Just in case you have not noticed a little new feature on the front page of OzBargain, I have created a little sidebar-item Top Users, showing the top contributors on this collaborative bargain hunting website.

OzBargain has been getting many great contributors over the last 14 months and I thought it would be a nice idea to show the world who have been our top users on OzBargain. It is currently listed just below the fold on the front page only so you have to scroll a bit to see it, but still a little ego booster may I say :) I am currently showing the top 10 users on OzBargain, updated hourly, but you’ll probably get a full brown page with all the interesting statistics in the future.

How Can I Be A Top User?

Now, how can you get onto the Top Users list? I am still experimenting with the scoring system but basically this is how things work at the moment.

• You will get points/credit/karma/scores from both the actions you do and the actions other people do. There are also positive points or negative points against your account. For example,

  • Positive points:
    • Contribute a new deal.
    • Write a new forum post.
    • Comment on someone else’s deal/forum post.
    • Your deals/forum posts get commented on.
  • Negative points:
    • Cast negative votes on deals
    • Your deal gets negative votes

  Note that you don’t get points for voting positively on a deal (no reward on something that you ought to do!) but negative points on negative voting to discourage people from making too many of them.

• Your daily score is calculated like this:

  score = floor(sum(points) x rdays from today)

  Where 0 < r < 1, i.e. a discount of your previous days’ scores, so that your recent activities will have heavier weight. The activities that were too long ago will have no weight.

• Your overall score is the sum of all your daily scores. Users are then ranked according to everyone’s total score.

• Calculation is done once per hour at the moment, i.e. not real time.

What Is In for Me?

Currently the top users are just listed on the front page, together with their avatars, and that’s it! Don’t you feel special?

Obviously there might be other uses, for example.

• Special prize for topping me on the top users list? Nothing has been planned yet, but don’t quote me on it :)

• Moderation capabilities for persisting top users? I would like to keep OzBargain as automated as possible, but sometimes it is good to have someone around fixing up glitches and killing off the trolls :) Instead of setting up multiple permanent moderators, we can get OzBargain to be self-moderated by rewarding the top users.

I am happy to take any feedback here or on the OzBargain forums.