Legit Suggestion

[James S]

You know what we need to add to the forums Chris? Ratings kind of like on eBay, for likeability, trustworthiness and accuracy of data. We'd want to make the user who is rated be able to reset his or her rating atleast once a week since people post so much and change moods around here faster than a horse on vioxx.

[Cameron]

[ingallsj]

[James S]

[ingallsj]

[sponge]

Stop complaining John, your not getting any sympathy..

Moose, that is a good idea though, the SomethingAwful forums do that, except for threads. Ones that are rated 5 stars are put into the goldmine, where non-subscribers can also read. I don't think it'd get used that much though, especially if it's hard to access (ie less than one click here :P)

[James S]

Well you see there would be a little thumbs and a down icon at the bottom of everyone's posts, next to the "Email this user" image. You'd click it if you liked their posts and it would add or take away a point to the user's "karma" or "likeability" or "usefulness" average, whatever we want to call it. I think this would be a great idea and could potentially red tag some users that never post anything of any use, so that people know how much they can believe their posts...

Maybe it could be a different rating for each BOARD as well, because one user, say Mr. Courtney, is a contributing member of the Developer section and Phantom's forum, but will talk shit on Anything Discussion till Paul comes home. I think this would be a FUN AND USEFUL addition to PM, and would add some flavor for old users. I know it would be an ACTUAL goal to reach, instead of just posting to up your "popularity" like a certain Ingalls tried to do recently.

I don't know about seperate boards for gold club members, I doubt many would have access to that . And limiting posting rights would just make PM not fun anymore (although it probably would make people think and use there posts wisely.. or to cuss out the person(s) that gave him or her a bad rating ). I think it should simply be a Reliability meter under the user's avatar and that's that. Little icons at the bottom of every thread, up or down, and there you go.
maybe something like "[TU] Rate This User [TD]"
TU being the Thumbs up image, and TD being the Thumbs Down image.

Edit: Oh, and you can rate the user as many times as you'd like, but only once PER POST. Kind of like how Polls you're only allowed one vote, well the ratings would be functional per post, not per thread or per user in general.

[Michael Y]

The only bad thing about that is the person could boost up their meter themselves if they wanted to make themselves look good.

[James S]

[Michael Y]

[James S]

[James S]

[Michael Y]

[James S]

[Michael Y]