in reply to Why loose XP if $REP > $NORM ?

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

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Re^2: Why loose XP if $REP > $NORM ?
by GrandFather (Saint) on May 07, 2007 at 22:20 UTC

    "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
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        As best I know, they can't tell which are the low-rated ones 'till they've actually voted. So, they can't intentionally target the low-reputation ones.

        Now, if we assume that all of your votes are near average, the odds of a loss are 1/3. Therefore, to lose 30XP suddenly, you'd most likely have had ~90 downvotes. (these numbers actually work out as the same as picking the low-rated ones, as the odds of losing XP are never greater than 1/3).

        As the level 'pope' only gets 54 votes/day, and there's only one (Vroom, who hasn't been on for a month), and there's only two others with more than 44 votes per day (BrowserUK, merlyn), I'd say that to suddenly lose 30XP is a sign that it's much more likely that you're managed to piss off quite a few people, rather than just a single (or couple) vindictive people.

        ...

        (yes, I know that it's possible with this sort of distribution to lose 30XP in less than 90 votes, but it's just as likely for it to take more than 90 votes)

        update: okay, there is a way to see the lowest rated. The math still holds. And hope that we don't have a whole lot of people who would indiscriminately downvote nodes based on the author -- it just seems like a prick thing to do. (I personally rarely down vote nodes ... of course, I don't up vote nodes that often, either, but it's an order of magnitude different, I'd estimate)

        update 2: Yes, I have 3 nodes w/ negative rep (this is one of 'em) ... I think kyle upvoted those two nodes, as two of 'em are at -1. However, even without that, I have 728 of 790 nodes at < 3*$NORM, so you'd still have good odds on random downvoting being effective for me. (and I would assume, most others on here, but there might be a few who are less likely affected)

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