in reply to Ranking the Saints by XP Efficiency

I don't think all posts are created equal. For example, I'd be willing to bet that the number of votes a post receives is a strong function of the depth of the post in a thread. My guess is that Re^7: posts receive very few votes as compared with root nodes and Re: replies. If a monk has a tendency to post deep into a thread, that monk's XP/Posts number would be lower that a monk who tends not to dive deep.

It would be interesting to see the average Rep for posts as a function of depth for a given monk. Since this information is not available on the Saints in our book page, this would be more compute-intensive exercise (not to mention that the typical monk can not see another's Rep data).

  • Comment on Re: Ranking the Saints by XP Efficiency

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Re^2: Ranking the Saints by XP Efficiency
by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Jan 15, 2016 at 08:18 UTC
    While that's true, the OP's stated intent is to determine the "XP efficiency" of the various monks. If deeper posts tend to receive fewer votes (and I agree that this is almost certainly the case), then that just means that making deep posts is "inefficient". Treating deep (or late, for that matter) replies differently would only serve to mask that inefficiency, which seems counter to the OP's purpose.
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Re^2: Ranking the Saints by XP Efficiency
by 1nickt (Canon) on Jan 14, 2016 at 21:11 UTC

    Yes.

    Other factors include time of day, weekend or not -- the longer a thread is "recent" the more views and therefore votes it will get -- and probably several more I can't even think of.

    It's definitely not a scientific tool, but the law of averages makes it somewhat useful as a progress bar, I think. For example, the depth-of-post factor should apply to all Monks roughly equally, if we assume that all Monks behave the same in terms of how deep into a thread they would be likely to post.


    The way forward always starts with a minimal test.
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      if we assume that all Monks behave the same in terms of how deep into a thread they would be likely to post
      Agreed, but I tend to tire easily, whereas BrowserUk tends to be tenacious. My guess is his XP/Posts would crush mine if deep posts were excluded: 
      +---------------------------------------------------------------------
+-----------------+
| Pos | St. | Monk name    |  XP  |     Level      |  Age  | XP/Age | 
+Posts | XP/Posts |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------
+-----------------+
|    1     2 BrowserUk     159,881        Pope (28)   4,971  36.0644  
+22,404    6.9144 |
|    8    20 toolic         43,023      Bishop (22)   3,130  14.7489  
+ 3,597   11.0906 |

      [download]
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[d/l]

        Well, that would be an interesting question. Clearly the deeper posts tend to acquire fewer votes, but is it all because of depth, or it is (also) because the perceived quality of the posts is greater the "shallower" they are?

        Follow-up posts tend in general to be progressively less pithy, more OT, and in some cases, less courteous.

        But remember that you only need one upvote to gain the first XP on a post, so prolific output of varied quality may have an advantage over less frequent, higher quality posts. Certainly it seems to me that the overall "winners" are those who strike that balance the most.


        The way forward always starts with a minimal test.
[reply]

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