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The Open Source community operates as a meritocracy, and forums, sadly, are sorely lacking in this respect.  Most forum systems boost user rank by the number of posts made, regardless of whether the information posted was relevant, useful or merely a string of inane drivel.

That’s where most forums fail today. There isn’t an effective way to ensure quality answers with relevance, and encourage users to become a productive member of the forums.  The short and sweet of it, there's no way to keep out the repetitve, stupid shit.

I've gone on about this before but I read an archived article over at Cameron Moll's website called "Sly Forum and the World of Tomorrow" that really nailed it.

In the piece Mr.Moll details the benefits of MarketingProfs’ Know-How Exchange, developed by PensaWorks:
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Here’s a break-down of how it works:

  1. New users are alotted 250 points.
  2. Users earn additional points by responding to others’ questions. However—and here’s the kicker—points are awarded by the author of the question only to those he or she feels deserves them, based on the quality of the response.
  3. Users expend points by posing questions, ranging from 0–500 points, as determined by the author of the question. The higher the value, the quicker and more qualified the responses (usually).
  4. The higher the number of points a user has, the more questions—and higher valued—he or she can ask.
  5. Users are incentivized to gain additional points from the “Top 25 MarketingProfs Experts” tally (based on points earned) that appears on every page.


The Open Source community needs to develop a forum along these lines and mandate it's use on every community site that elects to use a forum.
Ouch

But necessary :)
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Unfortunately, the smart get smarter while the stupid get stupider. Those who are truly skillful in marketing ultimately gain the most points, while those are less adept fail to gain points. That leaves the skillful, who don’t have as much a need to pose questions, with plenty of points they’ll likely never use. Meanwhile, the less adept—those who really need answers—likely cannot acquire sufficient points to pose questions.

This is exactly why I don't like this system.  It's much closer to a business model than a community model, and it's a business model with which I disagree.  It favors those who have wealth (in this case, wealth of knowledge), and shuts out those without.
Grim, it's certainly an interesting concept.  At first I thought the author was going to suggest the same peer regulating peer concept that Slashdot uses: moderation of posts by other users with karma points given to good posters.  Who is to say what's good and not good, though?  It turns into a popularity contest.  It does work for them, but they are huge compared to us.

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 4. The higher the number of points a user has, the more questions—and higher valued—he or she can ask.


I agree with mikshaw: the plan in the article is a little backwards.  New users need to ask questions, old time users like yourself tend to answer a lot more questions than they ask.  Why wouldn't I post a question with a value of one point?  Is someone not going to answer me because they don't get enough out of it?

I also have trouble seeing how many points a question is worth.  What if I posted the ever popular "How do I change my keyboard layout" question and offered 200 points.  Was that worth 200 points?  Sometimes a great question should earn points instead of costing them.  Many are good suggestions or even questions that I never thought to ask myself.

Do you think the person posting the question is the best one to judge the answer I gave?  The article said points are awarded by the author of the question only to those he or she feels deserves them, based on the quality of the response.  I could spin a line of crap, giving them a long elaborate solution to their problem, when an easier solution might be posted three days later.  But since mine was first and more eloquently stated, I'd get the points.

If you could make a filter to remove each and every "string of inane drivel" I'd never turn it off.  The only way to do that is third party moderation.  This means someone has to read those lines of drivel and filter them out.  Doing that in a fair and consistent way would be a major hurdle, but a major achievement if it could be pulled off.

The people who need the most moderation are the new users, who haven't posted before, and are in a new environment.  They are the ones who ask the same questions time after time.  One solution would be to moderate a user's first three posts.  That let's someone tell them to "search the forums like so and find you answer here.  Do that first next time, please."  That would help cut way down on the same questions being asked again and again.

As far as long time users who post worthless drivel, I don't know.  I agree it's a problem.  There is a certain feeling that number of posts is important, after all, it's right there under your name on the forums.  Would removing that help cut down on the one line, worthless posts that get submitted just to bump that number up?

Mandates for forum uniformity inside the Open Source community?  Me, I like diversity.
I also get tired of seeing posts by a new user that could easily easily be solved by doing a search, I mean it implies a level of laziness on the users part.

I don't agree that awarding points for answers is the way to go, why would a new user have the ability to judge an answer's value, especially for an easy question, hell they did'nt have the brains or the will to search in the first place. It sounds like under that system, answers are up for sale, maybe get some bidding wars going.

As for myself, I don't even read a post that looks like another repeat, and I really don't care to enter the "high post club" if thats what it is. I just want to run Linux and help when I can.

Actually, Grim's suggestion from a previous post about having a "big in SEARCH button" at the top of the page sounds good to me.
Maybe a flashing neon red or something.

I think a system like the one in the article is going to split the community into separate distinct groups, the "elitist", the regulars, and the newbies, not my kind of community.

I sure as hell don't have the answer, but I don't think the article is it.
Maybe the forum just needs a dickhead around willing to tell a new user to get off their ass and look around.

edit> Wow, I just noticed I have 51 posts, I'm well on my way to the top. Silly me, I should have posted instead of editing, I woulda had 52.


my 2 cents,
roadie
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