I can haz cake?

There are guidelines we are finishing up. Will let you know specifics. Right now, positive posts affecting gameplay (ideas, answering questions by players, PvC, etc) will gain points. The more thought and detail put into it, the more points it could be worth.

You're looking at stage 2 of the tag system. Stage 1 was Pies update. Fine tuning and usage are being ironed out now.

They definitely should, and a few have already.  I just gave you one for pointing this out by the way.  I was unaware of Hoad/Toadies' work until I read this.

As Arby said though, we are still working out a guideline for this.  We want to make sure we have some consensus on what constitutes what amount of points that way we aren't all just going off the fly.  Contributions to the community in the form of tools and addons should definitely be highly rewarded though.

Ah yeah... to answer your question about the protologist tags and such, those are meant for good players too, not bad posts.  That's what the "good/evil" thing in your forum preferences is for.  That no longer works off of negative tag points.

I can't say for sure yet because the guidelines are still being discussed, but here is my take on things:

"Do you want to give points to any idea, or just good ones?"

It's hard to define what is a "good" idea.  I thought about only giving out tag points for ideas once they are actually implemented but I think that is being a little too conservative about it.  The whole idea is to encourage players to partake in discussions.  I wouldn't say we're going to reward every "random brainfart" though.  I'd like to know where you are seeing that happening.  In the end though, even a "bad" idea can be useful if it opens discussion on part of the game that needs to be improved.  Sometimes players recognize that there is a problem but don't really have the best solution but try anyway.  I think that is a good thing.

"Do you want to give points for solely things in forums, or also in chat/ingame?"

We have some ideas in the works to include non-forum activity into this as well.  However, we have to figure out how to get things working right in the forums first.  For the time being, this is just a forum thing.  The one exception I can think of is when players need to report a bug but can't do it in the public forums because it involves sensitive information.  In that situation we still want to reward the player, and will likely award the player "generic" points that aren't tied to any specific post.

"Do previous promises of tag points or the like still hold strength, and if so, why have they not yet been acted upon?"

If there is public record of the promised points, or whoever promised them can confirm that they did, then absolutely.  The only reason this hasn't been acted upon already is that we don't have a way of automatically knowing who has promised what tag points.  If you feel you are owed though, feel free to find me in IRC.  However, keep in mind that we have to have some kind of proof of the conversation or acknowledgement from whatever mod or fmod promised the points.  Otherwise, anybody/everybody can come and say "You guys owe me points!" without having done anything to deserve them.

"The final question was meant to highlight the notion that being truthful and critical may be the best for the game, but hasn't seemed to be rewarded with tag points."

I have to disagree on this.  I have handed out several points already for people who have criticized things in a constructive manner.  An example that comes to my mind is You_Fool criticizing the new system for not having taken the old points into account.  He was very right, and I upscaled all the old existing points to new values to balance things out.  He got a tag point for expressing this.

"Also, it was supposed to highlight how tag points are 99% of the time rewarded to people who start a thread, and not to responses to that same thread, even if those responses contain more content than the initial post or provide a different insight to the argument (perhaps even debunking the initial post)."

I think this is just a matter of staff resources.  I know I've done this once already in Uni news for a pvc thread.  To me, the initial post wasn't necessarily informative but it was the start of an important conversation.  In that regard, the poster was receiving a point for the thread, not the post specifically.  I would like to go revisit that thread and hand out some more points to people who have contributed, but to be quite frank about it that should be the job of the forum moderators, not the developers.  On that note, the forum moderators are busy designing the aforementioned guideline that will allow them to know what kinds of posts get what points.  If we are short on fmod resources, that is something that needs to be looked at as well, but that is a problem that is independent of this point system.

"Will ingame achievements (such as winning a round, an EoR award, being #1, #2, #3 etc. in a certain category (NW, size)) gain you tag points?"

We're discussing this too, but at the moment we feel this would be a better fit for a larger achievement system in which tag points are also a part.  Each user has only 1 forum tag, so something like winning multiple rounds wouldn't work well in the current system.  Having multiple forum tags may not necessarily the right answer to that, so we're still brainstorming here.

"Will bad and/or unrealistic ideas (aka brainfarts) gain you negative tag points?"

No.  Players are encouraged to talk about ideas even if they are perceived as "bad".  We don't want to discourage players from contributing.  Negative points now exist soley as a mechanism to punish players for breaking the forum rules, so the only way a bad idea will get negative points is if the post itself has other problems.  For example if they are spamming it, swearing in it, or discussing it in a way that is insulting to other players or the IC staff.

"If good behaviour on irc, in for instance #mod but also famchats/chats such as #general and #pinwheel, gains you tag points, will bad behaviour gain you negative tag points? If good behaviour on irc does not gain you tag points, why is that so (referring to one of my previous questions)?"

For the moment, IRC won't have an affect unless it is related to troubleshooting bugs.  The reasons for this are primarily that they are just two separate mediums.  Not everybody who is on IRC partakes in the forums and vice versa.  IRC also has its own mechanisms for punishing and rewarding, which are not tied to the forum in any way.  As an example, if you swear in chat you will get kicked, but if you swear in the forums you will be warned and have your post edited.  If you continually swear in either you will be end up on the respective ban list.

There are similarities to both systems but also enough differences that it may not be the most appropriate thing to add crossed functionality.

That's not to say that it isn't in the future though.  I've already talked to a few people to get their feedback around a consolidation of forum, game, and chat accounts.  Unfortunately this involves some interesting/difficult technical challenges that I haven't figured out yet.  This also has to be prioritized with other projects.

Really, it just comes down to taking things a step at a time.  This all started because the mods mentioned to me that it was not easy to add tag points.  What we have now is the first step to address that concern, and as Arby stated, designing the guidelines that will allow us to add them in a fair way is the next step.

Good questions though.  If only I had some way to reward you. =P

1 more question, why doesn't my tag seem to update?

Finally, that brings us to the forum tags themselves.  Our previous forum tags have been merged with the tags from the original IC forums to create a new, much larger list.  The point requirements have also been changed.  Notice the 5 "evil" tags are alternatives to the "legend" tags:

1: Planetary Defender
3: Planetary Fighter

And I have yet to find a negative tag point...

RD, you are farming in PW, how is that not negative.

Also they were already at war, even posted that they were. You thought it was funny Gx over jumped.....

I thought it was funny that Gx overjumped because I found it totally unnecessary. I was the first to admit that it would not be a war, and I did not like the circumstances either. However, I stopped attacking when you guys had dropped to perhaps 1350-1370 planets, from 1470. That can hardly be called farming.

Forever, I did not like fighting 55 at that point, but it was bound to happen at some point. It would have been a slaughter anyways. What I disagreed with the most, however, is how it was finished.