Escalating privileges: proposal for initial version

See also more extensive vision-type proposal at Escalating privileges system #Goals

The goals for later versions will be to help with the administrative burden. The initial version will be focused on improving the quality of requests. The idea is to:

• Encourage good quality questions
  • ...but without censoring anything
• Specify and implement a first version release promptly
  • ...but ensure we provide solid foundation for future iterations

#Tactics

• Make good quality questions stand out throughout the system
• Conversely, make bad quality questions less visible
• Provide incentives to people to ask good quality questions in the form of privileges

#Specifically

• Provide upvote and downvote buttons for requests. When a request is marked down, include a small "reasons" text field.
  • On Authority pages and Search pages, list only requests with a score of more than 0 unless explicitly asked otherwise via some UI widget (TBC)
  • On Home page, list only recent requests with a score of more than 1
  • On requests with a score of less than 1, include a banner that says "This request has been marked down by other site users for the following reasons"
    • and link to page that describes what makes a good quality question
• Incentives:
  • Privileges: privileges should be making multiple requests, the ability to vote, and the ability to comment
    • Users with negative points can't make any requests
    • Users with 0 points can only make one request per day
    • Users with 1 point can make up to 5 requests per day
    • Users with 20 points can make up to 20 requests per day
    • Users with 5 points can comment on requests
    • Users with 15 points can vote requests and comments up
    • Users with 30 points can vote requests and comments down
  • Points can be earned or lost by:
    • Filling in your profile (+1)
    • Having a request voted up (+5)
    • Having a request that's been voted up at least once enter a finished state (successful, unsuccessful) (+3)
    • Having comments voted up (+1)
    • Having requests voted down (-2)
    • Having comments voted down (-1)
• Seeding:
  • All current site admins have 200 points to start with
  • All site users who have previously made a comment get the privilege to make comments anyway

#Implementation

• Put some thought into designing user authorization system: roles, permissions, groups?: 1d
• Design the points earning data structure (around events, so we can explain them to users?): 1d
• Wireframe / design new UI components: 1d
  • earning new privileges (and losing them): flash for letting user know it's happened
  • encouraging earning new privileges: flash letting them know how to reach next level? (e.g. "if you earn [10 more points] you can post multiple requests per day"
  • badges or similar for listing privileges on user profile page
  • list points-earned-history for user profile page
  • flash for pointing out new features (e.g. highlighting new upvote/downvote buttons, etc)
  • upvote/downvote on requests: ensure it's obvious if/why you can't use it (yet)
  • unhiding downvoted requests on results page (or maybe they are still returned but very subtly compared with upvoted?)
  • asserting that a given request is demoted and making it clear how to find out why
• Implement base authorization system: 10d
  • implement API
  • admin backend for editing all permissions directly
  • integrate / refactor / migrate current admin permissions into new system
• Implement upvote/downvote for requests: 6d
• Implement request hiding / demoting / promoting: 3d
• Implement user-profile related changes (list of privileges, history of points earned, etc): 5d
• Integrate same into admin backend: 1d
• HTML mucking around: 3d
• Testing, bug fixing, iterating: 10d

Total: 41d