by Seth Levy
Since Trailspace's founding, members' participation in the community has been measured and recognized simply in terms of quantity: the number of reviews you've each written. But all gear reviews are not created equal, and we believe that members who write high-quality reviews deserve credit for their efforts.
So today we're excited to introduce reviewer reputation — "reviewer rep" for short — a rough measurement of your contributions to the Trailspace community, based on both the quantity and quality of the reviews you have posted.
The primary way to gain reviewer reputation is by writing useful, detailed reviews of gear you have used. When your peers vote on your reviews, those votes will affect your reputation.
We still count quantity: for every review you write, your reputation will increase by at least 2 points, and a detailed review with pros, cons, and pictures could earn up to 8 points.
But the real driver of reviewer reputation is quality, as judged by the entire Trailspace community: each time another member votes up one of your reviews, you'll earn 10 reviewer reputation points. Reviewer reputation reflects the collective judgment of the community, and empowers each of us to play an important role in recognizing our top reviewers.
Everywhere we previously displayed the number of gear reviews you've written — on your profile, in forum threads, review bylines, etc. — you will now see your reviewer reputation score instead.
In addition to the Reviewer Reputation score itself, we're introducing several other features to give more recognition to our best reviewers:
- The People page has been redesigned to recognize the top reviewers of the past week, month, year, and all time. You can easily find not only the members who have been active over the longer term, but also who is contributing significantly right now.
- For our top contributors of the past year, we're introducing new “Top 10 Reviewer” and "Top 25 Reviewer" badges that will be displayed on those members' profiles and avatars.
The overarching goals of all this is to recognize members who have made high-quality contributions, as judged by the collective wisdom of the community, and encourage all members to write reviews that are of high quality.
For more information, please read the reviewer reputation FAQ, and then build your reputation by reviewing your gear, or improve the system by voting for the reviews you find most helpful.
