Helmet Stickers are 11W’s community currency. You earn them by contributing, you lose them when the room tells you to maybe take a lap, and they help keep the commentariat mostly pointed in the right direction.
The short version: Good comments earn stickers. Bad comments lose stickers. Keep your balance healthy and you can comment, post forum topics and vote on other members’ contributions.
+1 for posting a comment
+2 for creating a forum topic
100 needed to create topics or vote
How You Earn Helmet Stickers
Every member gets one Helmet Sticker for a comment and two Helmet Stickers for creating a forum topic. From there, the community can add to or subtract from your total by voting on your comments and topics.
Write something smart, funny, useful or perfectly timed, and you may get showered in tiny digital Buckeye leaves. Post something dumb, lazy or hostile, and the math can move the other way.
What You Need to Participate
- Commenting: You can comment as long as your balance does not fall below -50.
- Forum topics: You need 100 Helmet Stickers to create a new forum topic.
- Voting: You need 100 Helmet Stickers to vote on other members’ comments or topics.
How Voting Works
Upvotes and downvotes affect the author’s Helmet Sticker balance. You cannot vote on your own stuff, and you only get one vote per item, so use it like a grownup with a keyboard.
Vote for comments that make the site better. Downvote comments that are off topic, bad faith, abusive, spammy or otherwise running afoul of the commenting policy. Do not downvote someone just because they disagree with you about quarterback reads, defensive rotations or whether punting is ever bravery.
What Happens to Badly Downvoted Comments
If a comment reaches -5 votes, it becomes hidden from normal view. If it reaches -10, it gets locked. Forum topics that hit the spam threshold may be removed.
That should not happen often. When it does, the system is usually telling everyone what they already knew.
Do Not Campaign About Downvotes
Downvotes happen. Sometimes they are deserved. Sometimes the room is wrong. Either way, complaining about downvotes is not a growth industry around here.
In aggregate, the system works because the community cares about the place. Help it work: reward good contributions, punish bad ones and keep grudges out of it.
The Leaderboard
Want to see who has stacked the most stickers over the years? The Helmet Stickers Leaderboard tracks the top accounts by accumulated Helmet Stickers.
Consider it a monument to useful comments, good timing and spending a possibly unreasonable amount of time around here.
