Good point Mark. I'm wondering about a less automatic Power Point system. I often use a programming website called
StackOverflow, and there people earn points by the credibility of their answers to questions.
Part of our issue is that people contribute in lots of different ways here. Some people are almost exclusively forum creatures, and their posts have provided me lots of insight. I'd like to increase their power points if I could. Other people are all about mountains, routes, areas. I agree that is the mainstay of the site, and it seems that the point system rewards those contributors well. Now today, I'm arguing for a new way to contribute, that is by a combination of occasionally creating mountain/route pages, and by roving around editing and improving on public sections. It would be great if that is rewarded too.
Instead of the 1-10 system, which no one seems to know what to do with nowadays, we switch to a "+1" and "-1" system. Not voting means "meh." Voting with a +1 button means, I like it! "-1" is for things like illegal activity, copyright violation, pissing off the Navahos, etc. Any more nuanced criticism can be dealt with in places like "Additions and Corrections," Forums, PMs, Elves, etc. Additionally, these +1/-1 buttons are scattered around. In forums, the "thanks" button can map to a +1 that affects your power points. In page comments, there is an icon next to each user allowing for +1.
I know a big problem is "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours." I think there are algorithms to look at a days voting pattern to find that. Egrigious violators get a -1 that nullifies the attempt to game the system.
Maybe I should have opened that can on a new thread...For the record, I basically vote this way now, using 1 and 10 as the -1 and +1 scores. I
know that this style of voting is decried as problematic...