Our Naked Food aims to put you, the members, in charge of the community. Unfortunately, it is also a fact of life that some people seem to like acting as spoilers. So we have designed a system that over time learns to trust dedicated, positive contributors, allowing these members to earn more site privileges the more trust they earn. At the very top end, a “super member” may attain powers almost equivalent to official site administrators. We think this is as it should be. It is your site - please treat it well!

We don’t know what form it will take, but in time we are pretty sure that if the Our Naked Food community continues to grow while maintaining a high standard of self-regulation, high Reputation attained by members is eventually going to lead to career and economic opportunities for serious and long-term contributors. OurNakedFood as a site will not share in this, in order to maintain our impartiality, but we do look forward to providing appropriate tools to make this happen for our most trusted members.

You don’t need any Reputation to use Our Naked Food in the normal manner - asking and answering questions. Yet it is in building a reputation where you will find the greatest ability to contribute to the site and form collaborative relationships with others to tackle problems too large for a single person.

How do you gain or lose Reputation? There are two kinds of reputation. Q&A Reputation, and Wiki Reputation. Together, they tell you a lot about how a member is using and contributing to OurNakedFood.

Q&A Reputation Your Q&A Reputation level is a vital part of your identity. It demonstrates respect among your peers, because it can only be gained when other members of the site vote up your questions and answers. You cannot award yourself Reputation, you can only earn it by convincing other members that you have added value to the site.

Importantly, up-votes are more heavily weighted than down-votes by a factor of five. Also note that it costs you 10 points to downvote another person’s content ? we believe this will help prevent the mindless down-voting often seen on user communities which also utilise point systems. Posts which are marked as "Community Wiki" do not alter reputation for any individual member.

As you gain Q&A Reputation, you will attain the following abilities and responsibilities:

(* Site registration is required to attain all abilities listed, including to begin earning Reputation)

members gain and lose reputation when:

Your Answer / Data is upvoted as Useful: +100 (if downvoted as Not Useful: -20)
Your Question is upvoted as Useful: +30 (if downvoted as Not Useful: -10)

An upvote on your Answer is removed: -100 (A downvote on your Answer is removed: +20)
An upvote on your Question is removed: -30 (A downvote on your Question is removed: +10)

You downvote someone’s Question or Answer as Not Helpful: -10 reputation (removing that downvote: +10)*
You wrote the latest revision to a post that becomes flagged Offensive 5 times: -1000 reputation

*It may be useful to think of losing 10 Reputation as a kind of tax that you willingly pay in order to help keep the community functioning properly as a whole. After all, taxes pay for our rubbish collection in real life too!

Built-in Limits

* A maximum cap of 3000 Reputation can be earned in a single day. (A new day starts from the international dateline, or 0:00 NZ Standard Time). (The system will let you earn more than 3000 Reputation to the extent that downvotes received in a day can be cancelled out by up to an equivalent amount of extra upvote points).
* All members start with 10 points.
* A member's Reputation will not drop below 10.
* Once a particular question or answer has received 30 upvotes, no more reputation will be earned for the poster.
* Once a question has 25 answers, it automatically transfers to Community Mode

Note that off-topic questions (i.e. concerning food and drink integrity) should be downvoted, no matter how good they may be. See the FAQ here for more.

User Levels

The Thinker

In addition to the badges and crowns, we have chosen Rodin’s “The Thinker” as a core Reputation symbol. We think it sums up well the gravitas of looking after our global food supply. Thinker symbols are difficult to earn, but if you see someone with one or more Thinker symbols above their crown, you know that member is an especially serious and trusted member of the Our Naked Food global community.

Badges

Badges reward specific behavior that helps the Our Naked Food community to self-manage and scale organically. The members that carry out these tasks are performing essential work for the integrity of the system as a whole, and should be recognised as such.

Apprentice Badges = An action given with enthusiasm and potential

Helper = First up vote

Student = Asked first question

Teacher = Answered first question (that receives at least one vote)

Edit = First edit

Complete Profile = Completed all member profile fields.

Nice Question = Question has been voted up 3 times

Nice Answer = Answer has been voted up 3 times

Data Manager = First tag

Self-Starter = Answered your own question with at least 2 up votes

Intern Badges = A dedicated action requiring uncommon knowledge

Good Question = Question has been voted up 10 times

Good Answer = Answer has been voted up 10 times

Helpful Question = Answer has been favorited by 20 members

Popular Question = Question has been viewed 1,000 times

Beta = Private beta-tester for OurNakedFood

Generalist = Answered 10 different questions (total) on at least 5 different topics (1 topic = the top tag of each question)

Commentator = Commented 25 times

Editor = 5 edits

Senior Editor = 5 rollbacks

Instructor Badges = A fully ripe response requiring deep knowledge of the subject area

Great Question = Question has been voted up 30 times

Great Answer = Answer has been voted up 30 times

Very Helpful Question = Answer has been favorited by 50 members

Noteworthy Question = Question has been viewed 3,000 times

Specialist = answered 20 questions on a single topic (by tag)

Global Patrol = Active in 3 different language sites (per the different language sites that the member has edited)

Civic Leader = Voted 250 times

Organiser = Created a tag used by 30 questions

Professor Badges = The rarest award. Only possible by receiving recognition from a great many peers

A Guru = Answer has been voted up 100 times

Q Guru = Question has been voted up 100 times

Solid Gold Question = Answer has been favorited by 100 members

Famous Question = Question has been viewed 10,000 times

Polymath = Answered 100 different questions (total) on at least 10 different topics (1 topic= the top tag of each question)

Hints on Creating Great Answers

A great way to build Reputation even if you are not a food expert or able to do your own research. You can cull together related information from other Wiki answers that are scattered around the OurNakedFood site and compile them into a super-answer on the topic. (For example, you may aggregate all the various research on residual pesticide levels in different brands of green tea into a super-summary). Naturally, you should cite the original sources or OurNakedFood Wikis that you drew information from - just like you had to attribute other people’s work when writing an essay at school. (Don’t do the lazy thing and simply take someone’s lengthy and thoughtful answer, add one sentence, and then claim it as your own Wiki. When the community finds that out, they are liable to vote your “work” (and thus your precious reputation) down, not up!

Wiki Reputation

We do not yet have a concrete system for the attainment of Wiki Reputation, but over time as member behaviour patterns become clear we look forward to instituting a reward system for Wiki Reputation as well. This may in its own way turn out to be as valuable as Q&A reputation.

For example, one basic system we are considering is that for every useful word you add to a Wiki, you gain +1 Reputation. A useful word is any word that isn't a conjunction. Under this system, you would lose Wiki Reputation to the extent that your data is later edited out. Further, Wiki Reputation will be neutralised for a particular Question or Answer you wrote that has since attained an overall minus Reputation. (However, you will not be penalised beyond zero points for a Question or Answer with minus Reputation).

Our aim for Wiki Reputation is to help identify members who beaver away in the background, constructing and correcting the data that Our Naked Food depends on to act as a global guide to safe and healthy food.