Gaining Site "Experience"

So I've been thinking, I'm a big fan of the idea of liking tweets/pages. Sometimes, you don't wanna respond to a post, but you want to show you like it. I also wanna reward people for activity on the site... not an actual reward, because I can't afford but, that vanity things, because who doesn't love vanity!

I put this up on Twitter last night, but I'm thinking of adding a system on the site that gives you "experience", points, for activity, be that making a character, posting on the forums, GMing, etc. Gaining xp would lead to getting "levels", which would come with vanity stuff. In addition, you could use experience to "buy" things, such as other titles/flags/etc. On top of that, I wanna give people the chance to thank their GMs and fellow players, and maybe you could use xp to "buy" other people on the site medals/awards that indicate you like their GMing/playing/posting, etc.

I'd also weight the stuff accordingly: if you earn 10 points for making a character, at a certain point, you'd earn fewer points so someone couldn't character spam.

In general, what do you guys think?

+1

I like everything about this. I find that in general humans are very accomplishment oriented and always thought it strange that we didn't even have a post count.

When you say post count, do you mean a personal post count, as in the user?

indeed

Good ideas, indeed.

Let people earn currency for participation and have ways for them to spend it. Qralloq makes a funny post? Here, have a Keleth Buck! Azzorak runs a good game? Here, have five Keleth Bucks. I've earned 20KBs? Maybe I can purchase a little medal to put under my avatar. As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, I think it's an awesome idea.

While the idea is to have fun and encourage participation, I have seen things like this on other sites do just the opposite. Newer people may be intimidated when their opinion is countered by someone with a lot of 'bling' and who is receiving a lot of tips, up votes, whatever. I know that won't stop most people, but I have seen it happen, especially when negative feedback is allowed (which I know hasn't been suggested) or rewards are made public (as in you can see how much someone was tipped for a message or something). Not a real big concern, but something to keep in mind.

Oh, and when you implement it, make sure it's retro-active. :-)

+1

I would say points for posts, with some controls for spam.....then again, I think we have one of the most active games on here.

Negative feedback is off the table, of course, but as for public rewards: I'm not thinking variable amounts... if you like a post, you wouldn't choose how many to give; it'd e a set amount to "buy" a like.

As for controls for spam, while I've gotta flesh out the idea (and feedback will be great!), I was thinking something like this:
- 1 point for a post in a game forum
- 2 points for a post in a non-game forum
etc.

This means that if we set level 1 at 100 xp, you'd still need to do a fair bit of posting before you level up. And if someone is spamming, I'd be banning them anyway. I can always add in a feature that would stop someone from gaining XP.

So while chatting about this with you on twitter, I was nomming on dinner @ the pub i work at with a friend who frequents /r/eddit, and he made the comment that "if you do that, make sure it's not an 'upvote' system, where if you upvote something over and over it gets to the top of a forum or whatever". I'm paraphrasing this, but I agree, but you haven't mentioned this type of thing so that's fine.
I think it'll be fun and help encourage participation in places that aren't just -in game- to what you're doing.

The question I have: if you get to buy badges/flags/titles then how many do would you plan to have inherent to the site when you implement this? Titles would probably be fewer and more expensive, badges could be cheaper with many, but would the require more icons and coding, etc. Levels could just be shown beside or under a persons name for instance.. so under my name for instance it would read like::
ExpLimited
Level: 1 (title goes here if applicable)

actually, you could probably included titles that reflect classes or participation. "Games Master" "StoryTeller" "Dungeon Master" "Fate Weaver" "Chaos God" etc.