I suppose you could think of it as an estimate of experience revised over time ;-)

I think you've quite hit upon it, adrianh.

To say that "experience" herein reflected that in the real-world would be an oversimplification, for there are many who visit the site who are deserving of much, much higher rank than myself, but for whatever reason have not been able to spend much time here, and thus do not yet have an XP rating that would come close to reflecting their actual experience and assistance to the perl community at large.

By my (perhaps limited) understanding, "experience" or XP herein would, for the most part, seem to be an estimation of the helpfulness of a particular individual in regards to the community as made by the community, revised each time the individual participates in the community. Factors that can affect the increase or decrease of XP are probably best covered in the page describing the Voting/Experience System.

My advice, for what it's worth: don't worry about XP, and if you must, consider it behaviour modificiation: good behaviour gets ++ votes, bad behaviour gets -- votes.

I just reviewed your posts, and the feedback you got from many Monks (specifically adrianh) on your request for a module review was extremely detailed and valuable. So ignore XP and slurp up all of that excellent feedback, learn, read the fine manuals, write more code, update your module on CPAN, read lots of nodes here, reply to nodes as your ability permits.

It's sort of like my philosophy in life .. don't stop to analyze too much, just get out there and do some fun stuff. Life is short: get busy!

Pavlovian it is, although some of us drool more than others.

jdporter
The 6th Rule of Perl Club is -- There is no Rule #6.

You're making one fundamental mistake: PerlMonks isn't like reality.
It's like Dungeons and Dragons.

Close... It's more like Survivor^TM!

But Survivor^™ is reality television so you're wrong. :-)

---
print map { my ($m)=1<<hex($_)&11?' ':'';
$m.=substr('AHJPacehklnorstu',hex($_),1) }
split //,'2fde0abe76c36c914586c';
[download]

Losing/gaining points means nothing. The XP system is used to determine the quality of a writeup through the use of user-submitted votes. The graduated system of personal experience is directly (yet not, see 2 XP points for signing in, etc) related to the content you share on Perl Monks. If you have a low XP, it doesn't mean you know nothing; inversely, having 3000 doesn't make you a Saint, either.

I hope you get the most out of Perl Monks.

John J Reiser
newrisedesigns.com

I hope you get the most out of Perl Monks.

Thanks John (newrisedesigns). I think I am. It's such an awesome find. I don't know why I never got involved before. What an awesome group of people you are!

--
Tommy Butler, a.k.a. Tommy

Since promotions around here are based on XP, I think the current design achieves your goal. Besides, I don't think much gets heavily --ed around here except extremely unpopular content, totally wrong answers, or intentionally misleading posts.

---
print map { my ($m)=1<<hex($_)&11?' ':'';
$m.=substr('AHJPacehklnorstu',hex($_),1) }
split //,'2fde0abe76c36c914586c';
[download]

Since promotions around here are based on XP

I hope you mean "promotions to new levels", not "additional rewards and responsibilities." :)

What most monks abjectly, completely, disastrously, unbelievably, impossibly, crazily seem to fail to grasp is the idea that having XP in such a prominent role makes it perhaps the most easily recognized element representing Perlmonks. AND, programmers are not the most stable of individuals especially when they come to a site like this to chill out after getting nauseated by information ovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvverload (that was just my keyboard at this crazy too hot cafe!) / crazy customer / crazy suits / crazy girl problems and they get a neat idea post it, and then flamed out.

(You'd think more people than an enlightened few would figure this out: XP has of course NO OBJECTIVE REALITY but we are talking about psychological perceptions, not reality here.) So let's add to vroom's saying, "..but 8,000 XP WILL buy you a front row seat in the Chatterbox."

So yeah, XP doesn't matter. But I also dislike seeing XP go down (even though I sometimes spend days on end at PM and sometimes like just now, months away..) and have to fight the urge to delete posts when it seems they get minuses for no good reason.

I figure I learned some pattern recognition skills about PM and have no need to get a psychological twinge at seeing minuses. XP works like a sledgehammer on those who believe it, and you can quote me on that (just please don't vote me down). Smile!