Second, I'm not clear on who is ++-- the questions and the answers; I assume this would fall to the moderators. This seems fair to me; the section is intended to be a quality reference, and a more tyrannical hand is needed to keep it that way. (Chaotic democracy being fine for SOPW.) Should moderators receive a reward for their volunteer efforts in keeping up this section? It seems reasonable enough that the same chances of XP++-- should apply here, though I don't know if the moderators should lose XP for voting down a crappy post. Whether they vote it up or down, they are doing the job out of the goodness of their hearts. This absolutely opens up the door for abuse, but the pool of moderators/editors is probably small enough that the complaints of other monks would keep them in check.

Finally, I'd like to suggest that the promotion of good SOPW questions to Q&A not be done by just copying the ? over to Q&A with all its attendant threads. I see no problem with handing out lots of XP to people who volunteer to take a SOPW question and all its threads and rewrite into nicely formatted Q&A (with due credit of course, to the original posters). Doing that is a LOT of work, but lots of XP could be a great incentive.

e-mail neshura

I agree that the dispersion of werk amongst the pool of willing Monks would benefit the Q&A section greatly. I would love to do that kind of thing (like distilling entire threads into a clear Question and an authoritative verified Answer) whenever I have some time. Since Q&A should be established at an almost prohibitive threshold (in the name of concise accurate information both in Q's & A's), I recommend a drastic measure:
It costs 127 points to post any Q or A. The first 7 moderators to review the post can each award up to 31 points back to the author. If the total awarded back surpasses the initially docked 127, the post is inducted.

This way, crappy posts and spam are nearly impossible to have in the Q&A section. The cost of entry is significant (and cannot be engaged in indefinitely) but quality posters stand to gain significantly as well. This would keep the bar high and (although it might seem somewhat unfair) it would likely yield a slow growing, highly reliable section. This is where we could amass the core of PerlMonks' growing knowledge base as new Perl problems arise and are considered and solved and thoroughly described. I like very much the idea of such an elevated knowledge resource and an accordingly high risk involved in contribution. What do other Monks think? TTFN & Shalom.

-PipTigger

p.s. Byslexia is a Ditch!

We do need to keep the XP available for that section. Perhaps the posts could be in a state of limbo until an editor gives it his/her blessing; much like the posts needing the nod to make it to the The Monstary Gates. The XP award would not be given until the question/answer was scrutinized and deemed worthy. If the posts makes it then the XP is given.

But should the author be penalized if the post is not used? We can all make mistakes, and with all good intentions, inadvertantly give a wrong answer to a question. Typically, this is handled by others posting corrections and (perhaps) voting the post down. This could potentionally lead to many XP taken away. So I feel a -1XP for a post that is deemed not up to standards would not be overboard. It would be nice if the editor could communicate the reason for the post rejection as well.

Roy Alan

"I quit; I concede. Tanj on your silly game!" -- Louis Wu

There's one other category of answer that might not be used - redundant. If the answers aren't visible until they've been moderated, then there are likely going to be multiple answers. The moderators should be able to rejcet an answer without penalizing the author - something like a "it's otherwise fine, but we already have an answer to use" kind of thing. Otherwise, I agree with a small penalty for unused posts.

- Ozymandias

You are absolutely right! Certainly noone should be penalized for submitting a redundant correct answer.

Roy Alan

"I quit; I concede. Tanj on your silly game!" -- Louis Wu

You make a good point! No one should be penalized if they submit something that is of good quality, but there is already something there, also I feel, however, that if multiple answers are submitted to a question and all of them are good, then all of them should be posted. I think it is to the readers advantage to have multiple answers since one style can be easier for them to read than another (let them make the choice).

-- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
   Go Bells!!

• New questions to Q&A will post to a "New Questions" area. The user will enter a title and/or category for the question, but final titles and category placements will be decided by editors.
• Anyone (maybe only non-anonymous monksr?) may post an answer to new questions.
• Answers may receive votes from qualified users
  • Users must have a minimum XP to be qualified to vote on Q&A answers.
  • Possible votes are:
    • "Great Answer!" - When approved by editors, the author will receive +1 XP (or more) for each of these votes. (This should be rare.)
    • "Good as-is" - Normal 33% chance of +1 at vote time
    • "Okay - needs work" - no XP side-effects
    • "Unacceptable" - Normal 33% chance of -1 at vote time
    • "Penalize" - When approved by editors, the author will receive -1 XP (or more) for each of these votes. (This should be uncommon, and only for truly worthless posts.)
  • Qualified users should be encouraged to use their Q&A votes wisely. Some ideas:
    • No "voting-out" bonus for Q&A votes and/or
    • Small number of Q&A votes (separate from "regular" votes) and/or
    • Qualified users earn XP for reading and voting on all new answers (not per vote)
• Answerers may receive XP from votes (as described above)
• After a certain time (one week?), the editors will remove the question from the "New" area...
  • moving it to an appropriate category (or removing it altogether),
  • giving it a correct, useful title,
  • redacting the best answers to maintain a high-quality standard,
  • approving "Great" and "Yuck" votes to affect the author's XP.
• Users who wish to post answers to non-New questions may do so, but those answers are subject to editorial approval before appearing. Answers considered good enough to be added "posthumously" will likely earn an XP bonus for their authors. (This will likely be very rare.)

I think this format will satisfy most of the other suggestions:
It allows anyone to participate in posting answers.
It keeps the "rapid response" to questions.
It allows those who answer questions to be greatly rewarded or greatly punished according to quality.
It allows a team of editors to maintain a high-quality resource without requiring lots of time or overly frequent attention.

Regards,

Russ

-- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
   Go Bells!!

Personally, I think is a bit much. I don't know if you would want to have a question sitting around waiting for a moderator to approve it. What if none are around for a day, or even a few hours. This could mean someone misses a good answer in a timely manner. I also don't think that moderators should be giving XP to answers unless it is with their regular votes. Things could be tracked so if someone consistently gives bad answers, some action could be taken (NO ANSWERS FOR YOU, 1 YEAR!) to help avoid people just making life hard for the moderators.

Cheers,
KM

I don't think having an answer take a while in Q&A is such a bad thing. Q&A is meant for common, general questions which will help many people down the line. As such, the answers should be fairly general and definitely well thought-out. These two things require more time than firing off a quickly hacked solution or workaround. Questions regarding how to do something very specific should be put in SOPW, since the whole site is set up to prioritize those questions. I still don't think the warning in Q&A that many valid questions are inappropriate for that section is big enough; perhaps mentioning that answers are likely to take longer and not relate as specifically to the problem will discourage people (especially AMs) from posting off-topic questions.

That is a good point about editors not being available, however, I have an idea to help prevent that. How about people sign up to aprove answers daily? And some kind of XP reward could be awarded for people that sign up to be editors. And to make sure that the editors can be trusted, they have to have over some minimum of XP points (300 is my suggestion). I feel that this could solve your concern.

As far as editors giving out XP, why not, if they are qualified to be editors then I feel that they have some kind of authority to give small amounts of XP.

-- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
   Go Bells!!

Cheers,
KM