I was thinking that it would be nice to give positive feedback to people who help with questions or post a cool project other than just responding to the post. Something like a "give cred" button or a thumbs up button. When the person post topics a small counter would indicate current credibility next to their avatar. The "collect" button is nice but I use it for projects or post I want to keep returning to and sometimes I just want to let the person know their project is awesome or they were super helpful.
It would also be nice to pm someone by clicking on their avatar. There is the shout box but the person must be online to talk.
There are several similar ways this is done. FB has the like, many forums have some form of karma, stack overflow has +1 counts.
Each suits to some degree the sites needs. If you look at the stuff people like on FB it is pretty much everything their friends do. There is some danger in feel good but near meaningless thumbs up and that I fear is how this woud turn out.
Always looking for new ideas and keep them coming!
1) Something like a “give cred” button or a thumbs up button.
Completely onboard with this one. Other sites implement it and it certainly makes sense here. To take it to the next level, we’ve also been open to implementing a rewards system; if people help each other (in various forms), then perhaps they can somehow get a small credit towards purchases on RobotShop? One step at a time though. Until we implement an ideas page, we’ve add it to our list of member ideas so it’s not lost. We can see if Drupal has astable add-on. If people can give a thumbs up, do we also want to et them give a thumbs down?
2) It would also be nice to pm someone by clicking on their avatar.
One previous idea was a subdivide the SB based on interests, but we’ll obviously ask the community for feedback before going this route. Currently some members have a “contact me” under their bio, so would the PM cause a small chat window to pop up or would it be a shortcut to their contact section?
I think like/dislike is too general and could degenerate into a “old boys” club. In the past, new builders have generally received polite positive feedback when posting robot projects. The last thing I would want to see is a negative feedback on a beginners project. I’m sure RobotShop will filter out the rude and crude.
Articles on techniques or how-to usually contain the authors opinion. Such an article in combination with the SB started a feud last month.
I have received great advice from members and would appreciate them being noticed. Perhaps a check box to have the article sent to a review committee.
+1 can’t cause harm and gives a little of satisfaction. The most common use case is for helpful comments. Then it can be used to sort comments/post “most helpful first”.
LMR never had a +1 or like button, and i liked it, because if you really wanted to give appreciation of a post you had to comment that saying you liked it, and meanwhile you were writing it, why not giving also a tip like a “it reminds me of…” or “there is a guide for…”. The risk could be that a robot post would be with some likes, but no comments at all. At the moment i’d like “+1” reserved for posts in discussions; a post like “you shouldn’t use 9v alcaline batteries for a robot” with 5 “+1” has more weight. Another thing i don’t like of +1, likes or skulls ishive mentality, were you click “+1” instead of commenting, or just because you are a fan of someone, or just to increase the counter to a round number.
But if you sort the comments by votes, you lose chronological order which I suppose could be weird sometimes. (A comment out of context may not make sense anymore).
But stackoverflow does it and you even have some kind of “achievements” associated with your account. (Badges)
Sadly, I believe most people do not comment on projects. I wish they did but I fall down on that as well.
I personally don’t really like the +1 system as I agree with what some others members have said, there can be a hive mentality that could be limiting to the emerging creators out there. There are many emerging creators that don’t need to be squashed in the moment of their inspiration.
I think we should welcome all who contribute whatever ideas they have and let people draw their own conclusions. Admittedly, some creators are not as knowledgable than others, but I trust most people here are intelligent enough to figure out what is of value for themselves.
I appreciate that Robotshop.com is so ready and willing to put resources into the site, but maybe hold off a little on too much change too quickly. We have already had a LOT of change and turmoil in a short period of time. Let the dust settle and the community recover a few months anyways before going too hog wild on change please.
I personally would love to see the Creative Commons Licensing put in place and maybe keep things as they are for a bit. Either way it won’t impact my involvement in the site here.
