This has been suggested before, and is a nice idea. I think the main concern about doing it officially was the bit about it being a pre-requisite for level advancement. The level system is already criticised for causing trouble by being more than just a reward system for participation, adding a test at each level would make that much worse (IMHO).
Also, I can't image who would mark all the tests.
In the spirit of open source software, you could start your own level grading system and post peoples results on your homepage. Then people could say they had been graded to kiat's level three, or whatever... ____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it. | [reply] |
I disagree, for two reasons. (Actually, there's a third, that this sounds like "standardized testing", but let's not dwell on why I think that's a flawed notion as well.)
First, I think people place too much emphasis on XP as it is, and this would make it worse. Don't lose sight of the fact that XP is just a number in a database, a figment of vroom's imagination. As he himself stated, a million XP and 25 cents will buy you a cup of coffee. (OK, maybe a $1.40 at Starbucks. ;-) XP says nothing about Perl coding skills, or general knowledge, or whether you're a worthy person.
Second, the idea that you must perform a task or cross a gauntlet to "advance" is, IMHO, counter to one of this site's main strengths: voluntary participation. I come here to ask and answer questions, and participate in occasional chit-chat, as my time allows. I'd hate for it to become a race or proving ground.
Personally, I think the existing voting/experience system works really well. There have been many suggestions for changes, but I haven't found any of them convincing.
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We had the same discussion over at JavaJunkies a while back. To echo my thoughts there...
I believe that the experience system is based on involvement in the community, not just on perl related knowledge. I'd far rather see people gain experience for contributing to the site and helping others out than just passing a test.
Note that my stance on this issue has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I'd most likely lose XP if we switched over to a test-based system ;-) | [reply] |
This opens up the door to a few novelty ideas too.. each submitter could submit a block of (pre-tested) code, and the site could execute it to ensure that a pre-defined list of inputs match the pre-determined set of outputs. The site could profile each person's submission (via Benchmark or something) and people would vote on their favorites (most elegant, most readable, most obfuscated, etc.) along with the system-chosen fastest and/or most CPU-friendly.
Even if it isn't used as a supplement to site experience, it would still be pretty fun. Maybe we need a more flexible XP system ("medals") that would be awarded to people for exceptional posts or as they win categories.
In this example, the trick would be doing it securely. Safe.pm is pretty safe, but only if you eliminate quite a few useful opcodes (e.g. eval and sprintf). Maybe "Safe" versions of these can be written in Perl.
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