Decoding Reputation Scores: Driving Engagement in Online Communities
Reputation scores are the scores that your community members receive when they perform different activities inside the community -- ranging from asking questions and answering to commenting and getting upvotes.
All these community activities should be rewarded by assigning points.The example above is a more simple case, but in most cases, you'll want to assign titles with names that fit your brand personality and customize them to meet the needs of your community.
Virtual currency, as shown below, is the currency defined in your community that members earn based on their contribution and preferably redeem the same to purchase products or services. This can come in handy when running competitions inside the community.
A member’s reputation is a quantified representation of their trustworthiness within an online community. Reputation is determined by a reputation system, consisting of one or more algorithms combined with ratings given to and by members of the community.
Ratings are often tied to various forms of engagement with members’ posts, such as likes or upvotes/downvotes. In such cases, a member’s reputation is determined by the aggregate engagements of all their posts and replies within a community. Some communities formalize reputations in the form of badges or leaderboards, while others opt for a simple five-point score.
Because of the actual, potential, and perceived value of reputations in certain communities, members may be incentivized to attempt to game the system in order to improve their own reputation. Methods here include self-promotion, where members create multiple additional profiles for the sole purpose of engaging with their own content, or slandering, where members target other members with negative feedback in order to lower the target’s reputation relative to their own. For this reason, community managers need to be especially vigilant when introducing a reputation system into their community.
