From Karma to Virtual Currencies: User Points,

This BoF is based on the User Points session that Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey) and I proposed for DrupalCon San Francisco and my Drupal Voices interview about managing virtual currencies with Drupal. Here's the session proposal:

For some time, Drupal has been successfully used to create online gaming sites, e-commerce applications with social networking features, virtual worlds with virtual items and digital currencies and, of course, reputation- or karma-based sites similar to Slashdot. A common ingredient used in these sites is User Points, a popular collection of Drupal modules that helps adds one or more point-based systems.

Topics that will be covered include:

• a brief history of User Points and various use cases, including success stories
• an overview of what User Points can do out of the box with minimal configuration
• the subtle differences between activity-based point systems and voting systems
• how and why to make an existing Drupal site "sticky" by rewarding and/or penalizing site members for performing particular activities
• the rich API available to developers for extending User Points with custom modules and integrating points into custom, non-Drupal applications
• how User Points is a framework for buying, selling and trading virtual goods and otherwise managing a virtual world with a virtual economy
• what to look out for, from preventing virtual inflation to handling fraud

This session will be presented by Khalid Baheyeldin of 2bits.com, the creator and chief developer of User Points, and Christefano and Lee Vodra of Exaltation of Larks.