A reward system

Ideas to improve Criticker and new feature requests, as well as announcements about new enhancements.
Luna6ix
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A reward system

Post by Luna6ix »

It occurred to me when mpowell was saying that he wanted to drive attention toward reviews that the star system is a decent way of incentivizing reviews, but there could be another layer added onto it. Criticker could have a separate badge system, or achievement system added wherein a user could receive a reward for doing things. This could be used to provide a little extra minor incentive to drive users to be more--well rounded, I guess. By that, I mean if there were a badge for 100 forum posts, you might get a few more people to be a little more active in the forums. By adding multiple increments of badges for reviews, you could get people to write more reviews. Or perhaps one for starring other people's reviews. Just slap on an image to a title and there's your reward. It'd be super awesome if they could be showed off on your profile page for you and everyone else to see. Here's the original suggestion I had typed up in the other thread:

"On a different note, I bet you that if some sort of review badge system were implemented, you'd get people writing more. Like, a badge for a review with X amount of stars, a badge for writing X number of reviews total, one for X number of different people having given you stars. Ones for you to write X amount for different genres, you could go a billion different ways with it. I bet if you do that, you're going to have a heck of a lot of people write more reviews.

EDIT: Just occurred to me that if forum posts had badges too, you might get more forum activity."

paulofilmo
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on strs / revws

Post by paulofilmo »

highlight the most starred reviews over whatever period on the homepage (24hr∨3days∨7days..) "the reviews that have received the most stars over the last 3 days are . ."

celebrate the most recent review that's received ~10 stars.
"congrats to goradgonad, who has received 10 stars for his review of Yoda? I hardly know her"

(that said, i never look at the homepage. imagine it filed with juicy graphs and dials oh my)

that's that the sort of things metafilter/teledraw would do. I don't know how much criticker wants to let the wobbly humanness of its users infect the site's public image/first impression

i guess i'd like the site to be just this niche thing where weird people can be weird together. it sort of is. i don't think my suggestions really help with that. idk. must sleep.

CosmicMonkey
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Re: on strs / revws

Post by CosmicMonkey »

paulofilmo wrote:highlight the most starred reviews over whatever period on the homepage (24hr∨3days∨7days..) "the reviews that have received the most stars over the last 3 days are . ."

celebrate the most recent review that's received ~10 stars.
"congrats to goradgonad, who has received 10 stars for his review of Yoda? I hardly know her"

(that said, i never look at the homepage. imagine it filed with juicy graphs and dials oh my)

that's that the sort of things metafilter/teledraw would do. I don't know how much criticker wants to let the wobbly humanness of its users infect the site's public image/first impression

i guess i'd like the site to be just this niche thing where weird people can be weird together. it sort of is. i don't think my suggestions really help with that. idk. must sleep.



Yeah, I like this idea. Letterboxd currently does this, with the 6 most popular reviews and 3 most popular lists (their version of collections), over the past few days featured on the homepage.

Luna6ix
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Re: A reward system

Post by Luna6ix »

Bump, I feel like this one is going under the radar.

hellboy76
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Re: A reward system

Post by hellboy76 »

I am for this. You could do submissions badges, for films, bios etc. A lot of opportunities as there are still a ton of blanks out there.

djross
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Re: A reward system

Post by djross »

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Last edited by djross on Thu Jul 20, 2023 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

CosmicMonkey
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Re: A reward system

Post by CosmicMonkey »

I'm assuming the lack of reply from mpowell means that the admins are currently on the fence about the issue and don't want to see some more discussion before they reply, so let me put my two cents in: I don't like the idea of a reward system at all. I've never been a member of a forum that uses the rewards for two reasons: One, all the badges and rewards and gubbins are cluttering, visually distracting and ugly and two, as a new member joining the forum it becomes discouraging and overwhelming to join the site knowing that it'll take hours of work to reach a "respectable" number of badges on the site, and the fear of the being judged by more senior and experienced members of the website, with your lack of experience so evidently on display.

