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Enhancing your email reputation
I’ve had an email from a member who is concerned that her email reputation does not reflect the number of emails she sends.
To understand how confusing the email reputation can be let’s start with the website help where the algorithm is defined.
http://forum.tgr.net.au/cms/forum/FXXXXXXXX/4839-839The email reputation was established with one clear purpose – to encourage people to reply to messages from other members .
This is because a common complaint I have heard in the past is that our members don’t respond to others – specifically new members.So the algorithm tracks if you reply to a new email – an email that has to be sent by clicking on the “Email me” button on the members profile.
The help is clear about this, the only emails that are counted are the ones with a link that says:Quote:To reply to ****** go to the following link
profile.php?mode=premail&u=******&f=trueNote that replying through the TgR web site by clicking on the above link will enhance you profile reputation.
Not replying, or replying directly to ****’s email address will result in you loosing reputation.The obvious reason for this restriction is to avoid counting replies to replies – in other words ongoing conversations.
It would clearly be unproductive to award a high reputation to those engaged in frequent email chit chat.As the help also states:
Quote:Each email chain only accumulates reputation points once.When I take time to look at the system logs generated by members I find the algorithm works as expected. What is less expected however is that very few emails are actually sent by clicking on the members profile. Most of the ongoing email traffic appears to be replies to previous emails. And so in the absence of any incoming “new” emails to reply to – members may find that their email reputation is very low.
Is this a problem?
On one hand – it isn’t – as the algorithm is correctly only rewarding the behavior it was designed to encourage.
On the other hand some of those “replies to replies” are probably new email threads albeit ones that are started as if they are just a continuation of a previous conversation. So perhaps the system should acknowledge and reward more replies.
By making the currently simple algorithm significantly more complex and computationally time consuming it might be possible to pair off outgoing emails with incoming emails that started new conversations. But I can’t think of any way of identifying new conversations that were NOT replied to. Rewarding on the basis of the number of replies, rather than the percentage replied to would produce a distorted result that favoured those who receive lots of emails.
So for the moment I don’t propose to do anything.
Just remember that if the email doesn’t say it will enhance your reputation, then replying to it won’t!
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6 Replies
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So effectively emailing new members and others is a worthless exercise in the eyes of the reputation set up . I find that so surprising? I would have thought that was the point, if it relys solely on the action of others it is in effect a passive value and seems to have a vastly overpowering effect on the reputation. The simple fact is it only encourages replies and if messages are not forthcoming from others there is little value placed on you being friendly with others. That is unfortunate.
And for those who have not guessed it may have been me that had the grip. Obviously when you watch your reputation diminish from outstanding to good in a month entirely based one email it is terribly disheartening and , even though the effort is made to be friendly you gain nothing from it at least in the eyes of reputation.
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Quote:The simple fact is it only encourages replies and if messages are not forthcoming from others there is little value placed on you being friendly with others. That is unfortunate.Kristyana, you are entitled to whatever opinion you want about the reputation system – but it isn’t there to allow people to score easy points by emailing all and sundry.
Just take a moment to think about what you are asking for. If sending emails to others is rewarded then everyone will just shoot off a hundred emails and there will be complaints about the spam within weeks!
Communication (what we want to reward) is a lot more than just transmitting. That’s why you can’t get reputation by reciting Shakespeare into an empty chat room!
My monitoring of the site shows there has never been shortage of people sending emails to others. The problem is that they rarely got honored with a reply.
Now, since you are indulging, in your own words, in a gripe – let me add some objectivity to the discussion.
Can I share that the system has logged you sending new emails through the web site to just 17 distinct members in the last 6 months. It would be interesting to know how many replies you received – looking at the logs I think just 4?? Which is the point I’m trying to make!
So maybe you are just looking for an easy way to get a reputation. And I’m the webmistress just making it harder for you. That’s the way it will probably stay!
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I tend to agree with you Amanda, I sometimes send emails to new members from WA saying hello and welcoming them but almost never get a reply. If the system encourages replies then I am all for it. Make it a reward for involvement.
Hugs
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17 emails and four replies! Tells a story and supports my point! Not exactly spamming and was it worth the effort? The comment I am making is mearly that the effort to communicate by one particular person with another has absolutely zero value. If even it had a small value it would be worth it for the new members who would feel even more welcomed by additional messages. Its not so much a criticism as an observation.
When it comes to it I am not interested in easy points as you know ,I have in the past year become a lot more involved in creating and cultivation of discussion. That’s taken quite a bit of time and I think it’s value is geater, at least for me, than the time it’s taken. Don’t take this the wrong way its not an insult but easy points , thats a cheap shot at me it seems. I am not a lazy thinker nor am I waiting for someone to do things for me, I am far to busy trying to make a difference to care about me and my reputation here but I think you know that Amanda.
As I said I do think to encourage the welcoming of new member and communication with them would be a good thing , obvious spamming could maybe get a negative result . Anyway I am not aware of this systems capabilities maybe it’s not possible to adjust, or maybe it is to hard and to costly , I don’t know it’s only something that I believe could add to this great site.
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This is quite an interesting discussion and I can see both sides but from my point of view I have no interest in any systems that automatically label you based on metrics that are not always a true reflection of someone’s worth. I find quite often the most intriguing people are the ones who listen a lot and contribute to discussion when they feel they have something worthwhile to add.
I personally found that when I first joined here I received a number of emails from longer standing members which I replied to and then got nothing back. My replies were quite detailed and had content that encouraged further discussion but nothing came. Only one member was nice enough to continue on with a subsequent email.Because I’m not a big contributor to this forum, my reputation is now probably “bare feet”, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest for reasons I have already described. I run a fairly successful non tg forum myself and the most positive thing I did was remove all reputation based metrics systems and replaced them with a “thanks” mod which allows people to show their appreciation of a good post. By this a persons worth is reflected on the quality of their posts and not the quantity which for me is a much more accurate reflection of someone’s forum value as it is based on real appreciation by individual members and not blind statistics.
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Quote:Because I’m not a big contributor to this forum, my reputation is now probably “bare feet”…………The most positive thing I did was remove all reputation based metrics systems and replaced them with a “thanks” mod which allows people to show their appreciation of a good post.
I know the help system is not a frequently visited area of the site…but the component of reputation related to posting has for some time reflected the judged quality of posts and not the number. Some of the people with the highest reputations have made the fewest number of posts. Quality not quantity.
But you also bring up an interesting point – that the reluctance to reply may not be just an issue for the person receiving the email – it may be that the person sending the email has no intention of striking up a long running conversation.
I know some people email members (particularly new ones) to highlight local related events and activities. Whilst this is OK – the outgoing emails are very much publicity and there perhaps isn’t an intent to start a conversation – something that I probably can’t or shouldn’t do anything about.
