Every registered user and every blog has points associated with it. These points are added together set up the different ranks of users and blogs on this site.
Why have a point system at all?
What motivated me to set this up was that I wanted to set up a medium in which people could write articles and that the popularity of that article would be based, at least in party, on merit. All too often, what gets read on the Internet is purely a matter of luck - some very popular website links to some article and then everyone reads it.
No points system is going to be able to overcome lots of sites linking to a given article. But a points system can make a big difference when all other things are equal.
And points basically come from a number of sources - number of people who read your article. Number of people who respond to it. And people giving it "insightful" or "interesting" ratings. And while such things are subject to abuse (and no doubt will be abused), something is better than nothing. And our system is designed so that opinions of users who are trusted (i.e. not prone to abuse the system) will count for a lot more points when they rate something.
The more points something gets, the more places throughout the Stardock.net syndication system the article will be seen. That means sites ranging from JoeUser.com to WinCustomize.com and even places like TotalGaming.net and PoliticalMachine.com (depending on the topic and # of points).
You receive points in 3 forms: Points from your personal site (i.e. your blog), Points from your articles, and points from your activities (writing comments, writing articles, etc.).
N = User's Access Level (1 for Citizen, 9 for Admin).
Point System: Details
| Activity |
Points you receive |
Points your article receives |
| You write an article |
5 |
N/A |
| You make a comment on your article |
1 |
N/A |
| You make a comment on someone else's article |
5 |
N/A |
| Someone gives your comment an insightful rating |
2(N-1)^2 |
N/A |
| Someone gives your comment a "trolling" rating |
-(N-1)^2 |
N/A |
| Someone reads your article |
N/A |
1 |
| Anonymous user comments on your article |
N/A |
1 |
| Registered user comments on your article |
N/A |
5 |
| Someone reads your article as part of a home page view |
N/A |
1/10th of a point |
| Someone gives your article an "Interesting" rating |
N/A |
(N-1)^2 |
| Someone gives your article an "Insightful" rating |
N/A |
2(N-1)^2 |
When we measure top "blog sites" such as on JoeUser.com, we do this by adding up the total points your articles have received in the past 30 days.
When we measure top "users" such as on JoeUser.com we do this by adding up the total points the user has received in the past 30 days.
(some of this is still under construction).