Young Writers Society

Putting up a poll to gather thoughts on whether leaderboards should be based on points or reviews. Personally, I actually favor the former, though there are pros & cons for each.

Anyhow, vote in the poll and if you want, feel free to offer your thoughts below.

Edit: All-time leaderboards will remain based on reviews no matter what. How YWS counts points has changed over time, and it wouldn't be possible to rank the all-time board based on points.

As much as I love watching the number of reviews tick closer to high numbers, quality over quantity wins for me.

Unless it was possible to have it based on one but you have the other in brackets beside. Like, it could read: "500 points (4 reviews)" or "500 points (5 reviews)"

It depends: How would the number of points be determined? Because I have a ridiculous amount of points right now, but I would have even more if I never gave gifts or never donated points for any reason. Is there a way to even calculate the cumulative amount of points earned, even if they've been spent?

I think points could work on the shorter-time-scale leaderboards, but I think the all-time board would make more sense keeping it as total reviews.

ETA: I like the idea of having the leaderboard by points but have the number of reviews also visible somehow

Great point @niteowl. The all-time leaderboards would have to necessarily stay based on number of reviews. I'll update my first post to add that.

@Rosendorn ->> I like that. Adding the review count in parentheses could be confusing, but could make it such that when you hover over a point count, you'd see the number of reviews then.

It might also be nice if less reviews was ranked higher, indicating the person got them by going in the Green Room. Don't know if that's possible, but if it is that could help encourage Green Room reviews.

I think it doesn't really matter because don't the points rely on the reviews? But then again, oh I don't know this is complicated, comfusing stuff! Too much confusion!!!

@1626632 The points do rely on reviews, but you can get more points by writing longer reviews. Nate's basically asking if we reward the person who earns more points, or writes more reviews total.

For example: say there are two people, A and B. Person A writes two very long reviews that get the maximum amount of Green Room points (125, for a total of 250 points), while Person B writes four short reviews (let's say 60 each, for a total of 240 points).

Right now, Person B would be higher on the leaderboards because they wrote more reviews. However, if the leaderboards were based on points, then Person A would be higher because they wrote longer ones.

Okay, still too confusing,but okay.

I'm going back and forth but I think I'm ultimately leaning towards points for the reasons that have already been stated (rewarding quality over quantity). I also think it would be cool to be able to see the review count with the hovering feature. Then you kind of get the best of both worlds.

If it went by points, would the totals be affected by things other than reviewing? (Like points gained by welcoming or points spent.)

I've always been Team Quality 100%, so if I had to pick I'd probably go with points, particularly with the Green Room aspect in mind.

My only concern would be the way in which the leaderboards were calculated i.e. someone might write heaps and heaps of lengthy reviews, but also shower their YWS buddies in gifts, and thus they'd not be acknowledged so much in the leaderboards despite being a swell reviewer.

Kinda what everyone else has said, really. Oops.

Only points earned by reviewing would count, and it wouldn't matter if you donated those points away or sent gifts to others. Whenever you post a review, the amount of points that review earned is saved in the database. So all that would be done is to count up the points those reviews earned.

Points sound good. I like Rosey's idea with the points and then reviews in brackets or something.

I agree with Rosey's idea here! Quality over quantity wins my vote (Aka points!)

Create an algorithm that uses both.

I'm going to be argumentative and say that I like reviews better.

The more someone reviews, the better they get at it, just like the more you write the better you get at it. So, while quality is better than quantity, quantity usually leads to quality, which is awesome and I would rather encourage that.

By counting reviews, you will also have more newbies get the spotlight, since their eagerness and enthusiasm for reviewing is usually greater, which will (hopefully) increase their enthusiasm for the site overall (and hopefully increase their love of writing! Their reviews are just a bit shorter, usually.

The nice thing about points would be that it's very likely that the older members would be able to get their share of fame too, which is nice. Plus, you would look at the people with high quality reviews with tons of respect and perhaps look at them as rolemodels or something to attain for themselves. And, not all newbies have short reviews!

But... I sort of like the preferential treatment toward newbies. So, I'll side with reviews.

I don't mind either though!