Hi to all.

First please let me say that I'm asking the following question because I'm interested to improve my understanding of how (virtual or even real life) communities work. PM to be considered a successfull and stable community for years.

I didn't find an answer using SuperSearch for the last couple of years or on the help pages.
If I'm asking something which has been answered before please refer me to the relevant node.

My understanding of the subsection *Exactly how do votes on nodes affect my XP?* on the The Voting/Experience System node is thar there is still some chance of loosing XP even if $REP is greater than $NORM.
What's the idea behind this? -

I do understand about increasing chance to gain XP but I don't get the clue what the benefit of a loss of XP is. (Benefit for the way the community works)

Thanks for any input
RL

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Why loose XP if $REP > $NORM ?
by TStanley (Canon) on May 07, 2007 at 16:44 UTC
    Most of the time you will have a 1 in 3 chance of losing XP if some one downvotes a node that you have written. If the reputation of that node is between 3 and 4 times the value of $NORM, then the odds are only 1 in 4 that you will lose a point of experience. Once the reputation of the node is over 4 times the value of $NORM, then there is no chance that you will lose a point of experience.

    When some one downvotes a node, it could be for a variety of reasons, usually it indicates that someone happened to disagree with your point of view. For the most part, I try to avoid doing that, instead reserving a down vote for a trollish or incorrectly formatted node.

    TStanley
    --------
    People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. -- George Orwell
[reply]
Re: Why loose XP if $REP > $NORM ?
by herveus (Prior) on May 07, 2007 at 17:11 UTC
    Howdy!

    My take: as $REP increases relatie to $NORM, the likelihood of a ++ granting XP goes up and the likelihood of a -- taking XP away goes down. That rewards high $REP nodes more than low $REP. It's a social statement of sorts.

    Losing XP is a way for the community to express vague disapproval. If the loss is a point or two, it's just noise. If you suddenly lose 30 XP, that suggests that you really stepped in it, or that someone is out to get you.

    yours,
    Michael
[reply]

      "Someone" can only get you once per node you post so 30 XP is a lot of someones!

      The way the voting system currently works is to give a slightly exponential response depending on node rep - as abs(rep) increases the rate at which it garners abs(XP) increases. I guess the end result is to encourage high achievers to achieve even more - in whichever direction.

      DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel
[reply]
        Howdy!

        Well, a determined agent could go downvote other nodes you've written, and if they are really determined, aim for the low-reputation ones.

        yours,
        Michael
[reply]
XP changes affected by vote order
by kyle (Abbot) on May 14, 2007 at 20:38 UTC

    A semi-related observation here: the final gain/loss of XP depends somewhat on the order that the votes arrive in. Specifically, the earlier the plus votes arrive, the greater the final XP gain. I wrote some code to demonstrate this:

    Read more... (4 kB)

    Every test simulates a node that receives the same number of plus and minus votes (i.e., the final rep is zero). In the cases where the votes are alternating or all the negative votes arrive first, the resulting XP change would normally be zero (the non-zero reports are the result of randomness). The case when all up votes are cast before all down votes is the one that shows the variation. In that case, the resulting XP change is higher than it would be if the votes arrived in alternating order or with all the down votes cast first.

    Granted, these are very contrived examples, and even in them, there still isn't a notable effect until the node gets 15 votes in a row. Still, I wonder if it would be possible to have a system that does something similar to the system we have now but does not depend on vote order.

[reply]
[d/l]

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