Points and Ratings relate to how the members of the board evaluate/appreciate the contribution of a member.

Ratings are shown as VOTES and SCORE. Votes reflect the number of people that have rated you. Scores shows their average Star Rating of you. Scores are rated on a scales of 1 (poor) to 5 (best). You give a person a star Score by clicking the stars to the right of the persons name on a posting. If you click on the first (left) star they get a 1 (poor) star rating whereas if you click on the 5th (right) star they get a 5 star (best) rating. You can star rate the person as many times as you wish but ONLY your last rating will influence their star Score. So a number like 40 3.0 for Starzilla means that 43 separate members have rated Starzilla at an average rating of 3.0 stars. If one of those 40 people had originally rated Starzilla as a 2 and later re-rated Starzilla as a 5 the average rating would go up a bit. If 40 more people (that had never rated Starzilla) ranked Starzilla as a 5 and everyone else stayed the same Starzilla's average would go to 4.0.

'Thumbs Up' are to the best of my knowledge and experience just an indicatator that the article is an interesting/good/valuable read. It doesn't seem to change points. You can give any message either or both stars and thumbs ups depending on your view.

Activity Points-- are given for posting messages, photos, links etc and doing the functions that Ranked Members do on some of the boards (manage violations, load the links, add NRs etc) as part of their responsibility as hub managers.

Overall point -- combination of Star points and activity points

So in general points go up with activity and positive contribution as seen by the members of the board. Conversely you can go down in points if members that had previously rated you, or new raters, rates you lower than your previous average. Changes in you star Score can also change your points. You can also go down if your posts are found to be in violation of Agoracom's rules (either removed or warned). I have also seen a new poster get a overall negative rating for posting a large number of postings that were ranked as 1s on several boards.

There is no hard and fast statement by Agoracom that shows you exactly how your score is achieved but the above is my observation. Agoracom's statement is given below. You can get to the full version by clicking on the question marks that appear beside your name, score and rank if you click on your name (or anyone elses).

Hope this helps.

.... Been There

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AGORACOM Quick Help:

What Is The "Rating"
A member's rating is the average rating (from 1-5) received from fellow members of the community. It is a good indicator of a member's value to the community.

What Are "Activity Points"
Members are credited with points related to their activity on AGORACOM. Points can be earned and lost for a plethora of activities around the site. The more positive contributions you make to the AGORACOM community, the more activity points you will earn.

Why Are These Important?
They are important because the combination of these two metrics will determine your rank within the AGORACOM community. Your rank determines which functions you can perform within AGORACOM, which includes the ability to do things such as delete offending messages, delete offending members, update vital company information in real-time – and many more cool things.

What Is "Your Vote"
Your vote is the rating you have given to a specific member. It is combined with all votes from the community to determine a member’s average rating. You can change your vote at any given time if you feel the member has become more or less valuable to the community. All votes are anonymous, so be responsible with your votes as it will impact the quality of your community in the future. Cast your vote based on quality of information, not the buddy system. You can not vote for yourself.

What Is the Purpose Of All This?
Great question. In order to build a massive small-cap community without losing control and sacrificing quality on hundreds of discussion forums, we are going to put control in the hands of those who are best able to utilize it – You! To do this in a fair and democratic fashion, members will be given different levels of responsibility based on authority levels achieved within the community.