Monks can obtain XP by doing nothing other than showing up and/or voting. Clearly this would give no real indication of their overall knowledge of anything other than how to login and use their votes. ;-)

The other issue is that some monks get more XP just because of who they are....does a point by merlyn or tye hold more value than one by any other monk? Well, perhaps....but I often have observed spikes in reputation just because of who posted it, not because of what was said.
I have also seen well said posts take a dump because of a counter post as well so clearly, reputation is usually but not always a good measure of quality either

The other flaw I see is your assumption that Monks will be altruistic enough to say "hey, I really don't know enough to advance"....I think the realities of status and greed will keep this from ever working.

The last point that should be made is the most significant...while getting XP can be fun, it doesn't mean anything. As has been previously said here before...XP has no real value.

Still, I gave you a ++ for the original thought, even if I don't see if being very practical.

If the goal is to provide some kind of accurate indication of who really knows what, well ... that's redundant. You ask a question. Folks answer. The most popular (not necessarily best) answers rise to the top. The wrong answers get flamed. It's up to the questioner to decide which solution they want. It's up to us to make sure that wrong/dangerous answers are labeled so.

If the goal is for you to become a better Perl programmer, just do what i did (well, short of getting a CompSci degree):

1. join Perlmonks (i see you have that accomplished) ;)
2. start answering questions (this is the scarey part)
3. repeat step #2 until your answers are deemed popular by the rest of us
4. contribute material (code, tutorials, etc.)
5. join a group (pmdev, editors, gods ...)
6. keep answering questions / contributing material

The problem with your suggestion is simply that someone has to mine the real requirements from it and then implement them. And that someone is not going to get paid or probably even widely recognized for their effort. This is why i recommend that everyone resist the temptation of 'suggesting improvements' until they can join the pmdev group. Then, you realize that the only problem with this site is that it tends to be a bit slow during high traffic hours.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
    XP does not mean anything.
[download]

There is absolutely no relationship between XP and Perl knowledge. There are people with lots of XP that regulary write bullshit. There are people with a lot of Perl knowledge that hardly have XP. There are saints who have never written a post that got 15 more ++ votes than -- votes.

Abigail

okay, here goes:
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
XP does not mean anything.
However that's not really the point of what I wrote:
It probably would not be helpful to those with great expertise in perl, but for the beginners and those starting to make some headway in the language it would, I think, be useful to have somewhere to go where the information is obtained not by subject area but on the likely ability of the reader to understand it. Just another learning tool, I suppose, but I thought it a good idea.

Linking it to XP I thought might introduce a fun element and might even replace the adage 'XP does not mean anything.' with something like 'XP is in the eye of the beholder. Get it out with Optrex.'

Linking it to XP

Linking what to XP? XP doesn't mean anything, and the amount XP acquired will grow over time, as long as you are active. Witness the various XP related threads where lots of people write they regulary spend all their votes, even giving people votes for no other reason than making the effort to post - regardless of the content.

Abigail

Hey, I believe I have a script for that:

perl -e 'print "XP does not mean anything.\n" while 1'
[download]

Later

Heh...there seems to be a recurring theme here ;-)

This idea of "perl knowledge" is extremely variable - someone could be a 'Perl Expert', but a poor programmer, and vice versa - but that's not all the monastery is about. Generally, my more useful contributions here have been to do with broader matters of application design, UI, or even 'attitude'. Where 'problems' are concerned, I'm *nowhere near* writing the book, but I'm fairly good at putting myself in the position of a newbie and understanding what they're trying to achieve, and that's what I think my XP reflects.

The sheer fact that (I hope {g} ) your XP will rise due to this Discussion reflects your input into the community - as an idea, it may be rejected, but as a means of provoking discussion, it's great :)

cheers,
Ben.

Thanks for your comments benn, and tone in particular. An oasis in a desert of scorn, perhaps?

In actual fact it doesn't matter whether the XP means anything or not. They are definitely an inbuilt convenient set of levels which could be used to demarcate certain levels of knowledge. At that point monks could start to contribute links to their preferred nodes, or new illustrations, which could help situate the general level which one might think ought to be the goal of a monk before they ascribe to the next level. The main point is that the result would be a disparate area of knowledge which could be browsed by the user knowing that all the information would be either within his range or at least attainable with a little more study.

I just happen to think that would be useful, that's all. And if all this ended in an evolution of the concept of XP so they did develop some sort of meaning, so what? The general concensus of the great and the good on the site seems to be that XP do not, cannot and will not ever mean anything. Like a mantra really. A bit of evolution never hurt (tell that to the neanderthals) - and what perl version are we on now? :)

• Keep an eye on your goal: If XP really mean something to you, and you want to be encouraged by that, then forget the 'level' part for your purpose. Just set the sight on XP.
• Knowledge based level:Understand that perl lives and rules by motto of TIMTOWTDI (There Is More Than One Way To Do It) and thousands of modules at CPAN. So the progress is not linear in sense of perl. That makes perl society worth its value compared to FAQ and Guides. Point here is that you cannot have level/XP decided upon knowledge, level here is decided by 'participation' and that's the best practice for the society.
• Self assessment from perspective of society: Self-assessment is a good idea to learn something. In that case, you can pickup any book/faq/guide/module and decide points for yourself and give points when you finish it. The real value of self-assessment is realized when you answer practical problems of the monks and try to understand how you can provide better solution that may worth something. Knowledge just for the sake of it does not carry high value from the perspective of society. Knowledge definitely can lead providing better value to the society in terms of finding more interesting tools only when comes in contact with the problem which again leads toward contribution to the perl society. The way PerlMonks has been built is like swarm technology
• XP System Changes: Often I have seen suggestion in change in XP system. These are often proposed by monks who want to measure their knowledge in terms of XP, which is a wrong concept to begin with. We should have said somewhere in big bold letters: XP = Participation at Perlmonks. Which holds true for many society we live in real world. ( Of course, the act and parameters of participation changes according to society and time)

• A NEW idea for Self Assessment: We can build a huge checklist of things to learn about perl collectively by monks here and have an access to individual in such a way that they can measure their progress by checking the items. It may give realistic view what could be achieved. We can simplify the system in such a way that whoever proposes the checklist item should be good in the same. An tem could be 'displaying database records in XML' for example.

artist