There are other solutions to get users more involved with the website. I think the aforementioned proposal of having a box on the homepage showing the most starred reviews and collections of the past x number of hours is an easy way to get more involvement that doesn't disrupt the nature of what criticker is. Likewise, I think philamental's annual Image challenge got a lot more users involved in the forum than normal, and if the admins encouraged semi-regular Monthly site events like that similar effects could be seen.

For example, one event I've seen regularly done on various cinephile sites/forums is "March Around the World", where during the month of March, people are encouraged to watch and review as many foreign-language films as possible, usually with each year having an emphasis on a specific country (I believe 2017 was South Korea). I'm not necessarily recommending this in particular to be something to be adopted on criticker, but am merely citing it as an example of the sort of events that could be done to encourage more participation.

Luna6ix
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Re: A reward system

Post by Luna6ix »

I'd like to see some more suggestions to bring out the, more or less, invisible users, who use the site just for recommendations, there's a large number of people on the site whose only contributions are in the scores they give to movies, and while they have value to the community, I feel that users who are active in writing reviews, active in the forums, and active in participation are provide a more robust experience to the rest of us. Even if this idea were not implemented, I would still posit that Criticker is lacking in incentive for people to contribute more than just raw data for the recommendations algorithm. It's a great site, it has more to offer than just what movie am I most likely to enjoy, but some people need a little push to get them going. And maybe badges aren't the best way to go about it, but the conversation is worth having.

I would say that the suggestion isn't as beneficial for keeping long term users interested, but would provide more reason to contribute to the site in ways that you don't otherwise, making a better all around experience. Like most of the other regular forum posters, I've been here for a considerable amount of time and haven't needed any badges to make me stay, but the amount of people who post in the forums are a tiny fraction of the population, and the amount of people who write mini-reviews are another small subset of people. What I suggested wasn't to get people to stick around, but to try to get them to be more involved. As a poster on the forums, I can honestly say that when there's a lull, and no one's posting, I have less drive to do so myself, getting more people in on discussions would help me feel engaged. As a writer of mini-reviews, getting stars helps me feel engaged as well, which means that there need to be people out there GIVING the stars and if they're not writing reviews then it might be hard to see the value in giving something and getting nothing in return, but if there was a badge for something like giving stars to a certain number of users, or a certain number of reviews, then you might draw in a few more people than you would otherwise. Another contribution that I'd like to see more is movie submissions, there is already some sort of leaderboard showing titles submitted to Criticker by users and you can sort it by all time rankings and by a smaller amount of time, but it only shows something like the top five of whichever category, and as far as I know, it's only visible when you're actually submitting a movie.

As for CosmicMonkey's reservations, I feel that the idea could be implemented without clutter, it doesn't need to be something that's immediately visible, just as going to see all of someone's T10 movies isn't immediately visible unless you click a few times. I also would argue that the pre-emptive judgement and snootiness that you're fearing would arise, you don't actually need any badges to see that. There are already stats on the site that a holier-than-thou person could use to deem you unworthy: I can see how many movies you've rated, how many reviews you've written, how many stars you've gotten, and how many posts you've made already, so if someone really wants to look down on you for something you haven't done up to par, they already have the tools to do so at their disposal.

MacSwell
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Re: A reward system

Post by MacSwell »

When you're looking through your starred reviews, it will say "Most Popular Mini-Review!" if you happen to have the most-starred review for a film. I think it would be a nice touch if it said on your main profile page how many of these "Most Popular Mini-Reviews" you have. This would potentially incentivise users to seek out lesser-viewed movies in order to try and secure more of these points (I mean, I probably would), which I think, in a den of cinephiles such as this, is something to be encouraged.

CosmicMonkey
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Re: A reward system

Post by CosmicMonkey »

Maaxwell wrote:When you're looking through your starred reviews, it will say "Most Popular Mini-Review!" if you happen to have the most-starred review for a film. I think it would be a nice touch if it said on your main profile page how many of these "Most Popular Mini-Reviews" you have. This would potentially incentivise users to seek out lesser-viewed movies in order to try and secure more of these points (I mean, I probably would), which I think, in a den of cinephiles such as this, is something to be encouraged.


Hey, I like this! It's simple and fairly common sense; it encourages more usage of the site, but doesn't fundamentally alter any aspect of the experience.

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