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The Humaniplex.com Ratings Network
This site does not independently verify any of the ratings. Please read this warning for more information about safety and ratings.
What is the Humaniplex.com Network?
The Humaniplex.com Network is nothing more or less than a way for people to express their experiences or opinions with other human beings. It's a set of data generated by people, about other people. That's all at its simplest level. The rest of this page explains how that data is collected, how it is presented to you, and how you can use it.
What are Attributes?
There are five characteristics about a person that can be evaluated on the Humaniplex.com Network.
SAFETY
Safety ratings are issued based on other people's direct experiences or first hand knowledge about a someone. When someone rates another person in safety, they are considering if the person is safe, harmful, or if they don't know enough to make a determination one way or another.
COMPLIANCE
A person's understanding of the Terms of Service (TOS) and how well they adhere to it is a person's Compliance. Additionally, how conservatively they issue Network Ratings and how conscientiously they apply their system influence in the context of community governance for the good of the community as a whole applies as well. The 4 C's:
INTEGRITY
People rate each other's integrity based on how honest or dishonest the person is. If a person is corrupt and dishonest and tries to use their standing or reputation in the community to force others into doing things they don't want to do or undermine members of this community, others issue them negative integrity. However, if a person uses their standing or reputation in the community for "good" and to protect other community members from bad people, others issue them positive integrity.
RELIABILITY
How reliably someone tends to fulfill their commitments to others.
KARMA
Karma is very much a meaningless attribute. However, people use it to express like or dislike for a particular person without necessarily affecting their levels. Mainly, it's a way to attach your name to people either positively or negatively so that others can ask you about them. Just a way to say "Hey! You might have questions before interacting with this person... ask me!" However, the system (including ANA), disregards karma completely.
What are Levels?
As you browse this site, you will notice that usually, when you see someone's handle, you also see their level. This gives you a broad, generalized view of the person's ratings. Despite their ubiquity, levels don't necessarily mean ANYTHING! Levels are simply labels that are generated solely on the ratings that people issue to each other. The things that are more important are who issued those ratings, and if you trust the rater. Because again, the levels simply give you a broad stroke, and additionally provide the system itself with the same broad stroke to provide you with certain services, such as access control. How Levels are Generated Just like classes at the more difficult universities, levels are simply deviations on a curve. Taking positive safety as an example, the system lines everyone up from the "most highly" rated on downwards. Then based on the number of people with positive safety ratings, the system decides how many people out of the total will be labeled as "Level 5". Then slightly more people than that are rated "Level 4". And so on until Level 0. People with no applicable ratings are also just labeled "Level 0". After all of the individual ratings are calculated for each person, they are weighted into an overall total per person. Then THOSE are lined up in the same process, and curved to create the overall level labeling. This means that even if someone has, for example, a "Level 2" label for all five attributes, they could be labeled as "Level 1" overall. This occurs because the total number of people that have received any type of rating at all is obviously greater than the people who have received a rating in any specific attribute. This has the consequence of "widening" each deviation, which, if you aren't thinking clearly, seemingly should mean that people with "Level X" labels for each attribute will sometimes end up a level higher for their overall. But while this is theoretically possible, will be the rare case (we haven't looked closely enough to see this statistic, because, frankly, it's not important enough to spend the time to do so, because LEVELS ARE JUST LABELS!). More commonly, what will occur is that since the total number of people will always be higher in the overall level curve, and because as the population increases, the number of people per deviation increases, but at an ever decreasing rate, people near the bottom of their individual attribute deviations will be labeled a level lower overall than what you might think should be the average. If none of that made sense to you, don't worry about it. Just go back and read the few first lines of this section again. The Trickle Effect When you issue rating for an attribute to someone, you are also, in effect, issuing a small rating to everyone that person has issued a rating to in the same attribute. This effect applies several generations back. A single rating will trickle down several levels. A rates B, which means A is also rating everyone B rated, and everyone who those people rated, and so on. This prevents people from trying to artificially inflate their network by creating many accounts and issuing ratings to all of them. A real account with real ratings from real people always has more of an effect, thereby nullifying any