Can someone explain "the vanity effect" to me?

[Susan]

I am working on building some content on my forums for a site with just over 1000 families signed on (but not all active), before the forums go live (forums are a secondary aspect of the site, but hope to use them to maintain more active users on the other/main part of the site). I have gained alot of knowledge from reading the posts on community and forum building, and will be implimenting quite a few of those ideas over the next few weeks.

What I don't understand is the term "vanity effect", athough it has been used to describe one of the techniques epinions used to become who they are today.

I have heard this used in conjunction with community building, and after doing a search, I am still unable to come to an intelligent conclusion about what this means and how to impliment it.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

[King_Fisher]

Vanity Effect,

" When I look like myself,

But think I look like Robert Redford."

That is the Vanity Effect!

( Sorry, I have no idea what Vanity Effect means..
Just my weak effort at trying to be humorous!)

[Susan]

I'll give you an "E" for Effort ;)

Anyone? Anyone? :)

[DamonHD]

Hmm, it'll be like the contract "Sanity Clause" from "A Night at the Opera":

Sanity Clause, Sanity Clause?!

You can't fool me: there's no such person as Sanity Clause

(with apologies to the Marx brothers and probably Karl too, for my poor memory!)

Rgds

Damon

[edited by: DamonHD at 9:30 pm (utc) on April 25, 2007]

[londrum]

it sounds like something you'd use to make them feel better about themselves.
two really easy examples of that are
1) showing everyone how many posts they've made, so they can see 'senior' they are compared to others
2) giving them a rank title, which gets better the longer they stick around
webmasterworld uses both of those, as do most other places - webmasterworld calls us 'new user', 'preferred member' and 'senior member'

[MThiessen]

londrum is correct. Anything you do that appeals to people's vanity.

vbulletin also uses a "reputation" system that works well. I use titles, ranks and stars, as well as the reputation system.

The trick is though, not to alienate new users with titles like "noob" or "greenhorn". "Junior Member" is a good first rank.

[Susan]

Thank you! It makes perfect sense.