Civil Engineering Association

Here are some suggestions from my side..but before following points should be kept in mid:-

* This is only my personal thinking not affected by anyone else
* These suggestions are prepared to improve our forum. I didnt say, our moderators and admin are not working to improve the forum.
* I prepared my these suggestion keeping in mind the effort of those users who are new but contributing a lot and contributing power stuff not just posting to become active.
* I am not an english man and is not pointing out any one with bad english.
* These are just the suggestions, NOT A TRY TO CHANGE THE FORUM BY ONE MAN, many among you will disagree with me, many will agree, some will just agree with some points.
* I do not want to create politics here.
* I love my forum. and beleive in freedom of speech and right to think and express and i will appreciate any criticism and appreciation.
* I know only ADMIN, moderators can change the rules, we are here for suggestions only
* I do not know where my position will be? if these suggestions are implemented fully/partially. and I am not interested in ranking/reputation but it is important for users to get reward for their good work


So here I go,

1) Instead of showing thanks given and thanks received on posts, it should be the ratio of both...

for an example:-

xx thanks given in yy posts sholuld be Thanks/Post ratio = xx/posts = zz

this ratio should be the base for user's popularity....a user with high ratio (zz) means his posts are productive and if this ratio is less than 1 means user is posting but due to lack of quality/information he is not contributing much....

2) thanks given/thanks received ratio is also important....

if this ratio is less than one, it means a user is popular among other users (receing high no. of thanks) but at the same time he is not agreeing with other users or not giving thanks to other users ( as no. thanks given by this users is less). so the ideal ratio should be near UNITY...so that people receive and give thanks....it does not mean that if i receive 20 thanks i must retrun 20 or more thanks back to other users...this ratio is also useful in determining a users activity in forum (with ratio less than one, also means that user is helping others but in return not finding right posts for himself to say give thanks to other users)....

3) the old REPUTATION points should only be awarded by forum ADMIN, MODERATORS or VIPs. It should be disabled for other common users to avoid misuse of reputation points. Only if forum team think that a user must receive reputation point they should award the points.

3.1) Some times REPUTATION should be enabled for other members to vote for moderators or other members. but on rare occasions...for a hint this can be done twice a year like elections...
3.2) Reputation should be equal to the ratio mentioned in point no. 2) plus (+) any reputation recevied from forum team or from point 3.1)


4) A leaderboar should be created. Rankings displayed on main forum page should not be according to total no. of posts or total. no. of thanks rather they should be according to reputation calculated from point 3.2)....this is will be very effective because in this case not only our moderators or only the members with the highest posts will be top scoreres but it will also give the chance to the new users posting very good materials and receving thanks.
Of course I am not denying that our precious active members and mods made very large no. of posts which are also useful.

5) All the details about actual no. of posts and threads and actual no. of thanks received and given should be moved to the profile of individual user. who ever is interested in seeing the total nos. should refer to the detailed profile of that user.

6) All the above point/reputation system recommended by me should be only applicable to posts and threads RELATED directly to the CIVIL ENIGNEERING stuff...
I know our moderators receive points and thanks and reputation based on correcting other members and telling them to abide by rules...yes thats the work of a moderator and he should receive credit for his hard work...and yes they also contribute to the real stuff along with moderating the forum...but there should be another system for the moderators for doing their moderation job. I mean they should be ranked within them selves and there should be another section like MODERATORS POINTS/POPULARITY SECTION....or any thing else...so this way we may exclude our FORUM DISCUSSION (first one) and VARIOUS section (last one) and any other posts in which moderators ask other members to correct their posts etc. from the main point system.

7) Medals should be awarded once a user's points from 3.2) reaches some specific limit. For an example If a user xyz reaches 15 points from 3.2) he should be awarded a medal. These settings can be discussed further. I just want to give you indications not the exact system.

8) The points with DONATE option should be reduced by a factor and added in the repuation points. [/code]total points as said earlier should be move to profile. for an example if i have 1000 points they should be redesigned to normalize them to the magnitude of REPU points in 3.2) or they should be multiplied by a factor say a factor of (250 or 1/250) so that 1000 becomes 1000/250 = 4 and added into the main ranking REPUTATION points.

