Just Askin': How Useful is a Reputation System?

Filed under: How-To

Currently, you can right-click someone's avatar, and choose 'Rate'. This gives you the opportunity to rate someone in one of three categories: Overall behavior, Skill at appearance, and Skill at building. It costs 25L per rating, and you can leave a little message in the text field that accompanies the ratings. Sure, it's a nice thing to do, but other than that, is it useful?

For one thing, my understanding is that there used to be a Negative option that has since been removed. I can see how that could quickly become fodder for bad feelings, but it can't all be wine and roses. For another thing, wouldn't it be useful to have more categories, or at least, more specific ones? Or a category for scripting?

None of this even ties in to a database, so it's not kept track of by LL; it's just a little thing that the resident in question can tally up, but without knowing the taste, or level of critical thought that the rater employs, there's no way to know if these positive ratings are worth anything. Why is it still in use?

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