I'm hoping that this will spur a bit more activity in the post ratings department. I see a lot of posts go by unrated that deserve recognition -- mostly positive. If you ask a question here, and someone gives you a straightforward answer, please reward their post with a thumbs-up. It doesn't have to be a huge write-up or a herculean effort, just a straight answer that is helpful or useful. If you see someone else ask a question and get a helpful answer that you know to be correct, reward the poster that answered on behalf of the person who asked.
The idea here is that post ratings are only useful if people are using it fairly consistently. Each post rating is not supposed to be a huge influence, just a very small drop in a much larger bucket. So spend some karma. It doesn't cost you anything, after all.
Conversely, if you see someone behaving rudely or obnoxiously, don't hesitate to give them a thumbs-down. There are many forms of obnoxious behavior that aren't exactly prohibited by the posting guidelines, but make for an unpleasant forum.
While I've seen a few people continue to abuse the rating system (especially on the negative side), on the whole the system has correctly separated the helpful from the obnoxious. I'd like to continue that, but with more ratings to get a finer-grained picture. The more you all use the system, the less any single individual can sway the ratings with their own personal vendetta.
(And I've been developing some sophisticated tools to deal with the people who are abusing the system.)
Now that we've got some overt karma indicators, everyone's got a little bit more incentive to try to be more helpful and less obnoxious.
Thanks for your help.
MORE EDIT: I hit five targets already, less than one day in. Bollocks. I've now re-scaled it so that successive mod targets are harder to earn the higher you get. This lowers me, at this moment, to three targets, and at the same time raises more people to having at least half a target. I'm reasonably happy with that.
⚠️ Last edited by jess on UTC; edited 3 times