Reputation Icon

I've noticed a change since the forum software upgrade: The rate of repping seems to be WAY down, especially (or maybe even exclusively) from new members. If others have noticed this, too, it would be interesting. After all, the process is exactly the same, only the icon has changed. Of course, it could just be me, but determining this should be fairly quick, as you could look at reps/month (not points per month) for the months before and after the change.

Frankly, I almost didn't bring this up, since I felt it was fairly obvious. The old icon was a colorful little scale. The new icon is what? A black hole? A squashed bug? A black starburst? A....well, I won't say, but it rhymes with heinous. However, this is the way certain graphics seem to be going. Compare VS2012 to VS2010. The icons have regressed back to Windows 3.1 styles. I have very little graphical sense, but even I know this is being artsy for artsyness sake. You want you icons to have some kind of meaning. Leaving out color and substance may be modern, but it still sucks. However, it would be really interesting if somebody was able to do a study against the database in general to show whether or not the average reps per month has dropped off since the upgrade, as it would show that the icon is demonstrably horrible.

Wait for the next version of the VS IDE: full screen with no chrome; solid dark color; white text in a large font; menus, toolbars, and docked panes replaced by "charm bracelets" and fly-in chromeless pastel panels activated via gestures. :p

BTW: Isn't that icon a sort of 6-pointed star now?

Bug splatter still seems more accurate. It is a six pointed thing, and could be considered a dark star.

Frankly, I think this is an excellent opportunity to study a phenomenon that should be of interest to a forum like this. A person with access to the database seems likely to be able to perform a couple queries to determine whether the number of reps per post took a sudden drop after the forum upgrade. Alternatively, it would be possible to look at reps per month, but then you would also have to look at posts per month, because the real goal is reps per post. If that metric took a steep and sudden decline, there are only a few viable candidate hypotheses as to why, and the only one that I can think of that isn't silly is that the icon sucks. An empirical demonstration of the importance of icon design is entirely in keeping with the purpose of a programming forum. It may be the first time where the existence of the use of the forum advanced knowledge in a way that is not driven by the quality of the answers. The existence of the forum would show something of importance to programmers quite apart from the content.

I'm not sure "rep" counts mean much anyway. Perhaps they should be scaled by the duration of membership?

I'm not really concerned as to whether they count, and I'm certainly not interested in their meaning or quantity. The point is that the icon changed, and we have an empirical means to evaluate whether or not the change of the icon impacted the usage of the icon. In other words, we have a large enough sample size by this time that it should be possible to empirically measure the impact of a UI feature, and that measure should be of interest to anybody who works with designing UI elements.

Normally, when we change a UI, we get some rather mediocre feedback about the change. The reason it is mediocre is that you tend to only hear from the people who feel very strongly about it, and figuring out whether or not people actually prefer it, or find it easier to use (even if they self-report that they don't prefer it), is nearly impossible. Here we have an opportunity for somebody to check whether or not a UI change impacted usability without talking to the users. The reason it would work is because the number of users is so large that you have an effective sample size. The number of new users is also very large, so you could compare new users in the 6 months prior to the forum upgrade to new users since the upgrade and see which group was more likely to rep. The actual rates don't make any difference, just the comparison between the rates before and after. I feel that it has declined significantly. If the data supported that impression, then what possible reason could there be other than the change in the icon? New users wouldn't be able to compare before and after, since they didn't see the before state. Therefore, they are reacting only to the conditions that existed when they were there.

That's worth the study.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

The new icon is what? A black hole? A squashed bug? A black starburst? A....well, I won't say, but it rhymes with heinous.

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Veinous????

It seems to me like you have forgotten to adjust for colour inversion; in the night sky the background is black and the stars are white to our eyes, although on paper having a white background the stars are black as the colour schemes are inverted. Essentially a white star on a black background is the same thing as a black star on a white background after allowing for colour inversion. By contrast a black hole is black on a black background and white on a white background after allowing for colour inversion.

I think Shaggy is on to something. I've noticed it as well. Before the forum upgrade, I never used to see a streak of more than three green gems before it was interrupted by a gray one. Hell I've even had streaks of gray gems. 99.9999 % of the time a gray rep is from a new user who has less than 20 posts. Since the upgrade, gray gems have become quite rare in my rep list. I have a streak of 11 greens!! Something that I never thought possible.

There is only one explanation for this observation that I can think of......A high percentage of new users are completely oblivious about the ability to rep posts so the majority of reps now come from members who are familiar with the site. I have no issues with how the icon looks or anything but on a passing glance new members might mistake the new rep icon for nothing more than aesthetics to make the page look good. The old one, if I remember correctly had a big ole "Rate this post" label on it. It was really noticeable, and it was clear what is was for. Since the upgrade, you have to hover over the icon to know what its for. I don't think hovering over pretty icons is high on the list of priorities for new members on any website.

You mean something like this:
Attachment 97289

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Originally Posted by Witis

You mean something like this:
Attachment 97289

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Yeah, that's good....it would be more apparent on a glance with that posts can be rated.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Wait for the next version of the VS IDE: full screen with no chrome; solid dark color; white text in a large font

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Well I think we should go back to MS-DOS style. Monochrome. Green on black only, none of that fancy paper-white. We could give rep using a BAT file:

Code:

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A:\ rep vbforums /h Shaggy~1 /y /p
A:\ Error: Shaggy~1 Not Found. Insert Floppy Disk and Reboot Computer.

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Ah, those were the days.

BB

lol what are the arguments /y and /p for ?

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Originally Posted by Niya

lol what are the arguments /y and /p for ?

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As far as I remember, /y is if you want to give positive rep, and /p is if you want to reboot Reality after giving rep. BB

Yeah. The old debate as to whether amber screens were better for your eyes than the green screens.

By the way, after glancing at my reps, the last time I have two gray gems back to back was in July, which was before the upgrade. Since then, there have been only a handful of gray gems total, with long runs of green gems.

Yea, new users used to rep like crazy on the old forum.

Oh my, I spoke too soon....I just got two back to back gray gems during the last 8 hours. A first since at least July 25th of last year. Maybe we should start talking about winning the lotto.

Noone ever rates me much anymore :(

Where do you lurk? Games and NES emulator forums? What's the visitation and thread rate in there?

Frankly, I think the rate of reps, in general, is down. While I think the steepest decline is among the new visitors, I feel that it is off among the frequent fliers, too.

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Originally Posted by Jacob Roman

Noone ever rates me much anymore :(

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Unrated movies are oft-times pretty good :o

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

A....well, I won't say, but it rhymes with heinous.

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Shaggy, if that's what your rhymes-with-heinous looks like, I think you should seek medical advice.

I wanted to give someone a rep boost a few weeks ago and had to search for the icon to do it. I'm fairly sure that if I hadn't remembered that the forum had that functionality, I wouldn't have thought to try because it's really not obvious now.

I've got two grey gems but that's probably just because I'm getting older.