moderator title.

It's not much, but it's a breath of new life into a system that everyone has beaten years ago.

Frankly, custom titles are a good thing, but only in the right hands. They have to EARN them, or else it wouldn't be fair. Does Lich really need one?

The problem with titles is that once you have a custom title, the ride ends on contribution titles, and we kinda want to expand on those in the (near) future.

Which is why something like badges is more an idea to expand on. Several mods already pitched some ideas for this, because the badges system is great but just woefully underused.

Yeah, that is true that the badges are underused, but they could have started it at least a month ago, since the user appreciation awards was when they started them almost 8 months ago.

So how does that last month suddenly matter? You could do the previous 7 months without.

I personally like the awards at the end of the year, and less of a monthly thing, but that may just be me.

Me too, that way they mean something more and people have more time to try. I already know loads of users who are likely to get an award. Speaking of that, I should submit a few more suggestions. Kind of important.