Reputation#

All Wusoup members are asked to please help protect Wusoup's mission by:

• Reporting users that might be breaking the Community Rules
• Recommending (or not) the users they meet

Reporting users#

If you see someone breaking Wusoup's Community Rules or that you think might be breaking them - please use the Report user link on their profile! 🙏

This'll open a popup where you tick what seems to be the problem, and add any comments (you can cancel). You can then choose to:

• Report and block - report them, and block them so you don't see them again.
• Report without blocking - just report them, nothing else changes.

When you report someone - nothing bad will automatically happen to them! It just brings them to my attention so that I can manually investigate.

If they are breaking rules, I'll handle the situation appropriately:

• Accidental, minor, and first-time violations will generally get a friendly warning from me.
• Intentional, serious, and repeat violations may lead to a temporary account suspension or permanent ban.

Once I've investigated a report you made, I'll send you a message to let you know.

You will earn karma for each helpful user report you submit.

Community ratings#

Each member has a community rating, determined by how many other members would recommend them (👍) or wouldn't (👎), e.g.:

New users will have an unknown rating until they've received at least 5-10 votes.

Votes from highly-rated users have a bigger impact, and votes decay over time if the relevant users no longer interact.

When to upvote#

Please upvote (👍 recommend) users that you'd be happy to see more of here:

• Have put effort into their profile and/or messages.
• Are positive, kind, or otherwise well-aligned with Wusoup's mission.

You will earn karma for each user you upvote or downvote.

When to downvote#

Please downvote (👎 don't recommend) users that you wouldn't recommend for friendly chats:

• Have put little/no effort into their profile and/or messages.
• Are aggressive, rude, or otherwise poorly aligned with Wusoup's mission.

Think someone might be breaking the rules? Please report them instead (or as well) - that's what actually brings them to my attention.

You will earn karma for each user you upvote or downvote.

The motivation for ratings#

Wusoup's ratings are not intended to be a popularity contest, or a way for users to punish those they disagree with or even personally dislike.

Wusoup believes that diversity of life experience and diversity of opinion are valuable. Social bubbles and echo chambers aren't healthy - it's important to be exposed to different kinds of people, and to different ideas. And it's important to feel safe to have meaningful conversations - those most likely to be challenging.

We accept the challenge here. Not with naivety, but out of conviction that it matters.

Disagreement is allowed, even encouraged - so long as it's respectful.

So what are the community ratings for? They're a simple question: would you recommend this member for friendly chats? Ratings are a reminder that we do challenge ourselves to maintain high standards of civility and respect, and to treat this community as more than a mindless, low-effort distraction. Breaking the Community Rules is a separate matter - that's what reporting is for.

Wusoup's ratings are not intended to stifle individuality, genuineness, or disagreement - but exactly the opposite. They're there to help sustain the minimal level of trust needed to safely explore these in an environment that's traditionally super low-trust (anonymous internet chat).

There are downsides to having ratings, including:

1. People might feel pressure to somehow perform, or to not "be themselves".
2. People might feel judged, possibly even unwelcome.
3. People might feel judgmental, being asked to evaluate others.
4. People might feel worried that they'll be unfairly evaluated, or punished for somehow being different.

These concerns are real, and justified! There are unavoidable trade-offs with any such voting system.

The hope is that the benefits (far) outweigh the costs. And I do sincerely believe that with the right culture and design - we can absolutely achieve that.

For more info see Wusoup's mission, Community Rules, and further questions below.

What happens if you are downvoted#

It's not the end of the world!:

1. Getting a poor rating may be more difficult than you expect.
2. Getting a poor rating might be less detrimental than you expect.

For (1), Wusoup's community ratings are calculated with the expectation that:

• A non-trivial proportion of votes will be intentionally or unintentionally misused.
• Even the highest quality users will attract some non-trivial proportion of downvotes, again for justified or unjustified reasons.

So perfection is not expected, nor realistic. Especially since we're specifically trying to encourage meaningful discussion and even respectful disagreement.

As for (2), having a "divisive" or even "poor" rating does not prevent you from participating in the community. So long as you haven't outright broken the Community Rules, your account remains fully functional.

The downside to having a poor rating is that your profile might have reduced visibility. Some (not all!) users may choose to filter their experience and see only users with an established and/or consistently positive community rating.

Conversely, users that enjoy debating or engaging in challenging conversations might even seek out more divisive or controversial profiles! Not everyone is looking for the same thing, and Wusoup isn't intended to be an echo chamber.

How to avoid downvotes#

If you're consistently attracting a large proportion of downvotes, it might be worth reviewing Wusoup's mission and Community Rules.

Some common things to check:

• Have you put effort into your profile and messages? Sparse profiles and short/generic messages are likely to attract downvotes.

• Are you posting controversial content to your profile, or engaging in controversial debates? These are not against the rules (if done respectfully), but are of course more likely to attract downvotes.

Note that Wusoup makes a distinction between breaking the rules and being downvoted.

And it makes a distinction between:

• Users that are divisive (get along with some but not others).
• Users that are universally downvoted (get along with no one).

The first category might for example include folks that like to debate or post controversial content. If that's you, then a divisive rating might be appropriate and nothing to worry about.

Again, not everyone needs to get along - this isn't meant to be a monoculture!

See also how to create a great profile.

What happens if you're unfairly downvoted?#

Basically, this isn't something that you should need to worry about. Wusoup's community ratings are calculated with the expectations that:

1. Not everyone will get along, and that's okay.
2. Some proportion of users will unknowingly or even maliciously misuse up/down votes.

A few details:

• Ratings from poorly-rated users don't count much.
• Ratings from banned users don't count at all.
• All ratings decay over time unless you continue interacting with the rater. In practice this means that positive ratings tend to linger, while negative ratings tend to fade.