in reply to RE: How about
in thread How about

Another statistic of interest is the total rep for a thread. An active thread with lots of interesting responses can be of interest/teach us even if none of the individual nodes was a top scorer.

Together we are more then our parts...

I was originally thinking total rep / # of posts, but then I thought that an active thread (with more posts) is not inherently "less interesting" then one with only a few, good posts. Individual taste, I guess, and the ability to filter noise for signal.

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Rep counting
by footpad (Abbot) on Oct 19, 2000 at 02:00 UTC
    What if...

    You could abstain from voting on a message to learn its reputation? This would be different than not voting. It would cost a vote and prevent you from voting on the message in the future.

    Thus, it might be possible for newer members to learn which messages are interesting to the other members without down-voting or artifically inflating a node's reputation?

    -- footpad
    ...But only if your batteries run out...

    Update: *chagrin* I should have used Super Search, not Search, before posting...Well, at least I know it wasn't a completely bad idea. :-}

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RE: Rep counting
by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Oct 18, 2000 at 21:29 UTC
    *Total* rep might not be desirable. A thread with 50 nested replies each with 1 or 2 rep could rack up 75 in total rep and have little useful content. I wonder if there's a useful metric we could apply here..? Average? Max? Some formula that comes up with a totally different "score" for ranking threads?
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      Fastolfe, I agree that total rep can be misleading with lots of replies with a minimal rep each. However, here's my thinking - if a thread can generate a much larger number of replies then average, and they are good enough to get at least a few votes apiece, then the thread as a whole is probably rather interesting.

      A "Max" rep works well, but right now it's the equivilent of "Best Nodes" and just reading the whole thread.

      I am not so fond of average, since I think a good thread and the same thread with one extra neutral reply shouldn't slip significantly. And a good thread with one extra bad reply could kill it.

      Now, if I was a statistician, perhaps an average of reputations that only counts nodes that are within a standard deviation of the average reputation of the thread. That would mean that one single reply doesn't make a mediochre thread great (and that single node could hit the best list anyway if it's good enough). It also means that a good thread with a few off-topic or wrong posts doesn't get obliterated.

      But that sounds computationally expensive with possibly not enough return. Hmmm.

      =Blue
      ...you might be eaten by a grue...

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      How about total votes (excepting nulls) next to the reputation?
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