JungleDragon classes: more than just a pretty face »
FERDY CHRISTANT - DEC 7, 2009 (03:13:24 PM)
In the things I shared about JungleDragon, I have talked a lot about karma. Karma is what you earn by positive actions, such as uploading an image or getting good votes on your images or comments. As you grow in karma, you can get promoted to a higher class. Classes are organized along a foodchain, where for example an ant is lower than the lion.
The class of a user is displayed everywhere a user is displayed, acting like a badge of honour. The primary theory behind this is that users are willing to be active just in order to earn and show of this badge. Today, however, I made it even more attractive to get promoted to higher classes. Click the screenshot below to enlarge:
I have tied a number of capabilities to classes:
Upload quota
The higher your class, the higher your upload quota. This system is mostly in place to avoid the situation where a lot of low class users are uploading a lot of images of low value. Any user who uploads good images will not have to worry too much about their quota.
Vote power
The higher your class, the higher your influence in votes on images and comments. This system rewards good users and gives them more power. Votes are of course important for showing things like lists of most popular images.
Vote defense
The higher your class, the better your defense against negative votes. This one only applies to comments, since images cannot be voted down. What happens is that if you have a high class, the impact of negative comment votes is reduced. This protects valuable users from "trolling" low class users.
Moderation power
This ability is very special, only preserved for the top classes. When you have a top class, you are able to edit the metadata of all images, including those not uploaded by you. The idea behind this is that you have proven to be a top community player, and therefore can be trusted to correct the data of others.
What do you think?
I'm quite happy with this idea of extending the use of classes. This way, a class is more than just a pretty picture to show of. It becomes even more attractive for a user to make positive contributions. Another stimulator. The best part about it is that it is not just good for that user alone, it is good for JungleDragon itself, as it offloads the task of moderation largely to the community itself. Jungledragon will not just be about user-generated content, it will be user-moderated too.
Curious to know what you think about this system?
Comments: 5
Reviews: 1
Average rating:
Highest rating: 4
Lowest rating: 4
COMMENT: JOE
DEC 8, 2009 - 02:41:13
I find this to be a very interesting concept. In fact, you will get the same dynamic as in wikipedia. However, be sure to keep versionning of the information changed because someone could change something that was correct. So the author or a super-moderator could always decide to roll-back.
Keep on the good work! «
COMMENT: VICTOR
DEC 8, 2009 - 02:58:43 PM
I think it is a great idea.
The only one I am not sure about is Vote power. I think that a vote should count the same regardless of your class.
Excellent project for so many reasons! Thank you for blogging about your progress and design decisions. It is very interesting to follow the process. «
COMMENT: FERDY
DEC 8, 2009 - 21:38:06
Good suggestion. A lot of work to implement, but I will definitely consider it.
@Victor,
The way vote power works is similar to Digg.com. For example, there may be 12 votes on an image but it matters who makes the vote. The image would show 12 votes, but internally the image also has a vote karma score, which is the total of weighted votes. This internal score is only used for image sorting in overviews like "most popular images".
I understand your concern, but luckily JungleDragon karmaengine is very flexible. If in practice this feature is abused, I can decrease the effect of it by adjusting a single configuration setting.
Finally, I'm glad you appreciate my updates. There is plenty more to come! «
COMMENT: TOM JANSEN
DEC 10, 2009 - 18:06:55
It looks great and sure keeps you busy as far as I can see from reading your blogs and articles.
I sometimes envy the time you're able to find to work on this stuff. Anyway I hope all your efforts work out in a great new "special interest" community on the net.
I'm more in it for the technical challenges you're bumping into than for the actual content which sure fascinates me when presented like the "Planet Earth" documentary, however not so much as to dive into all possible detail like I imagine your future community will have.
Anyway rest assured that you're not talking to a wall!
«
COMMENT: FERDY
DEC 11, 2009 - 22:54:29
Nice of you to drop in. You're right, I'm taking this project quite serious nowadays. I've made significant investments in unpaid time to make progress, yet I also realize how lucky I am to even make that choice.
As for technical challenges in this project, I have many. Somehow I show more results than problems, but I can assure you, some aspects of JungleDragon are the most complex and challenging puzzles I have ever worked on. Usually, I tend to share more of this technical stuff, but this year I have to be efficient with my time, and use as much as I can on JungleDragon.
Rest assured, there will be a ton of updates coming in the next weeks. It is good to hear you are reading along, I found the little feedback that I got so far to be of great value. «