Hello everyone!

First of all, let me tell you that I am new to LingQ, and so far I have been greeted with nothing but pleasantries. Thank you all for that. Now on to the suggestion.
I think it would be beneficial to award points for replying to posts in the forums. Not a huge amount of course, perhaps just 4 or 5 points. Why? Well, by awarding points I think that people would be much more likely to reply to posts, which, in turn, would increase the activity on the forums significantly. This is something I believe would help the learning environment on this site, at least in the Ask your Tutor-forums.
Also, for the people that can't earn a lot of points by correcting/creating lessons etc., this would be an excellent way to make everyone be able to earn points, tutors or not. It's a win-win for everybody.
Now, obviously the risks of someone spamming the forums would increase, but this will not be a problem seeing as how the person in question could easily be punished, either by removal of points (or something in that general direction).

Of course, this is only my opinion, and anyone may oppose. Do you like this? Why/why not? Please share your thoughts, as I would be happy to know what you guys think.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks for a great site Steve (if you're reading this).

I don't think this will be practicable. As you wrote, the forum could possibly be flooded by very short posts (maybe only one or two words), spam or nonsensical content, only to get a few more points. Will there be any difference between long and very short posts, and who will be charged to supervise all posts and to punish the malefactors? :)

I like this idea in theory but agree with melomane about the practice.

Perhaps this would be a better way: people who get good answers to their posts could make it a habit of gifting points to the people who reply. Or, there could be a message at the bottom of each post to the effect of: "Like this answer? Gift 25 points to (poster's name)" with a link to do just that in one or two clicks.

.

There we have our first evildoer! Where is the supervisor for the penalties? :)

"Like this answer? Gift 25 points to Lmy"

.

If L had a persecution complex, L would be going into high dudgeon about now.

Andreas, we sometimes consider other ways for people to earn points, but I doubt if it would be practical to automatically reward people for answers on the forum. Dont' forget that you can always reward people who help you buy giving them points or roses.

Thank you everyone for feedback on this idea! I would like to begin by answering some of your arguments.

"and who will be charged to supervise all posts and to punish the malefactors? :)"
This could be accomplished by simply adding a "Report as spam" button. If 3 or more people marks it as spam (or something in that area) it will be removed, along with penalty points. I believe our members would be more sophisticated than to spam the forums for the sake of earning a few points, and even if they do they would be punished and probably refrain from repeating the "evil-doing".

"Perhaps this would be a better way: people who get good answers to their posts could make it a habit of gifting points to the people who reply."
I like this idea, and as I understood things from steve's post you can gift points (or roses, if you fancy). This or thumbing up or down posts would be something I think could be at least tried for a couple of weeks. 10 thumbs up or more = 10 points? If it doesn't work, by all means go back to the way it was, but there's no harm in trying! :P

This, again, is just an idea I thought about, and if it doesn't get pitched then that's OK by me, I will still keep on posting in the forums helping people as I can. But please consider it before you dismiss it. Thanks :)

@Andreas: This is the right attitude. Don't let you discourage if one or maybe more suggestions aren't realizable and/or refused for any reason, but continue making new ones in case you have further ideas. I'm sure, that some of them will be taken into account and possibly be integrated in this system. The ideas from users who are concerned about the development of Lingq are probably one of the most crucial reasons, that this website is still growing better.

I like, by the way, your proposal with the "thumb up function" (but without giving any points) similar to Youtube, as many users wrote some long and helpful posts without always knowing, to which extent those were really helpful. Of course, you can write some compliments in a new post, but - if you have a look at youtube - the feedback via the "Like it" button is often much larger (sometimes 10 times or even more) than the amount of posts. One of the main reason is certainly, that everything positive has already been said/written in very few mails, so you don't tend to write the same again and again (or you only want to say "thank you", but you don't think it's worth a new post, or the thread is already several years old and you don't think someone would read it again, or you simply don't dare because your language skills are not very good and you are too afraid of making errors etc.).

So maybe it could in fact be more motivating to get e.g. 30 or even many more thumbs-up together with the 3 or maybe 4 positive written replies.

If you'd like to give someone points, you still have the possibility to give points to helping members (provided you have some, which is certainly not always the case) as many as you like.

I do like the idea of giving thumbs up to helpful comments as positive feedback is always appreciated. :) And I see why giving points for posting might be a bad idea, but hey, at least I tried to convince you all! I guess I will simply earn my points in another way. :p Also, does anyone know if it costs anything to send a rose?

Yes, you have to pay 25 points to give a rose. If you don't have any points, you'll have to buy (or earn) them first (e.g. $ 20,- for 1000 points if you're a non-paying member, $ 10,- for 1000 points for paying members).

We are working on some more recognition type features on the site. Thanks for the input!