• Information
• How REI Works
• F.A.Q.'s
• Investor Points and Grading
• Pro Membership
• REI "I Buy Houses" t-shirts

INVESTOR POINTS

Your investor points are earned by adding value to the REI community, and show the rest of the REI community your level of involvement. As your point total increases your status in the community, your contribution to the community will be rewarded.

Earning Points with Participation

As you contribute to the site you will be rewarded points for your efforts.

Earning Points with Grades

When you have an item graded (Photo, Blog, etc.) you receive points as follows.

        * Note that most of your points will be earned by receiving favorable Grades

Investor Rankings

Accumulate Investor Points to raise your status in the REI Community.

GRADING SYSTEM

The REI Community has a very unique grading scale that is designed to make your life easy and optimize website content.  Below are full details to learn more, but the good news is we do all the work for you.

Overall Grade Description

The Investor Grading system is the first hybrid rating system online that combines the results of Grades given by other members with the number of times the item has been rated.  The result is one simple and meaningful Grade. 

1)     The average score from users choosing a Grade (Quality Score)

  >> Decides the letter grade (i.e. A, B, C, D or F)

2)     The number of times the item has been Graded (Quantity Score)
      
       >> Determines if it gets a +, a -  or nothing after the letter.

It is much quicker and easier to compare the overall merit of two items with one standard grade than with other formats.  For example, if two items on REI have Grades of an A- and a B+ than it is easier to compare these items directly as opposed to a rating system which would represent the quality as 4 stars (with 19 ratings) versus 3 ½ stars (175 ratings).

How to Grade Items

It does not get any easier than giving a Grade in the REI Community.  Any time you see a...

Grade It: A B C D F   (non-working example)

simply click on the grade you feel the item deserves.  The user’s Grade is instantly updated and they are not made aware of who gave them the Grade.

The grading application was designed in a way that allows the user experience to continue while the grade is updated (does not reload the page).  This technology called AJAX makes it effortless to Grade items and therefore helps our community to have well sorted content.   

If you want to learn the Grading history of any certain item simply hover over the “Overall Grade” of an item and you can read further explanation of both our system and specifics on the actual grades the item has received.  Included is the average grade, the number of total number of grades, broken down by each letter grade. 

Calculating Grades

The Quantity score (A, B, C, D, F) is calculated by taking a simple average, just like it is in school.  The Grade point average is not important since we give you the results in an easy-to-understand letter grade.

Example of Overall Grades:

A+  (Excellent Quality of Grades, High Quantity of Grades)

B    (Good Quality of Grades, Medium Quantity of Grades

C-  (Average Quality of Grades, Low Quantity of Grades)

As for the Quantity score, (+), (  ), or (-), the number of grades it takes to reach each level is on a simple scale in which the amount of grades to take the item to the next level can will vary as our community grows. 

The current Quantity score scale is:

(+) = 10 Grades or more

(  ) = 3 to 10 Grades

(-) = Less than 3 Grades 

Sorting Function

The good news about this system is that once Grades are calculated (which happens automatically) you have easy-to-understand values that can be sorted just like in school.  An B- beats a C+, no matter how many times they have been rated.  Results and rankings produced by this grading system will intermix newer content (or products, or blogs, or pictures, etc.) with older stuff.  For example, an A- will gain exposure near the top, but it takes time to get to the top of any grade. 

Within each Grade (including +, -, etc.) the results would need to be sorted by the highest Quality score (best letter grade average).  The Quantity score determines what level an item reaches within a grade, but the quality score ranks how high it gets within the grade (if it is a B+ it will be compared against the other B+’s).  So within the A+’s for example, the item with the highest quality score would be at the top.   

The Investor Point System and the Grading System work interdependently in the REI Community.  While users receive Grades for items such as Photos, Answers, Blogs, etc. they also receive points (or maybe even lose points) when they have their items graded.  Grading is primarily to help better sort the content of the site, while Investor Points are how REI Members are rewarded for the value they offer the community.