in reply to Googlish approach to voting/XP?

Abigail-II said in Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP?: ...There is no correlation between having a high XP and having Perl knowledge. XP is not a nice way to judge someone...

I think there is some correlation between having XP and having Perl knowledge, statistically speaking anyway. And I don't think it's about judginge people, but rather about judging content.

What I find informative is how people have voted on a particular node, to find out the "Reputation" of that node. This, together with the XP of the author of the node, is a good indication to me of whether what was said in the node, makes sense or not.

Now, currently, the only way to find out the Reputation of a node, is to vote for it, either up or down. But if I don't know whether it makes any sense, how can I vote in a sensible way?

I would therefore be in favor of being able to "ask" for the Reputation of the node. Such a request would cost me one vote and never change the Reputation of the node. In the end, I should learn because I get an indication of the node's reputation from my peers. So therefore it makes sense to me to have a the same chance of increasing my own XP as I would have if I would have voted up or down.

So for me, the options would be: 

    --  tell me  ++

Liz

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP?
by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on Aug 06, 2003 at 22:20 UTC
    liz,
    Don't confuse XP with a node's rep. They are different things. You will often hear monk's say that XP is meaningless. It isn't. XP allows you to consider nodes, add a picture to your home node, post questions to Categorized Questions and Answers, etc. The correlation between a monk's XP and their Perl knowledge is meaningless.

    When you talk about correlating a node's reputation to the authors XP, you have to consider a lot of things.

  • Was it front paged - automatically skewed numbers
  • Was the author one that gets popularity votes?
  • Was the author one that gets hate votes?
  • Was it one of the first replies?

    And then there is the story of the Saint that has 0 writeups. Yes, you heard me correctly - not a single node.

    Now there is no argument that some of the very high ranking monks are there because they are also very good at Perl. There are some that are there because they are very prolific in writeups which may or may not be of great quality. As long as they are not bad they will likely get one or two ++ from people trying to spend their votes in hopes of getting XP.

    I have personally received many ++'s on a node that was wrong. Why - because of my ranking. Evil begets evil.

    Ok - rant over. I see nothing wrong with casting a vote for the ability to see a node's reputation without affecting it's current value. It is not an original idea - it has been brought up before. I would care to wager that the reason it hasn't been done because the benefit doesn't seem to outweight the work. The people who are doing the work probably feel that there are "bigger fish to fry". Now, you could ask to become a PM devil. See what work is involved - volunteer to take it on yourself.

    If any of this seems inflamatory, I apologize, it is not meant to be.

    Cheers - L~R

[reply]
      ...When you talk about correlating a node's reputation to the authors XP, you have to consider a lot of things...

      Indeed. As with everything in life, make up your own mind. So there is no XP * Rep = Sense formula, it is only an indication. But knowing the Rep of a node gives you more to decide on, that's all.

      ...And then there is the story of the Saint that has 0 writeups...

      Which is probably a votebot. At least that votebot will be able to get XP without skewing the reputation of nodes with the "tell me" option. And fortunately, nobody will need to correlate its XP with any writeups, so who cares? ;-)

      ... Now, you could ask to become a PM devil. See what work is involved - volunteer to take it on yourself...

      Where do I sign up? Actually, I don't think the actual implementation would be such a big problem. The work will be in the proper documentation and the "cultural" change that needs to follow to make it a success.

      Liz

[reply]
        liz,
        I purposely didn't name names in my post, but I assure you the Saint with no writeups is not a votebot. My point was there are so many factors to consider in trying your approach that it seems like a waste. But that is my opinion. I am no more right or wrong than you are. I believe you can send a /msg to the pmdev group to inquire about joining the team.

        Cheers - L~R

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Re: Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP?
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Aug 06, 2003 at 22:37 UTC
    What I find informative is how people have voted on a particular node, to find out the "Reputation" of that node. This, together with the XP of the author of the node, is a good indication to me of whether what was said in the node, makes sense or not.

    I disagree.

    I have a node with a reputation of 14. What useful information can you deduce from that number?

    Update: Exactly. All of the other information is available already. I'm not sure the reputation of any single node adds significant data.

[reply]
      ...I have a node with a reputation of 14. What useful information can you deduce from that number?

      By itself? Nothing.

      Together with your XP? Something.

      Together with knowing you're doing stuff on quite a number of Perl projects outside of PerlMonks? Still a bit more.

      Without reading the node in question? Nothing.

      It's all about content and making (!) an opinion about it.

      Liz

[reply]

        I believe the word you're lookibng for is context ;-) Something every good perlmonk should be familiar with. --
        I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.

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Re: Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP?
by demerphq (Chancellor) on Aug 06, 2003 at 22:35 UTC

    I would therefore be in favor of being able to "ask" for the Reputation of the node. Such a request would cost me one vote and never change the Reputation of the node.

    I have to say that this is one of the most interesting twists on the voting/rep/xp subject that I've seen in a long time. There have been many nodes where I would have gladly given up my ability to vote for the node (and a vote from my store) to see the rep. In a sense its like casting a "no-vote" or spoiling your ballot.

    I hope this idea gets implemented and if I find the time I'll be sure to look into making a patch.


    ---
    demerphq

    <Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...
[reply]
[d/l]
      I believe I suggested that before in one of the recurring "null vote" discussions.

      Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]

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