he says he is being cheated!?!

Where? When?

(Hint:'devalued' ne 'cheated'. eg. You devalue this place by posting anonymously; but its not cheating. )

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With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I knew I was on the right track :)

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

I love to pull apart statistics. There's a wonderful phrase that turns up CFO reports and national Treasury stats all the time:

... the rate of share decline/recession is falling.

If you hear it said or read it quickly without thinking about it, it sounds like good news. It sounds like something is getting better.

What it really means is, things are getting worse more slowly. But still getting worse.

Take a magic number calculated by an undisclosed formula; wrap it in a few plausible but nonsensical pseudo-axioms, and multiply it by some random percentage of chance; what do you call the results?

I call it: something that no one can check or verify or challenge. I'd prefer no stats to bad ones.

Yes, now I see the similarity between SoB amd TIOBE: Both rankings that could be informative but are based on obscure measurements and therefore saying nothing.

I had misunderstood your OP as if you were complaining that your XP is not equal to the sum of votes collected by your posts. The latter would make for nice ranking, too :-)

Both rankings that could be informative but are based on obscure measurements and therefore saying nothing.

Indeed.

There is a way around it. If everyone just makes their view of their posting history available (say pasted on their home page or scratchpad), the secrecy imperative disappears and we users rest control back from those who think we need to be protected from the truth.

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With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I knew I was on the right track :)

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

Maybe I call it a silly game? Its about participation not node reputation...

proposal: Maybe the homenode should list a Total node reputation: 10:-1/+11 that is different from XP?

Maybe I call it a silly game? Its about participation not node reputation...

Hm. If it's just about participation; let the spammers in, they'll participate this place to death.

(IMO) If XP serves any purpose at all, it is to record our peers response to our participation. A measure not of us as individuals; nor as programmers per se; nor Perl gurus; but a measure of others appreciation of the time expended to help others; to produce original, or interesting content; and yes. Participate.

I'm aware of the fairy votes and attendance votes intended to encourage initial participation; but they cut off at some pretty low level. After that it should be down to votes. But that, like so much else here, is not just set in stone; but fossilised.

Once reminded by tye's (non)link, I (very) vaguely remember reading about $NORM -- possibly 13 years ago, maybe a little later -- and thinking that's shite, but house rules; and I've probably never considered it again until last night.

I was following chacham's thread; lanX' bit about guessing other peoples node scores and logarithmic scales; and thought a summary of my score distribution might be useful; so I posted it. When I saw the disparity between my summed total and the official XP tally I was taken aback. (I actually summed the score/count pairs manually on a calculator to check I hadn't done something stupid in my code that wasn't jumping out at me.) I remembered that XP != votes -- though not the details, so I asked.

And, had Tye's (or anyone's) reply been "Did you forget about Voting/Experience System"?; my response would almost certainly have been a simple: "Yes. That suck's, but c'est la vie", and moved on.

But when the response is a non-answer dripping with supercilious sarcasm and YetAnotherCharacterAttack; it gets my back up; so this continued thread is the response.

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With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I knew I was on the right track :)

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

I call it: something that no one can check or verify or challenge. I'd prefer no stats to bad ones.

Then close your eyes, #1. What could possibly more revolting than the winner bitching about not winning enough? #Sportsmanship

Then close your eyes, #1. What could possibly more revolting than the winner bitching about not winning enough? #Sportsmanship

Take your own advice there jealousy , namecalling and other such nonsense will not stop the discussion