Ever spend days and nights putting together a roleplay setting, pouring all your time and effort into the setup and details? Sure you have. Then what happens? That's right. You get a dozen or more people crying interested, so you work with them on their character sheets and help them find a place to jump into the flow of the story. Then what happens? They do one or two posts and disappear, leaving you and the few active people you manage to find waiting. And you wait. And you wait some more. Before long, even your good people get tired of waiting and all that hard work you put into the RP goes straight down the can. Wouldn't it be nice if there were something we could do about that? There is.

I propose a rating system for forum members based on their participation reliability. Some sort of percentage or maybe a scale between 10 and -10. It would be great if there were something we could do about these no-show CS slingers, like keep downrating them until no one will accept them in role plays because they're known for skipping out. This would also help us decent, active roleplayers to recognize one another and organize some real stories around here. Am I alone in thinking this?

Solution: Stalk 'em. Check if they have a history of dropping out of RPs. Or drop them if they don't post after 3+ days and continue the RP.

While I understand your sentiments, I personally wouldn't like to see a participation rating system. Some people have lives and it's very likely that the system would be abused.

I mean in the case of unexcused absences; just disappearing with no word or comment about when, if ever, they'll be back. It's understandable that unexpected things happen and people are busy sometimes, but why join the rp in the first place if you won't have time to put in the effort it requires? Like all rating systems, there's the possibility of abuse, yet for the majority of cases it works fine. It's like a youtube video; no matter how good it is, theres always some douche that gives it a dislike just to disagree with everyone. One bad rating isn't going to phase a dozen good ones.

I still say yay for the User Reliability rating system.

Eh... I don't know, reputation kind of speaks for itself around here. We are a community in which lots of folks know lots of other folks; I am familiar with a lot of names in the sections I frequent and therefore the types of people I am associated with/don't particularly trust or want to work with. The only wildcards to me in this are brand new members without any reputation yet.

You did read the discussion right? Aside from simply realizing the rp is not what they thought it'd be (which may lead to negative votes from upset GMs), rpers may not get along with others in the rp (which may lead to negative votes from upset rpers), may lose Internet due to an outage or being grounded (which may lead to negative votes despite having a valid reason), may feel forced to disclose what feels like completely personal problems such as depression to relative strangers in order to avoid negative votes, or may just lie altogether to avoid negative votes. And sometimes they just forget to go on the Guild because something big's going on offline like an upcoming exam or work, and no one in the rp has non-Guild contact information. In short, people flake for a lot of reasons beyond 'let's screw over your rp' and these reasons can lead to system abuse.

Also, I do note you bring up Youtube. The thing is, Youtube also has a larger population. People with Google+ OR Youtube accounts can vote on a video. A downvote doesn't mean much because there are millions of others who can provide an upvote. At the time of this writing, the Guild has less than 60,000 accounts registered - some of which are inactive, some of which only post in non-rp boards exclusively. As such, the actual number of potential voters is much smaller. If the ability to vote depends on rping with these people, then one negative vote can be devastating.

Finally, at this point, 'participation' still hasn't been defined. Are they no longer an active participant if they flake after ten posts after they post a CS? What about 20? What if they flake a year later? 4? Never - and let me say, as a long-time rper, it can easily take 4+ years to reach the end of a rp with a decent plot. Me, I was in a rp that lasted 3 months. We didn't reach anywhere near an endpoint, and those who vanished didn't leave an explanation why. Do I say that, because they only lasted 3 months, they're unreliable? It was a lot of work lost, after all. Or do those who chronically skip out after a month or so get skipped by this system?

Hrm....maybe it is just me then. Wouldn't be the first time.

A possible, simple solution for false downvotes would be a resign button. If something goes awry(real life, not liking the rp or the people in it, what have you) click said button to officially quit, thus giving the participating members notice of leave and simultaneously blocking any undue downvotes in the system. I'm talking about the people who mysteriously vanish without a trace, leaving everyone else hanging or big holes in the story where a character used to be. The ones I'm talking about know who they are *squinty eyes*

But yeah, that still wouldn't stop false votes before officially resigning. Perhaps I'm simply spoiled by the lighteryears-faster roleplay action of instant messengers.

