After having used Everything and Perl Monks, I'm a firm believer in the XP system. It's a simple solution to a problem which has ruined a lot of similar message boards.

USENET, the Internet news system, was historically a wild and crazy place, but somehow it was self-organizing, with most newsgroups able to keep unwanted behaviour in check. It wasn't until Prodigy, AOL, CompuServe, and many, many other commercial services started unloading users by the millions that USENET collapsed under its own mass, and SPAM, of course. The "village" community couldn't scale to mega-city size because it had no real way of policing. You simply could not prevent someone from posting.

So many Web-based bulletin boards are filled with drivel, "I'm first" posts, and remarks so remarkably stupid that they would have you wondering if you needed to have a brain to operate a computer.

The XP system is effective at "punishing" people who get out of line by contributing things that the community does not want (--) and "rewarding" those who contribute things that the community wants. You will notice that the "ruffians" are short-lived, that even those who make a deliberate effort to distrupt the community find it difficult to make a lasting impression. Nodereaper, for example, is merely an extension of the XP system.

XP may not be a perfect solution, but at least it is democratic, allowing the community members to define the community.

In reply to Re: Hide Experience Numbers? by tadman
in thread Hide Experience Numbers? by knobunc

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