potential network manipulation by a series of bogus accounts. So if you receive ratings from 4 other people, and those 4 people have received a total of 1000 ratings from others, you are, in effect, getting a small fraction of the ratings from each of those 1000 other people trickled through the original 4 as well. That is why, despite what some people who have no clue what they are talking about may tell you, a small number of ratings can often elevate someone's level quicker than others. Because ratings from people who have received a massive number of ratings from others mean more to the level calculation. This is also why it is important to issue ratings conservatively. I have no negative ratings and a buttload of positive ones! Why is my Compliance Level zero or negative?! Because you either lied hundreds of times, or you couldn't be bothered to actual read a few hundred times. In either case, the system is taking your votes and ratings into account less because of it. My level went down! It's the end of the world! As stated above, levels are generated on a curve. So even if your network didn't directly change, your level could be up or down, depending on the network of every other person. Basically, it you are on the cusp of a level boundary (which is always changing with every person's network change), and the person above or below you moves up or down, you consequently also move up or down. It's not magic, it's just simple math. How are Levels Used? The system itself doesn't directly use levels except in very rare cases to prevent people whom the community, via ratings, has determined to be somehow harmful or aggressively disruptive. In those cases, based on a person's negative levels, that person could be restricted from blogging, sending mail, or otherwise interacting with others. The main usage of the level labels is user specified access control. Remembering that levels are nothing more than computer generated labels and therefore nothing more than some text based on some numbers, people can choose to control access to their private information based on other people's levels. For instance, maybe someone doesn't want everyone and their mother seeing the pictures of them doing a keg stand, or the heart-wrenching rendition of a female pterodactyl after six or seven of the aforementioned keg stands. They could restrict access to their "Drunken Stupidity" photo album to just their close friends, or more broadly, people who have been labeled Level 2, or above.
How do I issue ratings?
From your Network Management page, type in the handle of the person you want to rate, then follow the instructions. Or alternatively, when you are looking at someone else's network, click the tab that says "Rate" then the handle of that person. It is located towards the upper left hand side of your screen. Then follow the instructions. Just answer the questions honestly. Don't worry about how your ratings are going to look to the recipient. If you answer the questions honestly, the appropriate ratings will be issued based on the definitions of the system itself. Again, answer honestly. Sometimes things have less to do with the recipient of your ratings, and more to do with you. Quick Ratings Issuing a quick rating only takes a few seconds. Basically, you are issuing ratings in the Safety and Karma attributes. Either positively, negatively, or not at all. Full Ratings Full ratings take a couple minutes. You are asked more questions about the recipient to determine which of all five of the attributes will actually be rated, and in which direction (if any). Rankings If you look at your Network Management page, you will see a row of tabs that say "Rank Safety", "Rank Integrity", etc. When you click on those, you are taken to the ratings you have issued to people in the attribute in question. You can drag people up or down. The ones near the top get "more" (either positively or negatively) of your influence. These rankings are part of the reason why someone with fewer ratings can end up with a higher level label than someone with more. It is because the weight of the rater and where in the rankings of the rater the recipient appears.
What is ANA?
The vast majority of people (well over 99%) will never need to know what ANA is. This information is provided here simply if you are curious about its existence. ANA is an acronym that stands for Automated Network Auditor. It's just a system that executes a process which prevents people from issuing too many ratings. There are a wide variety of reasons that doing this is important, from just preventing people from willy nilly issuing negative ratings to random people for kicks, to purely mathematical reasons, to preventing people from trying to artificially inflate their network. At the simplest level, ANA just counts the number of ratings someone has received vs the number of ratings that person has issued. If it looks too far out of the norm, ANA restricts them from issuing more ratings until the network is brought back within acceptable ranges. ANA does provide a lot of leeway. Just issuing a handful of negative ratings (anonymously or not) is considered "normal". Having a handful more outgoing than incoming ratings can be considered "normal". A network needs to be significantly outside the normal for ANA to kick in at all.
Contacting Support About Your Network
Neither you nor Support has control over the ratings that others issue to you. If you were allowed to removed your own ratings, there may as well not be ratings at all. Begging, pleading, threatening Support to remove a rating that someone else issued to you will have an effect of absolutely nothing. |