Following the removal of the thanks mod, the team have been in discussion regarding a replacement. As some of you will have already noticed, we now have a reputation points mod installed.
What is it and what does it do?
There is now space for 10 icons beneath your name, which will rise (and fall!) depending on how the rest of the community feel about your posts. Each icon represents 10 reputation points. A reputation point can be added or removed by a user according to whether he or she appreciates (or not!) your post. Effectively, both thanks and the infamous boo feature have made a return, but with a difference.
So what's different?
The previous thanks system was causing an issue as each individual thanks was showing for each individual post. That meant the database was being queried excessively to generate the page. Rep points allow members to give their opinion (good or bad!) on a user's contribution without having each individual rep showing for each post. This is then stored in a user's profile. A member can view their last 10 reps in their profile, but will not be shown on each individual post as before. Your rep count is also shown as a number as well as being represented by the icons below your name. You can also click the icon bar to view a summary of your or a users reputation.
How do I add or remove rep for a user
You'll now see two separate icons where the old thanks button was located at the bottom of each post. An positive (or thumbs up) icon
and a negative (thumbs down) icon 
. If you want to give a rep point, click the green one, to remove click the red icon. Think carefully about what reputation you want to give - you can't change your mind later!Isn't the system open to abuse?
Not as much as previous incarnations. The system won't allow someone to run through one user's posts and give positive or negative rep for every single one. We'd also be keeping an eye on things ourselves too. That said, if you see anything you believe to be unusual please contact myself or Kaycee and we'll take a look.
Is this a permanent change?
Like anything new, we're introducing this on a trial basis at first. We may make some tweaks to how it behaves and operates in the future, or then again we may remove it all together. It's success depends on how it behaves from a technical point of view and how it is utilised by you. We'll let you know of any changes within the TT News and Your Views forum.
What about my old thanks counts?
Due to how the new system works, we couldn't directly give one rep point for each thanks count. Therefore, for every 5 thanks that you had on the old system, you have been given one rep point. So for example:
UserX had 210 thanks on the old system
Divided by 5 gives them 42 reputation points on the new system.
This converts to 4 rep icons underneath their username when viewing posts.
Note As each count has to be amended manually, we have taken the decision to only add rep point to those with a thanks count of 7 or more. We're sorry we can't transfer everyone over, but those users with less than 7 thanks count would only receive 1 rep point. Considering it would only take one user to click to add rep once to achieve that figure, we decided it wasn't reasonable to go through each of these users to add one point.
We've already had a great deal of discussion on how to convert thanks to rep points and the decision is now final. The calculation above ensures that we have a decent spread of rep counts and also allows other new users to catch up.
When do I get my thanks count converted into rep points?!
We've taken a snapshot of the thanks database before we bid it farewell, [s:1kh74qn2]and we'll be working over the next few days to update each and every users reputation, so fear not it will be added shortly to any rep points you've accumulated in the mean time.[/s:1kh74qn2]
But I want all my thanks counts back!
Tough, kthx
In all seriousness though, if anyone has any feedback, please direct it to myself or Kaycee or e-mail the[dot]team at towerstimes.co.uk.
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