Measuring Activity

[Dugym]

I have an idea that can measure how active someone is.


There could be a level system, perhaps 1-5. Every time someone logs on, they could get 1 Activity Point (AP). Every time someone posts, they could gain 1 AP. So, if Mark makes 5 posts on Tuesday, he gets 5 APs for his posts and 1 AP for being on that day. However, every day Mark does not log on, he loses say 3 APs. 


EDIT: A bar could be used to show how many APs someone has.


EDIT: I thought of a way this could be misleading. If someone has high activity and then suddenly drops off the map, they would still look active. Here's my solution. If someone hasn't been on consecutively for say a week, the bar that measures APs can turn from green to red.


What do you think?

 

[Kaerri]

I don't see any need for that.  We don't want to make RpN like a job where people feel obligated to do things just for the sake of having done them.  This is supposed to be fun, after all!  And honestly I don't see the point of these "APs" other than to make people compete with each other.  We'll end up with people making spam posts for the sake of the points (it happens for post counts, we just remove and/or merge them).

 

[Dugym]

I don't see any need for that.  We don't want to make RpN like a job where people feel obligated to do things just for the sake of having done them.  This is supposed to be fun, after all!  And honestly I don't see the point of these "APs" other than to make people compete with each other.  We'll end up with people making spam posts for the sake of the points (it happens for post counts, we just remove and/or merge them).

It's a good way of making sure you have active members in your roleplay.

 

[Inner Power]

You can tell how active someone is in a roleplay however many times they post.

 

[Dusky]

I can tell you right now this method would likely have me at a rather low number seeing as I often only log on to check notifs real quick and take care of mod stuff if I have time, and yet I am an integral part of the community who reaches out to countless members through the newsletter.


(And I'm so humble, too.)


Honestly, it seems very liable to be used for divisive purposes and, as Kaerri said, takes the fun out of it.


I remember people I have roleplayed with; I know who's active and reliable and who's not, and I invite accordingly. As I roleplay more, I encounter new people, and I form my own network. The people in my network in turn connect me to the people in their network. That's the crux of it, really; learn by experience. It'd be extremely unfair to new users, and especially to users who need to go on hiatus, to implement this kind of system.


"Min 250 AP"


"B-but... I just got here..."

 

[Silanon]

One of the reasons why I sign in anonymously most of the time is because I don't want anyone to look at my profile and think: "Well, he was online fifteen minutes ago, so he'll better get a post up within the next hour" - I post when I have the inspiration and time to do so, and everyone I rp with hopefully knows that by now, from experience. How would that work with such a system? Would it still be displayed? In that case, I'd run right into the same problem again: "Well, he collected 10 AP's since I posted, so he better has an answer why he didn't post in my rp." - Yeah, buddy, I answered a post in the question section and wrote nine times that I'm too busy to get rp posts up right now. If it's not displayed, am I an inactive rper just because I prefer not everyone watching every single step of me? Don't think that's the case either.


I'm aware that most people don't use the anonymous login, so maybe that's a special case - but I think it shows that such a system would have holes, just like the others pointed out earlier. If you don't know if a player is active or not, then go and check a few of his recent rps - most of them tend to be open to everyone. Tells you way more than a number that doesn't even show how "active" a person really is - am I inactive just because I prefer to write posts with a dozen paragraphs instead of one-liners (just for the sake of clarity: I don't - but others do)? And I can't really think of another reason why one would want such a feature - as Kaerri said, rping is not about competing.

 

[Kaerri]

Also, if you're that interested in seeing how active someone is, you can go to their profile and click "See Their Activity" to see where they've been posting lately.

 

[The Mechanist]

I agree with @Silanon I don't want people knowing when I'm on and I'm not on, I mean personally how obsessive must you be to actually go into the persons profile just to check if their on?  They will post when they are ready to post, do not push the matter, do get on their case. I'm not accusing you of said crimes, but some of us like to be off the radar, we don't like being bothered, I'll admit I can't always post, other times I actually don't feel like it. Pretty much why I don't join hosted projects anymore.

 

[Dugym]

You can tell how active someone is in a roleplay however many times they post.

That doesn't work in stagnating roleplays.

"Min 250 AP"


"B-but... I just got here..."

This already happens with posts, unfortunately.

 

[Kaerri]

Which is why we don't want to make it worse.  I don't foresee us adding anything like your suggestion for that reason alone, plus we have lots of other things to work on.

 

[spookie]

i'm not personally a fan of this, either. it has a lot of potential for causing elitism, which was a plague on the site i used to visit and pretty much lead to its downfall. the "anti-noob" mentality destroyed a lot of friendships, and i would hate to see it happen here, where everyone seems a lot more accepting of newer and less active accounts.