Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
more useful options
 
PerlMonks  

Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP?

by Abigail-II (Bishop)
on Aug 07, 2003 at 13:25 UTC ( [id://281879]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^2: Googlish approach to voting/XP?
in thread Googlish approach to voting/XP?

But what does noderep measure? Nothing useful. The largest correlation noderep has with anything is "number of times viewed". Just look at your own nodes, see which ones got a high noderep. I bet most of them are in threads that have been frontpaged, and are posts that you posted relatively early in the threads. Almost all the time when I look at my list of writings, and spot a node with high noderep, it's in a thread that was frontpaged, and that I had an early reply in a thread. Replying in a thread that's two days old will hardly give you any XP, no matter how good it was.

Another factor that plays in role in making nodereputation useless is the pressure to vote. People seem to eager to vote, get rewarded with XP to vote, and lots of people even use up all the votes they get on a day.

I can see merit in having somekind of node reputation. I don't seen any merit in the system we have now.

Abigail

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Aug 09, 2003 at 21:23 UTC
    We may differ in our notions of usefulness.

    I think that this periodic discussion might be more fruitful if eXPerience were named something like Site Contribution. Because that is pretty much what it measures, and what it is intended to increase.

    Believe it or not, contributing wonderful nodes that nobody reads contributes very little value to the users of the site. Contributing an obvious node with useful information that many people read contributes a lot more. (Where the site is measured in terms of value to our actual users, and not a minority of very knowledgable ones.) The relative XP ratings of the two nodes reflect that.

    The system is obviously imperfect, but it works fairly well for that goal. It doesn't work on everyone - for instance it has no apparent effect on you. But it affects you indirectly because it contributes to the site's success and that success in turn creates an atmosphere that draws people like yourself.

    (An amusing aside. None of the top posters seem to me to be very much motivated by XP. I find that slightly amusing...)

    Other voting systems evolved at other sites for other goals. Generally most of them accomplish their stated goal reasonably well. Most of them do not accomplish the goals that other sites set out as well as they do their own. This is somewhat natural. Success should be measured in the context of the goals of the system.

    Therefore, other than suggesting that the highly misleading word experience be replaced by something else, I have no major objections to having the current meaningless measure being used.

      Believe it or not, contributing wonderful nodes that nobody reads contributes very little value to the users of the site.

      I think you need to take it one step further.

      Just as unmined gold contributes to the potential value of land, so does an unread post to the potential value of the site. The problem here is not the post, but the moderation system and its inability to recognize and promote it. This is no easy task, and I could easily write a book on it (probably 10 of them if I were smarter ;) but due to the length, and the fact nobody would see it, I won't get into moderation system design here.

      It is important, however, to realize that these "experience points" are not rewarded on the basis of site contribution, but on the basis on site contribution after processing by the moderation system. Or perhaps as Werner Heisenberg would say "What we observe as experience points is not site contribution, but site contribution exposed to our method of moderation."

      Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knoweldge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

      - Isaac Asimov

        A good point. I for one was disapointed not to see you delve into the subject of moderation system design.
      I would argue that even the quest for first post has some value, since obviously it increases the responsivenes of the system - something that has a huge value for beginners.

      I think that this periodic discussion might be more fruitful if eXPerience were named something like Site Contribution. Because that is pretty much what it measures, and what it is intended to increase.

      I think this is a very good idea. Perhaps it's a good idea for a poll. .oO(A serious poll, is that possible here?)

      Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }

Re^4: Googlish approach to voting/XP?
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Aug 07, 2003 at 15:22 UTC

    Oh, I'm not saying it's measuring anything tangible. However, there's one case where noderep as by the current system is useful: nodes with rep < -1, esp rep < -4 or so.

    It works quite well as a deterrent for "fluff" and a way to control the tone. While it doesn't prevent anonymous trolling, I've found that that is mostly ignored here. Overall, PM has a striking tendency to put out flames quite quickly. I've very rarely seen the tone go beyond heated debated.

    To me, that's a big part of the appeal of PM.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

      However, there's one case where noderep as by the current system is useful: nodes with rep < -1, esp rep < -4 or so.

      How so? I mean, it might be useful if you could skip the nodes with negative XP, but in the perlmonks I visit, I don't see the reputation of a node until I vote on it.

      And unless I'm snobbish enough to go to the page listing my write ups often, I don't see the reputation of my nodes either. So how does a negative node reputation help, as you have to put in quite some effort to actually see the reputation of a node?

        By the loss of XP, in the current system. If we got rid of XP, we'd have to have a different venue. Yes, I know it isn't flawless. The entire system isn't flawless nor attempts or even claims to be. But saying "I have a lot of nodes with high reputations" is a marginally more useful statement than saying "I have a lot of XP" which is completely worthless.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

Re: Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP?
by liz (Monsignor) on Aug 07, 2003 at 13:42 UTC
    ...Replying in a thread that's two days old will hardly give you any XP, no matter how good it was...

    Maybe you should only be given XP as a voter when voting on nodes that are at least 24 hours old? Maybe that would encourage looking through the Monastery for old nodes that may be applicable.

    Similarly, maybe you should only be able to get XP as a voter on one node in a thread. As soon as you have voted once on a node in a thread, you will never get XP for a vote on another node in that thread.

    Liz

      Too artificial, and there's still an initiative to vote. Perhaps if casting a vote would cost you something. Money, XP, a pound of flesh, or something. Then only posts you really care about you would vote on.

      Abigail

        I'd wager virtually nobody would vote. The only exception being if the benefits of receiving a vote outweighed the costs of casting it, in which case small groups would agree to upvote eachother's posts. You'd also have more problems with multiple account sign-ups just to upvote nodes.

        If you want to make vote's more valuable, simply decrease the supply, then most people would use them more carefully.

        Or you could just get rid of the whole silly system. Or make XP private. Or forget about the whole thing ;-)

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://281879]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others meditating upon the Monastery: (4)
As of 2024-03-29 07:28 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found