Delaying Point Distribution

[DarthNemesis]

I was browsing through the vBulletin manual and noticed this:
http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/s...ed_tasks_intro

Seems like it'd be possible to implement a system to add a delay between the time a user posts and when they receive their points. You could change the posting code to add an entry in a separate points table, then schedule a script to run through every hour or so and perform the point dispersal for entries that are old enough and haven't been deleted by a moderator. What do you think?

[Random]

This sounds like a great idea. Most moderators delete spam posts within a day.

[dougk_ff7]

Hrm, that said, I'm sure such an idea could be devised.... and I doubt it would be terribly hard. Still, I don't know if such an idea is necessary: if a user post-whores, it gets deleted/locked. If they do it again, their token count can be moderated, and again, deleted/locked. Or, if they're REALLY a bad person, it can get deleted/locked, and they can get banned. An interesting idea, yes, but I don't know if it's necessary.

Still, this is coming from a guy who doesn't make the policy, but makes the stuff to make the other stuff work. :P (Or, just does anything he's told to do, including jumping off any high building)

[DarthNemesis]

Originally Posted by dougk_ff7

Still, I don't know if such an idea is necessary: if a user post-whores, it gets deleted/locked. If they do it again, their token count can be moderated, and again, deleted/locked. Or, if they're REALLY a bad person, it can get deleted/locked, and they can get banned. An interesting idea, yes, but I don't know if it's necessary.

Well, the problem isn't really with disciplining the people who post a bunch of stupid stuff out of an actual desire to post. The problem is that people who just want tokens will just copy and paste a bunch of random crap into half a dozen threads, download the media they want, and leave before any action can be taken. Even if they're banned afterwards, they can just make a new name and do it again. Delaying point distribution would enable the mods to cancel payouts to postwhores before they ever get their downloads, and I think it would go a long way towards preventing postwhoring in the first place once people knew they wouldn't get anything out of it.

[zhek]

Yeah, lately on the 6.0 forums you've got a few people posting about a dozen times in a row in the gaming forum. So you'll have a bunch of shitty zero content replies so he could get the 100 or so tokens he needed for whatever, and he bumps topics with no new info or real conversation going on. There's no real reason to make the system that easy a payout if you want quality posts. If the person was going to post something interesting he'd do it without the incentive. At the very least it eliminates instant gratification to the people who just want to spam and grab whatever.

[dougk_ff7]

Ok, I've got an idea for this, and the go-ahead from Eddie. We'll see what happens... I think it should work well with almost no slowdown (and no, it doesn't use the vB scheduler--I think that'd cause too much load)