Polishing the platform and making Karma rule
admin on 04:13 PM
10
Platform News
Every 14 days we’re deploying some nice new stuff to the platform – sometimes we improve existing features, sometimes we just have some changes in the backend nobody but the developers and the community management notice and sometimes, yes sometimes, some of the big stuff is happening.
These beautiful days of June bring a flavoured mix of pimped up features, backend changes and brand new stuff – for once we’ve got it all.
I’ll spare you the backend stuff and get you right to the jewels:
Rating Graph in your Profile
No worries – only YOU can see your Rating Graph. It gives you an idea about your own rating behaviour and should of course encourage you to rate even more ideas in a fair and objective way.
You can see whether you rate differentiated and use the whole rating scale (which is good), or whether you tend to always give the same number of stars (which isn’t good because it’s not differentiated).
Rating Linked to Karma
Yes yes yes, after all the recent discussions about rating fairness we’ve picked up some of the really good and helpful feedback to revise our rating system. We do love Karma because it’s a really helpful tool to measure a community member’s activity on the platform and the quality of that engagement. Hence, linking the rating to Karma is a fair and transparent solution for the problem of so called “supporters” – people who only sign up to support a certain community member by rating his/her ideas with 10 stars and, at the worst, “bash” other community members’ ideas.
By having to collect 50 Karma points before one’s rating is valid, we make sure that new community members are really there because they are interested in the contest and the community and not because they just want a friend to win.
I really like this solution because it still gives all interested people the opportunity to sign up and participate whilst at the same time stopping those who only want to exploit the system. Aah, just beautiful! I like!
Revised Rating Box
In the run of improving the rating system we also pimped up the rating box a bit. The community rating is now placed more prominently right in the middle – it now receives the focus it deserves 
We also added a little “Thank you!” that appears whenever you’ve cast a vote. This way you also get a direct sign that your rating has been processed. Moreover the info button to learn more about rating is placed more prominently.
And last but not least the rating box shows all new community members that didn’t achieve the “Karma rating treshhold” of 150 karma points yet that their rating does not yet count. By clicking on “Karma points” one can learn more about what that means and how one can collect Karma.
Survey
Our friend Hendrik is conducting a survey about what drives the community on the platform. You can participate and give us an idea about why you’re working on jovoto so as to let us know which features we should further improve and what kind of things you definitely would want to have on the platform. All your data is absolutely safe and nobody will know who gave which answers – we promise! That’s actually why I included the survey here – the developers camouflaged all information and made it impossible for either one of us to detect which set of answers belongs to which community members. Masters of disguise…
Puuh, that’s that. Quite a bit, and some of it is really new and brings a lot of change with it. As always we appreciate your feedback and comments – we’re working with it!
Jesko
Cool !
The only thing that i would suggest on top for the next open contest:
Give them a quick intorduction into rating, immediately when they´ ve verified their account online. Something like…
• Welcome to the community rating !
• It´s not “points” you give, when you rate, it will be an averige calculation!
• Please be fair and conscious about your rating. Bashing competitors will be filtered and alarmed by the monitoring anyways.
____
Great too see that you simply do not stop improving the platform ! = )
Yours, J.
nfreischlad
high five! This is cool… can’t wait to play ‘show me your rating graph’ with the rest of the team
Jesko
Just for inspiration:
I just realised that it might be helfpful if “not rated yet” will show me ideas that i (!) have not been rating yet. Maybe that makes more sense and makes it a bit easier to rate all ideas in a contest.
Jesko
Sorry, i tried it twice. – But now it is working exaclty like i thought above. = )
clari
Super das ich jetzt mein eignes Bewertungsverhalten auch sehen kann. Ich verstehe aber nicht ganz wozu. Ich selber weiß doch wie ich die Arbeiten bewerte, was bringt mir das dann?
@ Jesko…du kanst doch in der Ansicht der Ideen “noch nicht bewertete Ideen” einstellen. Mir hilft das immer sehr.
Hut ab vor eurer Arbeit! Eure Verbesserungsarbeiten an und für Jovoto finde ich bemerkenswert!
Janne
Great updates! Why not making the rating graph visible for everyone? At least in a less detailed version – this would help encouriging people to really vote differentiated. But you are on the right track. Congrats!
Frieda
Hi y’all,
thanks so much for your comments – it’s good to hear that you like our imrovements!
@Jesko: Listen to Clari, that girl’s smart! “not rated yet” show you all ideas YOU haven’t rated yet.
@Clari: not all people are so aware of how they rate – sometimes you might not even realize that you’re actually using only stars 3, 4 and 5. The rating graph is there to raise awareness for one’s own rating bahaviour.
@all: It’s definitely an option for the future to give people the opportunity to voluntarily make their rating graph public.
Cracking my brain about other nice new features… There’s more to come!
shaun abrahamson
really like the idea of doing a short video tour as an intro to newly registered community members that introduces some of the core concepts on jovoto.
Jesko
@clari: & Frieda: Danke. Ich stand auf dem Schlauch. = )
Jesko
As karma seems to get more and more imprtant in our virtual and real life, here´s another good link to take aktion = )
It´s the Dalai Lama´s birthday today. You can leave him a personal note that will be published online and will be posted on a “wall of warm wishes” just outside the main Temple in Dharamsala, India and will be broadcast across the region. Organized by avaaz.org:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/dalai_lamas_birthday/?fp