9) I and we do not believe in language, race, religion etc rather we believe in skills and contribution. but as we are working in ENGLISH language in our forum. so i think we need our FORUM DISCUSSION or atleast the [color=#4682B4]RULES written in good english without grammer mistakes. I my self not an expert in ENGLISH and cant be because i am not an english man. but one should always try to improve. because our RULES section is among the most viewed section so it should be error free yes even from language point of view. Any moderator with good english should be awarded the duty to ammned the RULES section posts for language mistakes. for general engineering posts it is okay to accept lang mistakes as our main concern is about the main concept of engineering not on the language. For good english i mean with no spelling mistakes and clear meaning. it does not mean putting idioms and making understanding difficult bcz most users are not english here.

10) There should be a distinguished medal for experinced users of this forum. For an example DELL BRETT is so experienced in actual life. So after confirming and talking with moderators all these members should be award a special medal for having actual experience displayed with their posts. or atleast we can dispaly no. of years like SHOUT is displayed in each post for each user.

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just a correction!
See in this post even, i made some spelling mistakes, although i reviewed it several times before posting and i also made some mistakes about formating color and size...but i didnt see the EDIT button to edit my post to correct it...on some posts i see the EDIT button and some times no..is there any bug...

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and the last point after reading the post by chigozie about user BENNYK problem

11) If a member (we may put limit as only the PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER active status) has some issues and want to leave the CIVILEA, we must respect for what he has contributed and there should be an option of RESIGN to leave the forum with respect. after that his name should be displayed with RESIGNED symbol like our RETIRED MODERATORS.

In my opinion, this is an engineering forum and not a popularity competition.
Try to get reward from the fact that you helped someone, and not who clicked thanks button on your post.

I would respect more if you gave some suggestions on improving our forum with regards to engineering content and sharing of knowledge.

Regards.

Dear seb3K,

1) I clearly mentioned in my post that i do not want to make it a POPULARITY COMPETITION.

2) I am also sharing engineering contents

3) there should be reward which is interesting otherwise people lost interest. every body should be appreciated and rewarded for his good wills so that is why our current point system, reputation system and thanks system is!... if you just want engineering content, ask ADMIN to remove that system too...

the point is i recommended some SUGGESTIONS to IMPROVE...the CURRENT REWARD SYSTEM...NOT TO...CREATE NEW SYSTEM...
I hope you and other people understand my point..if you see there is already a reward system with members with large no. of posts and thanks displayed on main page...this is important for appreciation of members...

Hi,
I hope yo suggestions will be read,deciphered and, if need be, taken into consideration by the Administration.
I, and many others in the Forum, may fall within some of the categories you have endeavoured to mention above.
I am currently studying in one of the Universities here in India where we do not have access to uploading any material except for downloading and this also is restrictively controlled.
This leaves one with the option of only being actively participative in the forum by giving ideas,suggestions and opinions to what one's fellow users post,say in the problems section, and these may be worth quality material.
And putting forward what problems ones facing from which other users can discuss, offer solutions and learn at the same time.
One may try to be so active in the forum but one wonders when he/she may rise up to those ranks where he can gain accesses say to the "Exclusive publishes of the Forum".
Correct me if am wrong, uploading seems to be carrying a lot more points than just offering suggestions and solving users' problem.
Say if uploading=50 points, arbitrary value and solving problems is say 10 points. Then one has to solve five problems to equate to one upload. And if the uploader makes 5 uploads?, Definitely he will be way up the ladder faster than u wiil do.
I believe Coolestbliss' suggestions have a bone in them!!!

Hello everyone, I read the suggestions and i am a little critic about them.

I disagree on two main points with Coolestbliss:

Quote:1) Instead of showing thanks given and thanks received on posts, it should be the ratio of both...

I do not agree, this way people who post materials which are not very interesting for everyone will be de-motivated. Why should we do this, perhaps that is all they have!
Example: I want to post a manual on bamboo construction methods, it is 600 MB and I know that no one will like it. So what do I do, do I post or not? Maybe I can post 10 documents related to sustainability of 1 MB each and everyone will love them and give me credit!
What I think is to post BOTH! Don't think about reputation, points and hierarchy when you post something. Think about KNOWLEDGE! That is why we are here, to get knowledge, not to get famous.

