Suggestion: reward system for expert users helping newbies

[doubleDizz]

@ doubleDizz

 

Realize that no one is obliged to help and no one should be compelled to help. Just because your questions were not answered does not mean people do not care. I find your statement to be rather short-sighted here. People have lives, you know, and your statement that bben46's comment is utopian shows that you're frustrated, simple. Not all people's questions will be answered. And most oft than not, your questions were asked by other people already, and that you're either too busy, too lazy, or don't care to look for the answer. Just saying that a person is a new user is no excuse, we all started new. I bothered to search for the answers, did the research, did the troubleshooting myself, etc. when I first signed up on Nexus. Wasn't I a new user with no experience? Yes. Still didn't beg for an answer.

 

I'd say people should not be compelled to help or be obliged in any manner. Introducing a reward system would not really help in any case, because it's just a number with no real value behind it. Work for yourself, find information, troubleshoot on your own. Ask for help only if absolutely necessary, as a last ditch effort.

 

Realize? You must not have read my second comment.

 

Simply, I put an idea forward for an assistance incentive scheme based on my personal experiences, get told it's not a good idea, reply that something should still be considered, then get told that people are helpful and a scheme is not required, despite my own experience in not getting assistance.

 

Yes I'm a little frustrated, but more so by being told there is no problem/you haven't researched enough.

 

"Work for yourself, find information, troubleshoot on your own. Ask for help only if absolutely necessary, as a last ditch effort."

 

I have done all these things. I have also refrained from providing examples of the lengths I have gone to to fix my issue, because that is not the point of this thread.

 

You all see no issue, so lets not worry about it. Let the beginners flounder in their frustration and assume they haven't been meticulous in their troubleshooting. I'm sure some of them will make it.

[ZeroKing]

They need not flounder in their frustration. Have patience, work through the troubleshooting, see the guides that have been presented to you by other people, or on this site.

 

Not being harsh, just saying as it is, because a lot of people complained on the pages that I help that the mod author or the site members do not support the users or beginners. This is a recreational site, a hobbyist site for people to have fun. Please do not expect people to be instantaneously helpful, because a lot of the times it's only you who may have the problem and that the other users would rather not give inappropriate answers that only serve to waste time or ruin your game.

 

Likewise, busy lives only serve to keep people from being helpful here, I find. This is true for me, at least. I'd like to help, but I've got a son to feed. If people had time, it'd be a better experience for everyone, don't you think? But it's far from a perfect world. I see no issue that some questions remain unanswered.

 

And frustration over a video game or mod? It's not solving the energy crisis, mate. There are solutions. I don't receive much help either, you know. You're not the only person. But being frustrated is over something so small is not worth the time.

 

And besides, the kudos system is there already. I'd say that's more than sufficient for this scenario.

Edited May 16, 2013 by ZeroKing

[doubleDizz]

I also want to mention I am not saying anything against the support in this section of the forum. The replies and information I've seen on other threads is really good and I can tell people do care. It's the Mod Troubleshooting sections that are unfortunately not as active (except maybe the Skyrim one).

 

I know everyone has lives and this is why modders cannot answer 20 questions a day on why "mod x isn't doing y like it should." Maybe something that just acknowledges a user's assistance to a section of the forum (or a specific mod), could help.

 

Like "champions" for the mod (they could be the modder's champions haha).

 

Being a champion of a mod sounds pretty cool?

[ZeroKing]

Aye, I agree with you on that. I try my best and so do others to help, mate. But give it some time. I am active in the Troubleshooting section myself, but it's tax week here in Poland, and much of Europe here is busy this time of year, so there's less activity than usual on many parts of the forums.

 

And champions of a mod? People called me that on occasion. I consider myself more of a fan of good mods :biggrin: :biggrin:

Edited May 16, 2013 by ZeroKing

[doubleDizz]

I would vote you a "Nexus Forums Champion" and a little nexus mods icon medal under you avatar.

 

 

SEE YOU WANT ONE NOW. <---not yelling haha

Edited May 16, 2013 by doubleDizz

[DrakeTheDragon]

It's not that I don't see an issue, as long as a help request remains unanswered there 'is' an issue in my eyes, but I simply don't see a solution, that's it.

 

The causes for why such questions remain unanswered are many-fold.

- In Oblivion for example there's only me and a handful of other regulars left who even 'read' these topics.

- In Skyrim most of the inner workings of the game are still unknown to just about everybody. (Plus they seem to have managed to create the most unpredictable kind of machine I've ever seen so far, and they're famous for this ever since my Morrowind times. One and the same combination of mods with one and the same pc hardware stats works totally fine for 999 users, but there's this 1 it just won't work for although everything is the exact same? Yeah, that's no surprise at all. It doesn't make any sense, nor can anybody do anything about it, but I'm just far too used to it by now to be even the least bit surprised by it.)

- Don't ask me how many active Morrowind modders there actually are left.

- And if you take my mods for example, with my overly convoluted, one-of-a-kind scripting approach, how many people do you think are actually able to provide any help whatsoever, if anything scripting-related for some cause won't work? Enough? Guess again. It's 1, me. And if I'm gone one day all of a sudden, like most of the other game's modders and users with the release of Skyrim and afterwards, who's gonna answer these help requests then, without the slightest idea whatsoever how my scripting approach actually works and what the cause for the issues could possibly be? 1 - 1 = ... damn.

 

There isn't an entire army of knowledgeable sages constantly hopping around all the forums, seeing all these unanswered cries for help, and just looking away saying "nah, not worth my time, until I get some reward for answering!"

