In my first few months, I was duped into thinking that I was really accumulating experience because my XP was rising and I was climbing through the levels. I made sure I used up all my votes daily, thoughtfully and judiciously. Then it slowly dawned on me that this was just a psychological ploy to get me to read more postings and to make me feel like I was a productive member of this society. And it worked!

As I have said before, XP is more a measure of participation (PPP) than of Perl experience. If monks started looking at XP this way, there would be less strife. I don't think the XP system is broken, I simply think it is inaccurately named.

I am no longer compelled to spend every vote daily. My XP value vastly overstates my true experience as a Perl programmer. However, I know a lot more about Perl than I did 2 years ago, and that probably would not have happened had I not been lured into playing the XP game -- and it is a game.

If you did place your votes thoughtfully and judiciously, then your experience did raise over the time. You read a lot of materian and you thought about it. How could it not have affected your experience? ;-)

I would say that in your case the ploy worked great. It's hard to measure experience, just like it's hard to measure quality. That's why we have at least XP and kwalitee. It can be measured and even being what it is, it's still a useful first aproximation.

Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.

Actually I do not care about gaining XP since the way it is if its 0 or 6000 it's the same thing. In RPG games greater XP means I can cast a spell while a low XP means that I just can carry a dagger!! This distinction does not apply here and it should stay like that

But you do miss the point;I am not complain about XP but about people that offload votes for XP who don't seem to look at it from the same prespective as you do;For them it is either a joke or on the other hand carries a great meaning to them 'image' wise.

All well but the true victim here is the author of a post who does not get credited correctly;and I am not talking about my posts,my posts are a drop in the ocean.I'm talking about people like Javafan.

I do not offload votes and many times I do not vote at all knowing that this way my XP will not increase, but I do gain experience by helping other people out or getting helped by other people and I really do not need XP for doing that

The key there is the word participate. The XP system is designed to encourage participation, especially for the newer members.

I appreciate that. But several people in this thread (and you can count me in that group as well) question what the added value of participating is, if that participating means the game has degenerated to something meaningless.

It's like asking bystanders (newcomers) to participate in a game of soccer, and rewarding them for running around and kicking the ball. Even if they don't care for the team they are assigned to, and kick the ball out of bounds. The bystanders have participated - they kick the ball, but they don't play soccer.

question what the added value of participating is, if that participating means the game has degenerated to something meaningless.

I understand your frustration, and I know of at least one monk that does vote dump for XP and contributes nothing except the occasional response to a poll. As with any semi-complex community incentivizing contribution has its problems but, if done right the positives outweigh the negatives.

The advantages of incentivizing voting contribution:

• (obviously) Increased voting - which on a whole will show what the community values.
• Includes lower level monks in simple contribution. I think everyone will agree if PerlMonks degenerated into a cabal of higher-level monks we would lose PerlMonks' advantage to the Perl community as an entry point for new users. Being realistic, most new perl programmers probably feel they have very little to contribute in the way of posts or articles. This gives them a push in reading new articles, learning more, and (hopefully) contributing back.
• Increase return visits - This is an easy one. If you give someone something (that they value), then they will return. This increase in the raw number of the community will pay off.

I think you are looking at it from a narrow perspective. You have been a member for a year, you have made a large number of excellent posts, you started making posts early on, and have gained experience accordingly. I also assume from your posts you have had several years of experience before you entered PerlMonks. The experience I think you are missing is that of a new programmer entering PerlMonks. Their contribution level has to be low, they are mostly on the receiving end of teaching aspect of a community. Generally they have one avenue of contribution and that is marking what is of value to them. This is of value to the community as it represents the needs of the new programmer

There are disadvantages and there are people who exploit the system, but on a whole it works well and has worked well for a number of years. The abusers are few and they tend to drop out if their only means of contribution is voting. XP is hollow measurement. Eventually (most of) the abusers will realize that and either start adding real contributions or drop off. The ones that continue to vote dump, just ignore them.

grep
One dead unjugged rabbit fish later...