Some people do. What's the harm in letting them? Perlmonks isn't exactly a zero-sum game. And if some people use point competition as a motivation, where's the harm? They still have to produce posts worthy of votes (and avoid posts that the community will net downvote). Good posts keeps Perlmonks vibrant.

Until there's concensus that XP is causing a significant problem, I feel that we should just allow that different people are motivated by different things, and move on.

True. And I am not in any way advocating scrapping the XP system. I just wanted to open debate on whether showing the actual XP number is a good thing or it PM might be better served by hiding the number and simply showing the level. My hope is that that would remove some of the focus on XP as a goal.

-ben

In some ways, I agree with you, knobunc. In others, I don't.

I think some people do get a little too tied up with the XP system. Take a look at this node by deprecated that just recently came up. (Specfically, view the page source of that node...way at the bottom...) I don't want to point fingers at deprecated, I just recalled the recent post. And I really doubt that the XP frenzy is really contained to just a few monks. I admit that I recently passed a level and the day before I did, I was more active on Perlmonks than I had been in a while, simply to get to that level just a little bit faster. Even when I'm not specifically working on Perl, I often log on (once a day, if possible) to see what's going on and shell out my votes for the day.

So, now that we've seen what an XP freak I am - why do I think XP is a good thing? Well, frankly, I remain highly active in Perlmonks because I'm after XP points. Granted, I like to help people, too, but it's nice to have something to show for your efforts. If it wasn't for the XP system, I think Perlmonks would suffer from a type of "Bystander Effect" where everyone stands around when someone needs help simply because everyone figured someone else will help. Just think of all the newbie questions that would go unanswered... ;) With the XP system in place, people are jumping up and down to help others - and I think that's what we need.

Obviously, the XP system isn't perfect (if you look up "Personality Voting," you can probably find a knock or two on it by merlyn), but I think it gives Perlmonks a net gain. I agree with your point and I like your concept, but I think getting rid of the XP system would hurt Perlmonks in the long run.

There's my two cents. ;)

- Sherlock

Skepticism is the source of knowledge as much as knowledge is the source of skepticism.

Displaying a users XP to the user is of particular importance because it describes the relationship they have achieved with the community, albeit in a simple one-dimensional numeric. If you had -50 XP, you are receiving a pretty strong signal. Likewise, if you had 5000 XP, you must be doing something right.

With respect to showing your XP for all to see, it is not strictly necessary, but since most would likely want to see how they are progressing with respect to other community members, had it not been visible historically, there would certainly be a movement to make these numbers visible to all. Competition for higher XP is, in this regard, healthy.

XP is not specifically a goal, unless you make it one. Perhaps someone could somehow "engineer" their posts to garner a lot of XP. This would likely involve helping out the community a lot. Is answering more questions to gain more XP a bad thing?

Don't forget, though, that you can't make votes appear out of thin air. Real people actually have to vote, so there is a moderating mechanism there. If people feel like they are being cheated somehow, or that that user is trying a little too hard, they can always use their votes in the negative capacity to discourage it.