Quote:2) thanks given/thanks received ratio is also important....

Why is it important? It is not a reliable indicator. It can be bad actually because if you give less thanks you look better to others, so it discourages giving thanks and encourages posting only "fashion topics". See point 1, same reason as there why I don't like it.

Regarding my opinion on the forum in general:
It is nice to give thanks and receive them! It is nice to know that you helped a brother in profession even if you have never seen his face, and opposite. It is also very nice to know that if you are facing a challenge you can go to Civilea and it is very probable that someone will help you a lot and most importantly for FREE! These are the things that I love about this forum. Whatever changes are made, this output should be unchanged.

I am not having a high status in the forum and do not have many points either (because I haven't posted so much), BUT I do not care, honestly! If I will see a post in the forum that I might contribute, I will do that; if I have a book you want, I will post it BUT if I don't have time to search and post, if I don't have the chance to upload (because of government policies on copyright or because of low broadband) or if my posts are not so popular, I don't want to be judged! Maybe I will become more active tomorrow and someone with lots of credits will quit posting... then who can say who is active and who is not?

What I want to say is that everyone should be appreciated for what he/she posts and not seen bad if others post more or better than him/her. If we don't act this way, no matter how we change the point system, there will always be something we will not agree about it. Maybe the point system should be removed to avoid unnecessary disagreements.... For me personally it is important to know since how much time a user has been a member, how many posts does he have and how many thanks he has received, the rest is not important.

Keep up the good work everyone!

Regarding post#5

I am not compelling anybody to implement my idea! its a public forum! some will agree. some will disagree. action will be based on mods and admin moves.

but as an Engineer and from my personal point of view, ratio is important. it will also let the new users to maintain their good reputation. because this life is race. you accept it or not!. consider a new member joined today and started to post and uplaod from today. at the same time an old user is also there in forum who has contributed a lot and at the same time also contributing more and more. Now the NEW user cannot reach the total no. of posts or thanks as that of the old user because at the same time the old user is also active (same case of parent-son)...After all this, i know no body who is contributing is only after the points or thanks....

regarding the uploading for BAMBOO CONSTRUTION, as you said, yes if the post is useless, no body will be interested, but if the post is rare, our mods can give him repuation or more points. But the main point i understand, you want to say that, BAMBOO CONSTRUCTION is neither USELESS nor it is RARE but at the same time it is not popular because users circle in this type is very limited so you will get less points and less thanks, yes ofcourse that will happen. because in life also some thing is more common than other....just take an example of our own forum....on the main page it lists most popular sections like ETABS, i know most of the traffic is due to this ETABS things because it is very common. Now a post in ETABS will be much more popular than a post in FREE DISCUSSION....yes it a reality, it is just like the web site traffic.

now i will stronly disagree with your point no. 2 of ratio = thanks given / thanks received

I ask here how a member giving less thanks will appear good to other members? for an example suppose I got 200 thanks from members and i gave 75 thanks then my ratio is 75/200 = 0.375. i said in my post#1 that the idea ratio would be near to unity (1.00). ratio of 0.375 and ratio of 2.667 both are not okay! this ratio perfect value should be near 1.00. Any value below and beyond the ideal range will be considered negative....this is not the case with ratio in point 1 where having large ratio (thanks / posts) shows good signs.

These two ratios are prepared to promote the activities of new members who are contributing a lot and to appreciate their moves. As you said and you are, you are not very very active, just think can u reach the level of any one of our moderators no. of posts? NO? but may be you can achieve the good ratio. But as you said your self that you should not be judged by ranking. so okay there are people who do good things and do not claim any thing...yes that is great...i respect it...

Dear coolestbliss,
I am not trying to say that you are saying wrong things, I just want to say how I see things, so don't get me wrong here. I will try to be brief:

1. Number of thanks given is not important for me, and the ratio even less; they depend on the number of posts that a user browses, the topics he is interested, the value that a post has for him, his politeness and cultural traditions (in some parts of the world it is not customary to say thanks, no joke!), etc.
Let me give you an example: suppose I browse civilea all day and i make only one download a week since it is all what I am interested. At the same time I have made 10 uploads/posts. Supposing that I get 2 thanks per upload, it makes 20 thanks received and only one given. That is a ratio of 0.05 (or 20), does it say that I am not doing things right? Absolutely NOT! Thus the ratios we are talking about don't tell any info about a person (good, clever, helpful, experienced, rude, fast in response, crazy downloader...).