Perhaps have that in interest checks; people press a button to officially express interest and press it again to say nope, didn't work out?

That would be good for me as I have a tendency to join interest checks... half of which either die or I just don't like anymore for one reason or another.

Best you can do, is push through, and keep a mental list of anyone whose dropped out on you before.

What about just the positive version? Like, instead of being able to downvote somebody for being unreliable, you could maybe upvote people who are? Instead of having it on a graded scale, it could just be the literal number of people that have gone, "Yep, this person is solid enough to endorse". It's much less outspoken, but does mark out those people who have a positive history of sticking around, without threatening to backfire unfairly on those who do drop out for whatever reason.

It also feels a lot friendlier and supportive, rather than judgemental. Just like we have Likes, Thanks and Laughs, and not "I think this user is a prick" and "Not as funny as the user thought it was".

Like, instead of being able to downvote somebody for being unreliable, you could maybe upvote people who are?

Which still just results in friends upvoting friends (as tends to be the case with many voting systems) and people who just tend to stick with one active RP at a time being "non-upvoted" despite consistently sticking with a RP for as long as it is at least somewhat alive. I, for instance, have a fair number of posts on NewGuild, but have only been in two RPs which got to the point of having an IC (one of which predates NewGuild by several years).
I'll also note that there are always people who become reputation-hoarders and people who just don't give a damn about voting or being voted. There is a reason why I heavily advocated making the likeboards invisible to others.

In conclusion: no support. If you want to know whether someone is reliable, take a look at the member's posting history.

@deadfast @Rilla @Arenasnow @Jig @shienvien @RBYDark @RainbowReindeer

Doesnt the
'X posts
in X days'
kind of show a ratio of how consistent the person is with their posts?

@Bartimaeus

A little, but vacations aren't really taken into account, nor long breaks, and possibly a limited amount of IC posts that are good vs folks who frequent the introductions forum or post a lot in OOC without as much IC wise. So, it is variable. You can get someone who has been around for a long time and has stuck with a small number of roleplays but has been loyally consistant to them as compared to someone with a fraction of the time and a ton more in the OOC/off of IC bit.

Kind of like going around and comparing @deadfast's posting with @Rilla and that one with mine. We just post differently, it doesn't say much I don't think.

@Bartimaeus

Not really to be honest. The posts could be accumulated in non-rp/long interest check threads which gives them a very high ratio, even if they aren't reliable - or a person could have a low ratio but only be involved in PM rps/one board rp and be incredibly reliable. It's one reason why 'check Recent Posts' has come up as a suggestion since it gives an accurate picture of when their lasts posts were and where.

For the record, not dissing on people who post in the non-rp boards. Just that if a person has a high ratio but all of their posts come from Spam, you can't really guess if they have a tendency to flake or not, which is what's at the heart of this discussion.

Ah I guess yourright, also saying i have a high number of posts seeing how many days ive been part of rpguild, but ive only been in like a few arena battles, 1 rp and spam section. So i guess its not really reliable, is it? Thank yew for the quick response by the way, both of you. :P

A system that permits you to vote someone down tends to be a bad thing in general. Its too easily abused.

One sort of system that might work well is one that is based around giving good RPer votes. Including the ability to pull back the vote later. Not sure whether such a system would be optimal to have with or without the ability to see who approved of him/her. Its more open with the ability to check "supporters", while a closed system might promote some few to create accounts simply to vote up themselves.

But even this is open for abuse. Some elitists may start having "Only players with 10+ votes permitted".

Thoughts?

Still no support. The number would still be pretty damn meaningless.

I understand that you think this is a good idea. It is! But often I skip out becase the GM hates me or wont progress the story. You could have reputations overall. So if a guy (Me) is a dick in rps then he gets down votes, but we do have this. Its called PM's. As said before, we are still a community. I have a reputation of doing powerplays and so GM's are told about me. Then maybe a older member will tell a new GM that I am trouble. Does that stop me rping? Well sometimes but overall there is always another GM who needs players that I can jump in with. Your system will only work until someone gangs on the bad guy who is active and gets him banned.