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Fabby
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Be nice: How to optimise interaction between Trolls and Unicorns

Now we have a single type of reputation on the system that is only based on knowledge.

I've been thinking of a system where we add an additional kind of rep that is based on a user's "niceness" and start by classifying ourselves according to the following:

  • I'm a unicorn
  • I'm a good person
  • I'm a neutral person
  • I'm a bad person
  • I'm a troll  >:-)

where neutral is 0, and negative scores denote more troll-like and positive scores denote more unicorn-like behaviour.

Once we have that in place, users can start up/downvoting both according to:

  • the question / answer

separate from:

  • the user's behaviour

Any behaviour on the site will have an influence on your "niceness" score completely separate from your "knowledge" score (today a.k.a "Reputation") and would allow all of the existing to have an influence on your niceness score as well:

  • spam flags
  • rude/offensive flags
  • Chat bans
  • User bans
  • ...

We could use a scoring system that is similar to downvoting a question or an answer: downvoting a user's niceness score will give a penalty of -2 to the downvoted user but will affect the downvoter with -1 (as the fact of downvoting isn't "nice" neither).
Upvoting a niceness score will remain similar to upvoting a question: no score change for the upvoting user, only for the upvoted one.

Calling a spade, a spade has some other benefits as well:

  • Users can choose which kind of users they want to interact with on the site according to the smell they have:
    ☑ I want to interact with users who smell like rainbows  :-D
    ☑ I want to interact with users who smell like roses  :-)
    ☑ I want to interact with users who have no smell  :-|
    ☑ I don't mind interacting with users who smell a bit unwashed  :-(
    ☑ I don't mind interacting with users who smell like dung  ;-(
  • once a year, we can vote for that year's Troll king and Unicorn queen according to their behaviour instead of the stupid hats! ;-)

Users that do not completely overlap with your individual sense of "smell" will show up in light grey if there is only a little difference and be completely invisible to you including their/your questions/answers/comments!

###Basically, let the trolls handle the trolls, the unicorns handle the unicorns and the neutrals handle everyone if they choose so! :-)

Of course, a user limiting itself to only nice people will put the obnoxious and difficult geniuses out of their reach, (geniuses generally are as they're arrogant as they only see a world full of shit) but then that's their own personal and subjective choice!

##Thoughts? Remarks? Improvements?

Fabby
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