Re (tilly) 1: Idea's

The decision to not make node reputations generally visible is intentional. But it seems to be one of the more commonly questioned design decisions. I am agnostic on changing that.

However the ability to sort nodes by reputation does exist. For instance here are my nodes, sorted by reputation. You may not know the reps, but it is guaranteed that RE (tilly) 2 (benford): Spooky math problem has a lower reputation than The nature of work. (In fact as of the time of this writing, the reps are -1 and 84 respectively.)

However this is less useful than you might think. The reputation of a node reflects many things other than quality. When it was posted to a thread. How accessible it was to the majority of voters. Whether or not people agreed or disagreed. How long ago it was posted. (As the population of PM grows there is overall rating inflation.) So take ratings with more than a couple of grains of salt.

As for the scribing area, that has also come up. I really don't like it. The time I spend here is volunteer time. I already knew Perl before I came here, I don't want to jump artificial hoops to prove that I know it. Were that kind of system in place, I would never have bothered making it beyond scribe.

If you want challenges, here are some.

Write a useful class that uses tie.
Perl's hashing algorithm is O(n*n) worst case. Demonstrate that by finding a data-set that achieves this worst case. (If you do it right you don't even need to know what Perl's hashing algorithm actually is!)
Find a bug in a CPAN module or in perl. Produce a patch.

For more just look in SoPW. :-)

Comment on Re (tilly) 1: Idea's

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Re: Re (tilly) 1: Idea's by coreolyn (Parson) on Dec 24, 2000 at 20:10 UTC
Otay, On sorting the posts -- oops my bad! :) On the testing . . . The last thing I'd want to suggest is anything that would detract folks like yourself from participating on this site. In the final analysis it is people like yourself that make the site work. My idea evolves more from the bottom looking up, and seeing that perlmonks is extremely rich fertile ground for developing new perl people, and knowing how such level-testing can provide some organizational control as well as self-gratification. Simple testing would not be meant to be a roadblock to advancement, but more as a general gauge of apptitude that would give the lower level folk like myself some sense of where they fit (It could also assist in allowing new highly expirienced perlmonks a faster road to advancement). While the current expirience system does this to some extent, there's no way I should be at monk level quite yet. I got to this level more by perl advocacy and voting then by perl knowledge, and I know it. If there was some way to put the expirience levels more in lines with Tom Christiansens perl levels (sorry can't find the link at the moment) I think it might be of more value to the users. The team challenges was just an off the cuff idea, that stemmed more from picturing all the perlmonks in a massive 'tug-of-code-war'. It made me smile so I thought I'd throw the idea out there coreolyn Duct tape devotee.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re (tilly) 1: Ideas by chipmunk (Parson) on Dec 25, 2000 at 00:38 UTC
I think that the PerlMonk levels aren't meant to be in line with TomC's Perl levels. TomC's Perl levels directly measure skill and knowledge of Perl. However, the PerlMonk levels measure experience on the PerlMonk's website, which only indirectly includes knowledge and skill of Perl. More directly, the PerlMonk levels measure helpfulness, originality, and even participation, as well as the general approval of one's posts by other monks. I think that's actually the more valuable measure for a community like this. In particular, someone who as yet has a limited knowledge of Perl can make worthwhile posts, while someone with a very advanced knowledge of Perl could certainly make unhelpful or unfriendly posts. In conclusion, you're a monk because you earned the level of monk!	[reply]