Re: A Proposal for Additional Levels

I wouldn't mind if it was implemented. I think it's good to keep the upper levels from being disproportionately populated. It makes the concept more realistic. Thanks to data in an earlier post (++atcroft), I could graph the population of each level. With the current system, the populations drop quite rapidly as the levels increase, except for the overpopulated level 10, and higher than expected populations at levels 5 and 6. With the new proposal, the populations drop rapidly again, but level off fairly quickly around level 5, and then slowly drop as levels increase (except for a little higher than expected populations at levels 6,7,8 and 10). All in all, though, a better distribution, I think.

ysth made a comment about needing 40 levels in the future. Hopefully he was just joking. I'm thinking that it wouldn't be a good idea to keep adding levels; not that many anyway. But I can see the eventual need for some adjustments. Basically, I can see three ways of doing this.

Keep the proposed number of levels. After a time, they will likely start to get top heavy again. Increase the threshhold for all levels by the same percentage. There might be a problem in that the threshhold to becoming a novice, acolyte, sexton, etc, would all increase also. Maybe not a lot, but it would then take longer to get started up the ladder. Maybe that would be seen as a problem, maybe not. Personally I don't see it as a problem; I moved up the first few levels in a matter of a few days. Stretching that out a bit shouldn't be a problem.
If that was indeed a problem, it might be solved be keeping the same number of levels, the novice threshhold could remain 20, and the rest could be increased by an exponentially increasing percentage.
Perhaps a better way would be to every so often add a new level to accomodate the ever higher reaching monks. Hopefully "every so often" could be measured in years. Maybe it would be best to start with less than 22 levels now, to make it easier to add more later. Although I think an even better way would be to go to different levels of saints, as Happy-the-monk suggested. They could be added one at a time, as needed.

Additionally, I agree with Elian's idea to make votes worth less potential XP the higher up you go. I think the value of a saint or other high rank should be based more on technical merit than showing up and voting every day. But, voting is important, and this would allow the higher level monks to continue to leave their mark by voting on quality posts. If you just reduced the number of votes at the higher levels, they couldn't do that.

I don't agree with Elian's idea to allow XP to rot. Once you've "earned" it, it should be your's. His point might be equivalent to "What have you done for us lately?". But if you stop participating, you will be passed up eventually. And if you "earned" your XP with high quality posts, why should you lose your reputation?

I also think grinder's idea to allow you to pick your own title at some level of XP is interesting.

If a poll is eventually run on this, as Tii suggests, I was wondering: Can the polling system ignore AM's? It might even be good to allow the vote only to higher levels, say above ... let's see...my XP=599...level=friar...oh, Friar maybe? Yeah, Friar, that sounds good ;) Seriously, though, for as major of a change as this, more weight should somehow be given to those who have invested more time in the Monestary.

All in all, a very interesting proposal, one that should be seriously and thoughfully considered.

TheEnigma

Comment on Re: A Proposal for Additional Levels

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Re^2: A Proposal for Additional Levels by belg4mit (Prior) on Oct 26, 2004 at 03:04 UTC
Bah, rotting is deflation. That's perfectly natural. The problem with is implementing it. You'd need to know when each XP was awarded, it appears to currently only keep a running total. (think of it as maintaining a web site counter with an entry for every hit so that you can say: visitors within the last XX days) `-- I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.`	[reply]
Re^3: A Proposal for Additional Levels by sfink (Deacon) on Oct 26, 2004 at 04:44 UTC
Not if you rely on randomization: give every XP point a 0.1% chance per day of expiring. Older XP will then get a higher probability of dying off than younger (an XP is dead with probability `1-0.999^age`). You don't need to recompute everyone's totals every day, either, although to be completely accurate you would have to recompute on any day that a user's XP total changed. I'm not too crazy about the XP rot idea, though. I think the XP ramp should be closer to quadratic. Tune it so that the top two or three levels are empty (give everyone something to reach for). Or better yet, make the upper levels require more than just XP -- make people earn a certain number of "quest" points. Quests could be proposed by anyone (including monks eligible for advancement); when a monk claims to have accomplished a quest, other monks vote on how much credit should be given. Your vote would be weighted by the logarithm of your own XP or something (or just by your level, if XP requirements are exponential!). If some minimum number of monks have voted and the average value has stabilized for a few days, award the points. The sorts of quests I'm thinking of are things like writing a review, releasing a CPAN module, writing a test suite for someone else's module, implementing a feature for the perlmonks site, etc. Hmmm... or in some cases, deleting a CPAN module (by merging its functionality with another). Just a thought.	[reply]
Re^3: A Proposal for Additional Levels by johndageek (Hermit) on Oct 27, 2004 at 17:50 UTC
Why not have points begin to erode at a very small percentage of the members total after a certain period of time since last vote was cast. This would encourage voting on a relatively regular basis. I also like the idea of 20 votes. They should be used as a powerful tool to be applied only after some thought, not as a bookmark or as an attaboy (er attagirl, umm attamonk?). A positive comment in a reply is a good reward from another esteemed monk. That comment plus a vote (+ or -) puts a much higher value on those votes, not only for the writer of the nodes but for others who want to see the truly popular/interesting nodes. My take on the game of climbing the ladder – I am generally not a game player, but it is interesting to watch my meandering climb up the ratings, with the occasional gain in power, it does add to the experience of being a member of the Monastery. If the scale is to become sliding because too many people have beat the game and now find it no fun, why not create another game that only people in the top ranks have access to? An additional game at the upper levels would prompt those who need to beat a game or a system have something to look forward to, while leaving those of us who plod along lending a hand where we can, and gaining knowledge in the many ways the Monastery offers are able to keep track of where we are in the scheme of things. One other point, any time you put someone on a scale, they will pay attention to it. I believe many people (myself included) will take offense to being randomly bumped downward just to make more room at the top of the scale. Personally if this is the route taken, I would like the ability to opt out of the XP scale. What could the additional game be? Perhaps as suggested elsewhere in this post, XP beyond an upper limit in the highest rank can be used to buy additional powers. Things like signature options, particular home node modifications, option to put a picture in the front-page rotation, be able to buy various icons (also suggested elsewhere) or with enough points, the ability to post an icon others can buy for their home nodes. Obviously I have no idea what effort implementation would take, but these are my 2 cents worth. Enjoy! Dageek	[reply]
Re^4: A Proposal for Additional Levels by belg4mit (Prior) on Oct 27, 2004 at 20:47 UTC
You don't seem to be making much sense here. It's not an absolute i.e; rate monastery member Bar on a scale from one to ten. It's an open-ended scale like temperature. At one point we thought ice through boiling water was all you needed, later one realized that there was much more outside of that; you have ice and then you have Antarctica, there's boiling water and then there's volcanoes and stars. It's not "a random bumping downward" and you might just also go up a notch (on the numbered scale). In any event the number of XP you possess won't change. `-- I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.`	[reply]
Re^2: A Proposal for Additional Levels by ysth (Canon) on Oct 26, 2004 at 16:43 UTC
ysth made a comment about needing 40 levels in the future. Hopefully he was just joking. No, I wasn't hopefully joking; I was joking in earnest.	[reply]
Re^3: A Proposal for Additional Levels by TheEnigma (Pilgrim) on Oct 26, 2004 at 16:56 UTC
lol :) Even though I know one should tend to avoid the word "hopefully", since it's usually used in the wrong way, sometimes it slips through. No need to question your humor this time! (Hopefully not next time, either ;) TheEnigma	[reply]