It's all conjecture and theory, coloured by our own views of the situation. As I said elsewhere in the thread, I created a game out of the XP that mere reputation alone could not have fulfilled. Of course, now that there are no more levels to attain, I'm hooked. Which is part of what XP can do.

One of the most basic needs a human being has is the need to feel accepted. Voting allows members of this community to accept others, while XP shows an individual member that their contributions are valued. In fact, I think this was exactly what they had in mind when deciding what activities got XP: 1) just showing up can give you 2XP a day (25% chance). Just showing up (and presumably reading something when you got here) was considered valuable, and you get points for it. 2) Voting. Showing others how valued they are is valuable. You get XP for it (25% chance). 3) Posting something. Just merely by posting something and having it, even temporarily, end up with a positive rating can give you XP (100% chance). 4) The more people find it valuable, the more XP you get.

This is the positive feedback that some people need in order to feel accepted and valued in this community.

And the converse - some people end up with huge negative XP's. Usually this is because they're being disruptive, although smaller negatives are often just because the newbie isn't fully aware of the traditions and customs (aka "culture") of this community. Eventually, those that don't or won't conform to this culture will get disgusted by the continual disapproval they are getting, and generally leave.

Eventually, generally by a "sainthood"-ish timeframe (usually earlier), an individual has shown him/herself as such a valued part of the community that they no longer need that feedback to feel accepted. The symbiosis is complete - the community has found a new member who is a huge plus to the community while the individual has found a social circle which fulfills his/her needs to feel accepted and valued. XP is just a measure of that until the individual feels it on their own.

In reply to Re^4: Zen and the art of ignoring XP by Tanktalus
in thread Zen and the art of ignoring XP by DaWolf

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.