Sorry for the ongoing "meta" frenzy, but there's a funny little question that I have had in mind for quite some time: as a person with a marked tendency towards prolixity when writing prose (as opposed to poetry and, naturally, Perl) and a certain envy of those with the gift of conciseness, I wonder which are the nodes that scored the highest reputation per size. Ok, "size" itself should be defined more clearly and I can think of at least two ways to measure it... and yes: I am aware that by all means this kind of info is probably not tracked. But as I wrote it would be fun to know. Wouldn't it?

FWIW I remember in my early days here a SoPW in which someone asked how do a match globally, listing IIRC all the modifiers tried that far... from the set of which /g was missing. I seem to rememeber having been tempted to just answer:

/g

[download]

But in the end I think I wrote it in a more verbose manner, out the fear I perceived that wit is not well received at the Monastery, or better: that the general consensus on wit does not coincide with my own... All this is very vague in my memory, however, and I may have got it wrong...

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Re: Significance! (XP-wise)
by Old_Gray_Bear (Bishop) on Jun 28, 2007 at 18:38 UTC
    I am, as anyone who has read a few of my posts knows, one of the Prolixitarians. And I am not convinced that is a bad thing. Terseness has it's place, but.

    In answering a question or in conveying information, one needs to provide enough context so that Auditor (Querent? Asker??) can make sense of your response with out expending a lot of effort. There is a balance that needs to be maintained: the 'one liner' versus 'everything you ever wanted to know and 50% more besides....'. On the whole, I think I prefer less terse answers. I need all the help I can get to remember what we were talking about three minutes ago, and I can always cut to the bottom of the page if I feel I have enough of the frame of reference.

    I think what you are asking for is a measure of the Information 'density' of a posting. This is a hard thing to quantify, since what is 'information' one One is 'old news' to an Other; it depends on each persons 'context'.

    I am hesitant to relate posting size (or lack there of) with the informativeness of the answer. Given enough context, the two character '\g' response is entirely appropriate. But to someone encountering '\g' out of context (say in a Super Search results set), the answer is cryptic, if not down right un-useful, with out reading the thread that embeds the response.

    Your Kilometerage May Vary

    ----
    I Go Back to Sleep, Now.

    OGB

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      I think what you are asking for is a measure of the Information 'density' of a posting. This is a hard thing to quantify, since what is 'information' one One is 'old news' to an Other; it depends on each persons 'context'.

      Well, but then with a strong accent on fun. In this sense Roy Johnson's reply is very much in line with it... In fact I think that what I'm asking very much boils down to to a measure of wit, although of course wit itself is not something you can easily measure, nor with difficulty, FWIM. Yet, I'd still be curious...

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Re: Significance! (XP-wise)
by jettero (Monsignor) on Jun 28, 2007 at 16:35 UTC
    Reputation word Density?

    I'd like to see that and reputation per post.

    ... both numbers seem like something that would be on tinymicros imo.

    -Paul

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      Except that the scheme requires knowing the rep of every post, and that means running as a privileged user with direct access to the database. Since this idea has no more importance than an item of idle interest, I don't think it's likely to happen. Of course, if a god takes an interest in it, it could happen anyway. :-)

      A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight
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      ...I've been accused of being dense before. 8^D

      ...roboticus

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Re: Significance! (XP-wise)
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Jun 28, 2007 at 18:18 UTC
    For what it's worth, my highest rated post is shorter than this one.
    Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.
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