I am seeking a system that would encourage posters to post to a blog, since by posting they would gain access to more of their peers' posts. One might call this "rewarded participation." Since these systems (see below) use a sort of virtual money or "points," I think that it would be appropriate to call this system a truly virtual economy.

http://istockphoto.com
uses a system like this to good effect with images. People upload images, and if their images are downloaded they get points and these points can be used to download other people's images.

http://proz.com
has two points systems, one of which browniz, that means that people that perform site enhancement chores (such as entering words in glossaries) gain more site modification privileges (such as the ability to put in a bid for translation jobs).

If participation were rewarded in this way then there would be a true virtual economy.

Blogs with this sort of facility would really take off, I think, because people would research, write and share content that is really useful to other people, with a view to recieving the same from their peers.

At the same time, this is an open source project, and Francois does not get a direct reward for his late nights. I may be able to provide some monetary reward for this feature. I do think that it would make a world of difference.

While images are often more "valuable" than text, and that is why this sort of virtual economy started with images, there are lots of places where text is worth more.

E.g.

Programs (hacks, modules, plugins) might be made available first to those that write programs that are used by others, then perhaps there would be a snowball effect with more and more people writing stuff to get the stuff written by others?

The application I am thinking of...I am an English teacher. There are a lot of texts available for free on the Internet, but there is a big shortage of simplified texts ("graded readers"). Usually these have to be purchased. But if us teachers got together and REWROTE public domain texts then we would be able to share these with our students. This is a big task. I would like be able set up a virtual economy (the more one rewrites, the more one can read) so encourage membership.

Another application I am thining of...I am an English teacher (yes...) and I make a lot of tests for moodle.org (and before that QuizTest). Making tests is time consuming. But once one has made them, they are very useful. I would like to create a virtual economy encouraging educators to share texts.

I have been looking at Xoops, Mambo...but nope...I cannot see this sort of point-based "virtual economy" feature except on the sites mentioned above. Both of these sites are doing very well.

The title of this topic is based on Jean Baudrillard's "Towards a Political Economy of the Sign", which I read many many years ago in French. There is even a connection...This is how i summarised how I understood the book,

In Jean Baudrillard's "Towards a Political Economy of the Sign", he argues that there is no such thing as "use value". People don't buy things cause they are useful but becuase products are signs, which express (political) power. Purchasing is driven by a desire for differentiation, to have "the thing that is desirable" and by having it, be desired, loved, respected, powerful. I found Baudrillard quite convincing. So for me he seems to provide an explanation as to why there will always be wage inequality in an economy because if there were not winners and losers, no one would want to take part. Or something like that.

The connection is tenuous but, in the world of the Blog we do things because we want to speak out, to make signs. There is rarely a claim of being commercial, economical in the sense of having "use value." But in fact, there is of course a continuum and all acts are economical and significatory.

A virtual economy would merely recognise that there is more to blogging that just making signs or that making signs is more than just a hobby.

I wrote a similar, perhaps more explicatively, at another blog site forums.
http://www.geeklog.net/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=6&showtopic=43748
Geeklog is very powerful. I think that b2evolution is quite enough for me but I would go anywhere for the rewarded participation that I trying to describe. Whether I rant on about it or not (sorry again) I humbly predict this sort of rewarded participation system will be seen all over the place soon. While Geeklog may be even more powerful, I think that b2evo is more beautiful. So I hope it happens here first. Someone over at Geeklog suggested (or we suggested together).the following
1) Making a lot of groups (say 500, or probably 50 would do)
2) Making the "read more" link invisible to all those who are in group 1.
3) New members start in group 2.
4) When a member clicks on a "read more" link their group level is reduced by 1 (or x)
5) When the entry submitted by a member is clicked then the level of the group of the contributor is increased by 3.

Now that I know b2evolution a little better, I realise that there are numerical user privileges and they are hardly being used.

I think it would not be too difficult to
1) free the 0-10 limit, perhaps remove the current restrictions (which seem to be redundant), and call this number "points."
2) allow all those with 1 or above to be able to see extended entries,
3) when someone clicks on an extended entry their user privilege is reduced by 1 (or x).
4) When someone else clicks on the extended entry of another user, then that users points are increased by 3 (or y)
There is a module in phpnuke postnuke that gives users points for certain actions, but I have not been able to find one that allows users to "buy" things with those points.

This is a site offering a user points awarder for postnuke
http://dev.pnconcept.com/
And this seems to be the same sort of thing for phpnuke
http://phpnuke.org/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=6803
And this is the demo site showing the points gained for each action (I guess they are settable)
http://webdever.net/modules.php?name=User_Groups&op=list

And this site is using a similar module in phpnuke
http://mgdc.xullum.net/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=38
But as someone asks on the site "what do we get for points" the answer is "no plan," i.e. nothing.

This person is thinking of the same thing (access priviledges based on the points) but again, the answer seems to be no.
http://tinyurl.com/4sfu9

They just seem to make a ranking. Which is okay, but dynamic access priviledges would I think be considerably more potent.

Well maybe. The whole world of blogging is a sort of "vanity press" where like to see our blogs read. We are happy when there are lots of (non spam) comments, when our google rank goes up, when there are lots of people visiting our site, becuase it is nice to feel wanted and useful. The points system's above are similar in that they provide a ranking of the most useful members of community site.

But still no "virtual economy" of the likes of istockphoto.com. By the way, istockphoto.com is a great place to get photos to. So far my attempts to upload have been rejected but the photos are very cheap and print quality.
This site (below) is almost the same but there are far fewer photos since they are only a few months old but growing very quickly.
http://www.canstockphoto.com

I have also found out that filepile.org uses this "take a penny, leave a penny" system, as a repository for files various, and that it is so popular that now filepile usernames/passwords are up for auction.

Zoovy.com has used the same system to amass a large amount of documentation.

The person that invented filepile.org is one and the same Andre Torrez who invented dropcash.com, which also has the possibility for a new type of economy. A dropcash module would be great too but it requires more than just points -- it interfaces to pay pal.

Also Steve aka xcandyman says he has created a virtual economy system here.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/4090.htm
I have tried to get in touch with him at what I presume to be his blog system here
http://moblog.co.uk/blogs.php?show=1481

The above post was recreated from some that were hacked into non existence recently. I hope that someone here at B2evolution takes an interest because I firmly believe that this type of ?ratio system? or ?virtual economy? is going to make a big difference to blogging.

In the future there might even be inter-blog currencies or currency exchanges such that those that contribute to my blog would gain points that would then allow that users to access content on other blogs.

Tim

Thanks to Graham and [url=http://firesuite.net/]firesuite[/url] I now have a working b2evolution blog.