What is the "point" of using Points? Are the members or contributors being ranked for any particular purpose? Thanks.

I have the same question.... How can I earn points? what are they for?

uhm!! I noticed that when I replied I earned 5 points...

Wow!  Back here is really cool!  Hyperlink and everything.

But my question had to do with accumulating points - I use them as incentive to participate in the discussions.

Is it simply a flat rate of 5 points per post, or does it get more interesting farther along?

Thanks!

Yes, it will get more interesting. How interesting, and when, are more difficult questions to answer.

Right now we're working on a wiki solution, and a site UI redesign project, and a forum replacement project, and a half dozen smaller things. Still, recognizing and rewarding contributions is top of mind and I'll be spending a lot of my time on it in the next several weeks.

It sounds like you've been around these sorts of systems. Are there any examples you can think of that really stand out? I'm game to try just about anything. Personally, I'm inclined to consider a model closer to the mmorpg ladder concept. Implementing it in this context though could be tough.

Bob

I still don't understand what the points we can earn are for.

Why have I lost points?

You earn points based upon your contributions. Right now, all we do is capture and display them. Sometime this summer we hope to more aggressively reward participation.

That's about it. Though it's also a bit of a popularity contest. If you add someone as a "friend" that gives them more points in one shot than they would receive from forum contribution -- considerably more actually. I don't know how long that will remain that way, but given that there's no other tangible reward for collecting points beyond, as you say, "look, I have more than you" I didn't see a reason to change it. But, should you want more points than anyone else, the fastest way there today is getting yourself selected as everyone's "friend".

Doesn't anyone want to be my friend? I swear I'm cuter than my avatar :)

 There you go 'friend'. It looks like a few other have added you too.

Thanks! Hooray, I finally got a friend!

I think it'd be great if we could import friends from our Live Contacts (http://contacts.live.com). In the last couple of weeks there's been a big announcment around importing your live contacts into Facebook, mySpace etc... There's no barriers there so there are certainly no barriers to doing it for another Microsoft property rather than a third party property. The technical pieces are in place, it just needs to be done at the OLW end. In particular I would like it if a group were automatically created at http://contacts.live.com called "Office Live Workspace friends" so that I can see which of my contacts are also friends on OLW.

I'm really jazzed by the whole idea of lots of Microsoft properties (e.g. OLW, Zune Social, Listas, etc....) having the notion of friends. That way they all become psuedo-social-networks, in reality they're just subsets of a massive social network that is governed by our Windows Live ID.

I've banged on about this on these forums before so I'll stop now.... :)

-Jamie