Member Points System
Overview
The purpose of the Member Points System (MPS) is to help determine a member's "reputation". Since each community will most likely want to "reward" members for different behavior, we've done our best to make it simple and flexible in its first iteration. In this article we'll walk thru how to get the MPS up and running. A discussion of how to extend the MPS is beyond the scope of this article...for now :)
Install
In order to use the MPS, you'll need to purchase a commercial edition of Community Server (either Standard, Professional, or Enterprise). Follow these steps if you haven't yet installed your license:
- Navigate to Control Panel > Administration > System Tools > Manage Licenses
- Click the "Browse..." button and find the license file (.xml) on your computer
- Click Install
Configure
Once the MPS has been made available, you'll want to configure it to fit the needs of your community.
- Navigate to Control Panel > Administration > System Tools > Manage Member Points System
- On the "General" tab, enable the MPS and set the desired visibility for post and user points (recommendations below)
- On the "Factor Values" tab, set the desired values for each of the point-collecting activities (described below)
- Ignore the "Calculate" tab for now
- Click the "Save" button
Recommended Settings
Enable Member Points System - Yes
Post Points Visibility - Show only to Administrators and Moderators
User Points Visibility - Show to Everyone
Point Calculation
Both posts and members receive points for various activities. The formula for calculating points for a post is simply to multiply each factor value by the number of times an activity occurs. For the purpose of the MPS, a post is defined as either a forum post, a blog entry, an uploaded file, a gallery image, or any reply/comment to one of these. So, for example, if a post (file) is downloaded 25 times and the Download Factor is 10, then the post would receive 250 (25 * 10) points for download activity. If that same post has 5 comments and the Reply Factor is 20, an additional 100 (5 * 20) points would be added to the post, for a total of 350 (250 + 100) points. The author of the post would also receive 350 points. So, when determining the number of points for a particular member, s/he is credited with the total for each post authored in addition to any points received for rating content and being marked as a favorite.
Factor Values
With nine different factors available, your community should be able to tailor the MPS in order to encourage the type of participation you desire.
- Post Factor - the number of points awarded to each post
- Reply Factor - the number of points awarded to a post for each direct reply
- Replier Factor - the number of points awarded to a post for each direct reply by a different user
- Rating Factor - the number of points awarded to a post for each rating star received
- Download Factor - the number of points awarded to a post each time it is downloaded
- Downloader Factor - the number of points awarded to a post each time it is downloaded by a different user
- Favorite Post Factor - the number of points awarded to a post each time it is added as a favorite post
- Favorite User Factor - the number of points awarded to a member each time s/he is added as a favorite user
- Rater Factor - the number of points awarded to a member for each star s/he gives to a post
While we've provided some defaults, you may notice that some of them are set to 0. This just means that those kinds of activities wouldn't be awarded points. You may also notice that there are a couple of factors that look similar. For example, the Reply Factor vs. the Replier Factor. In this case, the primary difference is whether your community wants to award points for every time a reply is made, or only every time new person joins the conversation. Similarly, the Rating Factor is awarded to the content creator, while the Rater Factor is awarded to the one who actually does the rating.
Initial Calculation
There are two ways to get a new or existing community up to date with points. The method you choose is based on the number of posts in your site.
For sites with less than 25,000 posts:
- Navigate to Control Panel > Administration > System Tools > Manage Member Points System
- On the "Calculate" tab, click the "Calculate" button
For sites with more than 25,000 posts, you'll want to run the initial calculation "offline" so as not to timeout. (You'll need access to the database to accomplish this step)
- Open Query Analyzer
- Select your Community Server database
- Calculate points for all posts (all factor values should correspond to the settings configured above; set @FilterType = 1, @FilterValue = 0 and @ForumRatingType = 0 for Thread-Level Rating or = 1 for Post-Level Rating)
EXECUTE cs_Points_CalculateForPost_Set @SettingsID, @FilterType, @FilterValue, @PostFactor ,@ReplyFactor, @ReplierFactor, @RatingFactor, @DownloadFactor, @DownloaderFactor, @FavoritePostFactor, @ForumRatingType
EXECUTE cs_Points_CalculateForUser_Set @SettingsID, @FilterType, @FilterValue, @FavoriteUserFactor, @RaterFactor, @ForumRatingType
Ongoing Calculation
Once enabled, the MPS will trigger point calculation whenever a point-collecting activity occurs (posting, replying, rating, downloading, marking as favorite, ...) If you notice that points are not continuing to increase after this kind of activity, be sure that you haven't removed the PointsModule from the communityserver.config file. Check for the following:
<add name = "PointsModule" type = "CommunityServer.Points.PointsModule, CommunityServer.Points" />
Gotchas
Most often, when point calculation looks different than expected, it is due to a misunderstanding of which posts/activities participate in the MPS. Posts that are awaiting moderation, private messages, and posts in forums marked as disabling points are not included in point calculation. Furthermore, any activities that act on an individual's own posts are not credited with points. For example, a post will not receive points for a reply if the author replies to himself, or rates his own post, downloads his own file, or even marks his post as a favorite.
Future
As this is the first iteration of the MPS, we've heard lots of feedback about where to go next. Without making any promises, here's a short list of some of the items we've been thinking about.
- Transactions (credits, debits, transfers)
- Multiple point buckets (lifetime, sliding, contest)
- Settings varied by application
- Pluggable calculators
Summary
The MPS can be configured and running with just a few steps. The number of settings available allows for each community to handle reputation as they see fit. We look forward to hearing how the MPS has encouraged participation on your site.