We may differ in our notions of usefulness.

I think that this periodic discussion might be more fruitful if eXPerience were named something like Site Contribution. Because that is pretty much what it measures, and what it is intended to increase.

Believe it or not, contributing wonderful nodes that nobody reads contributes very little value to the users of the site. Contributing an obvious node with useful information that many people read contributes a lot more. (Where the site is measured in terms of value to our actual users, and not a minority of very knowledgable ones.) The relative XP ratings of the two nodes reflect that.

The system is obviously imperfect, but it works fairly well for that goal. It doesn't work on everyone - for instance it has no apparent effect on you. But it affects you indirectly because it contributes to the site's success and that success in turn creates an atmosphere that draws people like yourself.

(An amusing aside. None of the top posters seem to me to be very much motivated by XP. I find that slightly amusing...)

Other voting systems evolved at other sites for other goals. Generally most of them accomplish their stated goal reasonably well. Most of them do not accomplish the goals that other sites set out as well as they do their own. This is somewhat natural. Success should be measured in the context of the goals of the system.

Therefore, other than suggesting that the highly misleading word experience be replaced by something else, I have no major objections to having the current meaningless measure being used.

In reply to Re: Re: Googlish approach to voting/XP? by tilly
in thread Googlish approach to voting/XP? by ajdelore

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