The more common explanation is simply, there's nobody around who knows the answer. Depending on the issue that's asked for it can literally take months for someone knowing an answer to even find it.

 

 

The experienced people don't help, I'm sorry but you're utopian vision of this forum does not exist. Well not where I sit unfortunately.

I actually take personal offense in this statement to an extent, given that ever since my ability to continue my modding projects suddenly died 3 years ago the "only" thing I'm still regularly coming back here for is exactly that, answering as many help requests and other questions as I can (which isn't exactly little, if I may say so), as it is the only thing I still 'can' do, and I just 'love' to help is all.

 

But even I can't answer 'all' questions. I'm not omniscient! And if I knew anything at all about Fallout New Vegas, rest assured I would so be answering questions in this part of the forums as well by now. But I don't, so I can't. Still doesn't mean I 'would' not!

 

In my sphere of modding I 'am' an experienced person, and I 'do' help, whereever and whenever I can. So don't you dare say I won't. You can come back making these statements when you actually talked to those experienced people and they actually told you "yeah, I could've answered that, but I didn't feel like it for X reason." Until then you got no grounds for making such a bold, biased statement, a metaphorical slap into the face of every single person who 'does' help.

 

I wrote 'to an extent', because it's actually impossible to really offend or even hurt me online. It's not like it matters anything what somebody writes to me hiding behind an anonymous account in some random forums on the other side of the world. But I'm only 1 of the many I know of you hit with this overgeneralized statement of yours.

 

And for the records, no amount of reward, not even a big pay check of real money, will make me answer questions any quicker, or more of them. That's not why I'm still coming here. And I strongly doubt there's that many others around here actually worthwile who would either.

 

On the other hand though, given the recent developments in community behavior, or disbehavior, putting me off, if I'm proven wrong and there actually 'are' this kind of people, only helping when there is a reward for it, in the majority around here, then I'll take this as my sign to leave, as this is not the community I became a member of those many years back and not a place I want to be around anymore. ...though gladly I doubt it... for now.

 

If you want to introduce some additional statistics or a fancy badge system just for the fun of it, by all means go ahead.

But it won't improve the situation at hand one bit. I simply don't believe in the community only being that many bad apples anymore. Call me a hopeless optimist, if you must. I know I am.

 

 

edit: Geez, this post of your's rubbed me so the wrong way I now replied to even 'thrice' the amount of help request topics than I'd otherwise have done, just to prove it wrong!

...talking of 'incentives'...

Edited May 16, 2013 by DrakeTheDragon

[moldilox]

The community here is one of the most helpful I have seen out of any online modding organization or any organization I know of online at all. That's why I am a premium member. That said every question can't be answered just because there are so many. I agree with 100% of what the experienced posters above said so I'm not gonna waste time echoing everything they said. This is all voluntary here, I wish everything could work out for everyone but we don't live in a perfect world.

[TLymond]

I find it incredibly arrogant that someone who had been a member here less than a week would post a rant about "not getting help" on the very same day as posting the original query.

 

As noted above by Lanceor (over 1K posts), DrakeTheDragon (over 2K posts), IsharaMeradin (over 1K posts), jim_uk (over 14K posts!), and ZeroKing (over 5K posts) the community on the Nexus is one of the most courteous, friendly, and helpful around. My thanks to each of you, and to all the other modders and players whose help I've received over the years since I first discovered these sites. I may not post much, but that's because most of the time I can find the answers without even having to ask the questions!

 

And I have seen how hard Dark0ne works to ensure that it stays that way. :thumbsup:

 

For someone to say that,

... the Mods Troubleshooting forums are bereft of experienced user support

only shows that they haven't been around very long. :dry:

[McclaudEagle]

The way I see it, if someone wants to help me, then they'll help me. If I need to be prepared to offer them a reward for doing so, frankly I don't want their help. To be honest, I don't think there are many options for a reward that most users would consider worth their effort. Sure, you could put in a "Thank You" button, and when it reaches a certain point, the "helpful" member gets a "I Am Helpful badge", but just how many people on this site would actually be bothered with it? Also, if the reward is visible to everyone, then I sincerely feel sorry for that poor helpful soul who'll end up getting a massive influx of requests for help.

 

In some ways, the idea sounds good. However, I just don't think it'd work out, at least not in the way intended. Truly helpful people will help others because that's what they want to do. People who only help for rewards are only doing it because there's a benefit to themselves, and I consider them to be the worst form of "helpers".

[Georgiegril]

Responding to the original topic here:

Although I understand that kudos can still be given on the mods profile page (not the forums profile page), I think this does not serve one critical purpose they had when they were visible on the forum, which was to provide some indication about the reliability of the help being provided too the user posting the question.

 

Obviously, as others have stated, kudos were a fairly blunt instrument for this purpose, but now we are really providing nothing other than number of posts to a newbie for them to have some indication of the track record of the person they are getting help from. A newbie who probably does not know to go to the profile page and check out the kudos, or give them.

 

I like the idea previously posted about "X people like this solution" or something of the sort. It takes the focus off of a reward of the member and onto a reward of a good post--which might honestly come from anyone, old hand or new member. It also seems to me like this could be incorporated in tag search, so when someone was searching for their problem's solution, they could call up the most helpful related posts.

 

Not to say that people helping don't deserve some kind of thanks for helping. I also have been at the lonely end of a help request that remained unanswered, and I have been deeply grateful to the more experienced modders who have taken the time to patiently explain to me something probably seemed pretty obvious to them. Even though I have given them, an anonymous kudo has never seemed adequate-- personally I felt a sincere thank you is more meaningful both in giving and in getting.