Tipped

You're right about rewards being risky - if you reward high frequency, you might just get lots of bad reviews from people going for the reward.
I did have a thought of something which might work - each review, or tipped point gets you an entry into a monthly competition.
Or you could just leave it without a reward - the kudos of being the highest tipper might just be enough.
The key to this is figuring out what your makes your members tick, then basing it around that - like free mobile ringtones for every 500 tipped points.
It would be great to come up with something unique that hasn't been done before. That might also get you some news coverage. What that is I don't yet know, but I'm starting to think.

Some people write detailed reviews, while others write one line. But the same points are given.

Correct, but you’ll notice Useful votes are quite heavily weighted. So for example a detailed, likable review with 5 Useful votes is worth 14 points vs. a 1 liner which likely worth only 4 points.

A one liner could be enough to be useful, but other users decide this - that's the point. Someone writing 'It's rubbish' I wouldn't expect to get any useful votes, whereas somone who's written 'Poor service - I had to wait 1 hour for my meal and then the waitress threw it on the table' should get more useful votes because they've told us their opinion and justified it, albeit in one line. Succinct is good as long as it's informative. Conversely, I don't want to read a lengthy review with little substance.
One point I would make is - it's possible to vote 'Not useful' but this doesn't seem to have any impact on a persons tipped points. I'm not saying it should do (that might cause minor feuds), but does it have any value? I suppose it's good feedback for the tipper.

You're spot on Gareth. It isn't how long or how short the review, but how useful it is to others. We just tried to create a point system that would reward the right things as well as possible. Your point re: Not Useful is correct as well - those votes provide feedback to the user, but since points aren't involved there is not incentive to use it where it isn't necessary.

Leave it to me to screw up my own point system. The point values above are wrong, the correct values are:

REVIEW = 3
THUMBS UP = 2
FIRST = 1
PHOTO = 1
FEATURED = 3
FRIENDS = 1
COLLECTION = 2

Sorry about that. Any questions/comments please ask.

Joel

hey

so I have a question - under my photo I've got 3 red circles - I think I got the third one when I got 1500 points - does that mean when I get 2000 points I'll have 4? Also when I get 5 what happens? Do I own Tipped? Do you buy me a car? How do I get 6? Will a portal open up on my profile page and warp me to level 8 like in Mario?

I can't answer all those questions, but we've thought through as far as the 5 shown. You earn according to the following:

50
500
1500
3000
5000

At the moment my tip is the featured one and I'm very smug...but how about if there was an opportunity for all your users to vote for their favourite tip. Each month a shortlist of perhaps 20 tips made that month are listed and your users get to vote for their favourite...it might be useful, it might be funny, it might include interesting facts but the one with the most votes gets featured in a link for the month and wins either additional tipped points (10?) or a little prize - luncheon vouchers perhaps...do they still exist?

Yeah this is a really good idea. No promises on timing, but it's on the list.

Also, well done on the Featured Tip, and so you know these are determined by users votes as well.

Do you know what I'd *really* love as a reward type incentive? I'd love to have a review I'd written published in Time Out.

Would something like that be feasible, do you think? Perhaps a partnership type deal with a printed publication?

That'd be really cool for sure, also London Paper, London Lite, Metro, etc. I met with the Gaurdian and asked if they'd publish and his response was "why would we want to do that?" I said I think it'd be interesting for your readers, and I do actually. Let us take it up TO + a few of the daily's and we'll let you know.