Quote: ratio of 0.375 and ratio of 2.667 both are not okay! this ratio perfect value should be near 1.00.

I believe the example above (1) proves this theorem is false ;)

2. Number of thanks received IS important, because shows how useful you are for the community and how many people have appreciated your help. :JC_handshake:

3. The number of points might motivate some people, but not everyone as maybe is the case for the "Thanks" received :)

first i thanks all for giving suggestion...
we are a team here that want improve forum more ...

yes, i agree with you. ratio of thanks is more important than no. of thanks. but no. thanks & no. post was written. for example a user with 1 post & 10 thanks has ratio 10 & other user with 1000 post & 10000 thanks has ration 10 too. but hey are not same ...

here is engineering forum, thanks, points, medal, ... is for encouraging user to active more.
we deleted medal system, reputation, ... & save only thanks & point. but most important encouraging is join to VIP group.

i think that it is better to speak about content of forum, suggest about it.


thanks :JC_cheers:

okay ADMIN, but for the last time i will ask, what about suggestions #8, 9 and 10.

Let me express my point of view...

As for me - I didn't care especially about the amount of pressed THANKS along my profile at my start in this forum (or any other) as I don't care now - I'll do my best to share my knowledge (regardless the fact I'm young engineer), I'll do my best to share all the books, standards and software that are in my possession - I have never expected a single THANKS, I even don't have in my signature written this silly sentence:

Quote:If you like the post, please press THANKS

or

Quote:Press THANKS if I helped you

I'll continue helping others with no expectations in pressing THANKS along my posts. It is nice to know if I helped another member or if someone read my post - this is nice to know - but no one gets hurt if I (you) don't see this famous THANKS pressed along mine (yours) post... It's not all about thanks and points - it's all about your will to share something - believe me, we (the forum staff) are familiar with all the members contributing here - we know who is active and who is contributing how many, we are aware of every single mistake individual has made in this forum - so all those information were checked before we decide to give a famous VIP membership to someone - the more you help selflessly - by uploading stuff in Request Sections, by helping to solve problems and making Discussion, of course, in corresponding sections of the forum - you'll more get from the forum, NOT from the forum staff!, but from the forum! It's all about sharing and expecting nothing... There is a saying in my country:

Quote:"The less you expect, the more you get!"

Me already have had few discussions concerning THANKS, Reputations, Point Systems etc. but Rep Points showed us nothing about activity and contributions of CivilEA members because only ones who was getting those Rep. Points in most cases were forum staff - but those members who are sharing Rep. Points to other regular members where forum staff - so it didn't work.

Concering Point System - I like it as I said in one earlier discussion - It isn't the point the fourm staff should be the only one who is sharing the points... For example, I share those Points to everyone who is willing to help me in solving my problems - it's not a secret (or a mystery, if you prefere) - I share more points because I have a lot of points to share relatively to new members who have small amout of points, but if I reach the bottom of my points, I'll share 1-2 point per every good reply to me etc...

It's not always on forum staff to decide who will be elected to be the VIP or who needs to be awarded in some way - every member have their own right to make a proposal (suggestion) - that's why CivilEA has Suggestion Section. Use it, but use it wisely!

CivilEA is a young forum and some of the moderators (including me) are new to forums and moderating and every day we learn something new, do something new. It is not the point to change the system from day to day - it's not good for new members as it's not good for forum staff - we would get lost in the system.

I think we have had enough discussions about thanks, points, reputations, etc., let's dedicate ourselves to engineering, let's make the dust calm down - we had a lot of non-engineering stormy discussion these days.

Hope I was clear enough. I think we solved now the great Thank-You-Points mystery... So, as Dell said:

(10-26-2010, 07:57 AM)Dell Brett Wrote: [ -> ]Let's do engineering!

Best regards to all
Grunf