Frequent Fiction Points - Q & A

What are Frequent Fiction points?
They're a scoring system to recognize members who contribute to IFDB in the form of reviews, ratings, etc.

How are my points calculated?
Points are awarded as follows:

• +100 points for each review you write.
• +5 points for each "Helpful" vote for one of your reviews, and -5 for each "Unhelpful" vote, but the total score for an individual review can never go above 200 or below zero.
• +25 points for each Recommended List you've created that includes at least five games.
• +10 points for each game rating you enter without a review.
• +1 point for each Helpful or Unhelpful vote you enter for someone else's review.

The rationale for the Helpful/Unhelpful adjustments to your own review scores is to better recognize high-quality reviews, and to discourage writing perfunctory reviews just to pump up one's points. The reason you get points for voting on other people's reviews is that those votes help improve the overall quality of the reviews on the site, by providing reviewers with feedback and a little extra incentive to make a good effort. These only rate a small bonus, because otherwise some people might be tempted to enter a lot of insincere votes just for the points.

When are my points updated?
The system keeps your point total updated once every few minutes. There's no need to do anything special to get points counted - every time you do something that affects your points, they'll be updated within five minutes or so.

Can I redeem points for cash and valuable merchandise? Is there a credit card that earns Frequent Fiction points with every purchase?
Sadly, no. IF isn't exactly a commercial juggernaut these days. We haven't heard back yet from the many deep-pocketed investors we've approached with our plan wherein they shower our members with cash and prizes. We'll let you know as soon as we hear anything.

Then what are my points good for?
They're good for prestige in the IF community. IFDB awards Top 10, Top 25, Top 50, and Top 100 status according to your point ranking among the IFDB membership, and displays your status when other users view your profile.

How is "Top 10 Reviewer" status determined?
The "Top N Reviewers" are simply the "N" members with the highest Frequent Fiction scores, with the proviso that they must all have written at least one review. In other words, you can't earn "Top Reviewer" status purely from points for non-review activities.

Don't get us wrong: we think those other activities are valuable too - that's why they're worth points in the first place. We just feel that "Top Reviewer" status should be reserved for, well, reviewers - people who have written reviews. Writing a review takes some serious thought and effort, so we think it deserves a special level of recognition.