Forums Reputation Phase 3 – Expansion

Over the past month I’ve blogged a ton about my “crawl, walk, run” plan for a reputation system in the Microsoft Forums.  Honestly, I’ve been putting off writing this “final” phase, because it’s pretty tough to write a vision for the do-all and end-all of online reputation systems.  J  So, let’s not call this “final”…let’s call these “guideposts to the future.”  In addition, this post is much, much longer than I originally thought it would be, so I’m going to divide it up into subject areas, each with their own posts.  I’m also going to create a “reputation system” tag on my blog, and tag each reputation focused post.  Today I'll start with "Expanding Your Microsoft Reputation."

The more I’ve thought and wrote about reputation systems, the more I’ve decided that reputation is 100% linked with broad community moderation and making the Forums something that the community is able to take ownership of—a true self-sustaining community.  (To read a great post about broad community moderation, check out Josh’s recent post.)

Expanding Your Microsoft Reputation

Why should your reputation only be visible in the forums?  Your reputation should always be scoped to your current context (if you are participating in the English MSDN Forums, your reputation score that is displayed should only be your reputation from the English MSDN site), but that doesn’t mean that your accomplishments on other forums sitees—and other Microsoft communities—shouldn’t be shown.  Are you a top bug submitter on the MSDN Product Feedback Center?  Are you also an Excel expert?  Involved in a beta program?  Your community profile should allow anyone to find out more about you and what technologies and communities you are passionate about, no matter what Microsoft community they run into you in.