yahoo62278, you summed things up well. As you can see, some managers already apply an approximate criterion, perhaps someone should analyze their campaigns and make a judgment about how effective such a method is.
However, there was a "rule" that you left out. To establish high-standard conditions, a competitive payment rate must accompany them. Looking further back, the maximum payment rate dropped from $100-$150 per week to an average of $60-$80. Which is more than twice less, including inflation.
The next thing is that campaigns are often short-lived, so it is difficult to expect a highly respectable poster to leave a stable campaign and switch to a better-paid one that will most likely end in a few weeks.
When you talk about payrates, you have to look at the budget you have for each week. You have to balance hiring as many posters as you can to increase visibility along with trying to have some of the better posters in a campaign with decent rates. If you only concentrate on the better posters, you will not get very many people in the campaign so you lose visibility for the company. Big balancing act.
The amount of users looking for a spot in a campaign far outweighs the amount of spots there are. So if the spammers aren't improving and all managers are using some sort of rating system, those people will be unemployed leaving slots for only the fair to good posters. Rates will even out over time.
I don't know why there is no concern that most (if not all) signature campaigns are related to gambling, the forum is less diverse and the number of campaigns is less and therefore no matter what your rank is over time you will have to post in sections or specialties that you don't like.
In other words I don't think there is a problem in finding good members because there are a lot of good accounts without paid signatures and since there is a lot of demand and less supply (fewer campaigns) campaign managers can set any conditions without problems.
Yea I'd say 75% of the campaigns on the forum are gambling campaigns. Requiring posters to post in the gambling sections has been a steady requirement for most of them, but look what that has done to the quality of the gambling discussion board. So while people are required to make a few posts in the gambling sections, that doesn't mean their quality has to suffer.
We as managers cannot tell users where to post per se, nor do we want to really. We want people to have the freedom to post where they want and have an enjoyable experience while being a part of this community, but users have to be a positive to the brand they represent. They should be considerate to those that employ them .
Yes we can make whatever rules we want I guess, but we don't wanna be seen as dictators, at least I don't. I want to be seen as someone who cares about the users and the forum.
Dave's point of view:
I am in signature campaigns because I am here anyway and might as well make some money while I post.
With that being said, I can also see the other side at least for me. My posting amounts and quality / length of posts can vary a lot based on what is going on IRL.
Busy at work, I will still try to help people, but you might get shorter replies because I am doing work things.
Other things happening in life and I am posting late at night, will also have shorter posts that are less frequent.
But every Monday I get paid the same per post even though for the last few months I have been posting less and they have been shorter.
Doing something like you said, after X weeks / months are going to drop my rank? Will I go back up after I get some of that stuff called free time and my posts get better?
I can see this also having people screaming abuse because they think their posts are better then user X.
If you did it 100% anonymously it might be better. Nobody knows who is making what. This way they can't / wont compare themselves to other posters.
-Dave
A quality post does not necessarily mean a big wall of shit. Sometimes you can make a quality post in just a few words. I am by no means saying that every post a user makes needs to be 1000 characters, all in the gambling section, and only talking about the company that employs you. That's just crazy.
Making a post that is on topic, not the same reply as 15 users before you because you didn't read anyone else's reply, and being helpful is far more meaningful than reading the OP, reading 0 replies, and posting. You're paid to do a job and a lot halfass it.
As far as what others think about their own post quality, it's irrelevant. What the manager thinks is what's relevant. You don't like it, don't join the campaign.
Doing it anonymously is an idea but doesn't stop people from sharing what they make between each other. People are curious and nosey and will send pms and ask questions.
I cannot see the current Stake campaign managers jumping onboard any initiative to clean up the forum or altering their stance towards spammers. Though I agree there should be a much improved vetting process by campaign managers, this is a debate that will go on as once again there will never be 100% consensus between managers. It seems as though some campaign managers have stated their own criteria but there has not been any universal approach.
What stake does or other managers for that matter are not my concern. Would I like to see other people sorta follow suit, yes, but they're free to manage in whatever way they want. We cannot waste time trying to force others to do as we see fit. We can only concentrate on what we can control. There will likely be no 100% universal approach, but as you can see, some are trying to think outside the box.
I think most campaign managers are already using additional information for accepting members in their campaigns.
Having just legendary or hero member is not enough anymore, everybody is looking at trust feedback, post quality and activity.
Working as manager is not easy and I think they sometimes have to make compromises when accepting new members.
Agreed. A good manager is more than opening a spreadsheet and counting the number of posts a user makes. Balancing act is the best way to describe it.
Anyway, this CM [I think he was a Bounty Manager] applied a system to the merit that works as incentive. So basically we have our standard payment, and then people with xx+ earned merit will get into a deeper category, like:
25-50 merit: extra 1 USD/post
51-100 merit: extra 2 USD/post
and so on.
Given that was a bounty that usually only for four to eight weeks, with certain max post per week, I understand same system won't be feasible on a signature campaign that's more long term, though with same max post per week. So maybe it can modified into
25-50 merit: extra 10 USD
51-100 merit: extra 20 USD
This would 1000000% encourage merit sales, merit trading, cheating, and corruption. Probably not the best idea to implement into a campaign. Yes we can look and see the merits earned by users, and yes it's mostly obvious when someone is abusing, but why encourage bad acts?
It's basically like what Royse had [have?] where he'll add extra payment to three best poster weekly. But, instead of best poster, it relies on the earned merit and instead of only selected few, it applies to the entire participants. In a long term, it'll hopefully increase their post quality as they're hustling for the increase of merit for those extra payment.
Or perhaps you can combine what Royse had with above tiered earned-merit incentive?
Not only people with certain amount earned merit get extra per week, but three best posters will also get extra for their effort?
Granted, it'll increase the risk of merit abuse and merit trading, but I think that act can easily be caught by the manager [namely you] upon the weekly check, when an abnormal growth of merit is detected. And hey, we weeded out merit abuser with this too, so kinda two birds with one stone.
Extra pay for the 3 best posters is 1 way to go about it I suppose, but I feel like I am saying these guys were awesome and the rest of you were shit. If they're put into a tier, they already kinda have an idea where I think they are. They know whether they need to improve to move up or maintain what they have been doing.
On the other hand, I'll encourage to reconsider about length of post.
I have a tendency for a wall-of-text poster myself, given the nature of the threads where I made most of my posts require me to explain situations and POV and findings in details to avoid misconception or it being twisted, but as established from ancient age by many CM, as well as acknowledged by several prominent members, numbers of letters in a post doesn't directly proportional to the quality of the post itself. As evidenced by the posts made by campaigners of one specific casino.
Sometimes one liner, fifty characters post contain more than a 1,000 words essay.
Totally agree and I even mentioned above that long length doesn't mean superior quality. Sometimes a few words on topic says it all.
I think when I talk about length I am more looking at when a person creates a topic or like this whole reply of mine answering multiple users. You can see if a person put in effort or just quickly made a post for sig pays sake.
I am still working out how I want to implement this. Reading your replies and comments will help tweak the system.
