How to rate registered users?

Question

Guys,

I am thinking about a creation of my own blog/community engine. Could you advise what is a better way to rate registered users?

It is pretty easy to add a score to an user if he or she has commented something, or remove scores if someone complains, but it is not a wise way. I think that a registered user should have weight or something. For instance, those who registered before, commented a lot and whose comments appeal to other users should have more weight and vice versa. Or users with small weight are not allowed to write posts to some blogs/threads.

So, I need to have a rate system with a few criteria. I do not know which ones exactly. Could someone suggest formulas/ideas or URLSs how to calculate users’ rate?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Whatever rating you choose, I would only show the rating to the user (not make it public). That will keep people from posting just to get a higher rating, and will prevent all kind of flame wars in which people give a good or bad rating to others, just based on previous interactions with other users, or based on opinions rather than quality.

(Requiring a certain rating to be allowed to comment, like here at Stack Overflow, is not very inviting in my opinion).