Jeff

R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--
L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--

There are 10 levels. Ten seems like a good number because that's how many fingers people usually have, and fingers are excellent!

arturo's hints of dimensions and honorifics caught my attention. How about leaving these ten XP based levels, and adding another dimension to them, one somehow based on reputation?

This could use a degree scale of 1 to 10 (what else :-) calculated dynamically by looking at the average reputation of all users above level 1. If the worst avg rep was 3 and the best 33 the scale would look like this:

1 - - - - - - - - 10 (degree)

3 - - - - - - - - 33 (average rep)
[download]

Now imagine an extreme example of a friar with avg rep of 33 and a saint with avg rep of 3 illustrated by ranking them as a 10th degree Friar and 1st degree Saint. This would tell you something useful. Since both the degree scale and each user's avg rep vary, they could change in interesting ways.

Update: MeowChow suggested in cb that avg rep might not be the best measure. Maybe total reputation would be more accurate? I don't know. I'm just suggesting another dimension somehow based on reputation. The rest is details.

I must say that I like this proposal more than anything I've read in this thread yet. I just don't see the point of more than 10 levels. It's a scalability thing; sure there is gonna be some level bloat soon, but tack on another 10 levels, and there's gonna be more level bloat in ~6m-1y. I think you're just mitigating the problem rather than solving it.

On that note, is it a problem that we have level bloat? It just goes to prove that we have people that are either a) long timers, indicating a stable community, or b) intelligent, indicating a good community. I think it's both, IMNSHO.

This idea is cool. ++epoptai.

-marius

i agree, jeffa...

the "lower" levels make it interesting, help establish crediblily and, if you will, help Monks get establised within the Monestary community... once you've been around enough to reach the higher levels, and posted for that umpteenth time, it's obvious your not here for that extra five votes...

i think your idea is a good one footpad... besides half the fun will be in sheding the ol' one word titles for the more exotic formations of Perl Guru-ism...

magnus

I don't think that any of our active saints are here solely to get karma, that seems to miss the point. I think the point is just to keep things interesting. After all, XP doesn't actually *mean* anything. You'd still have our respect, merlyn, even if the whole voting system didn't exist. If it's just for fun, and for some it add more fun, why not do it?

(Anyway, then we can all stop seeing new "lets add more levels" nodes every few weeks. 8)

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...