If you're one of the first ten voters, your ++<10 vote counts, and then another person votes, so the node has a rep of 11 even though you didn't want to vote it above 10.

On the other hand, if you're the eleventh voter, your ++<10 vote doesn't count, leaving the node with a rep of 10, based on nothing more than the order in which the votes were cast.

This system would make the votes of monks who vote first less valuable than the votes of those who vote later.

The reason I came up with this is because I find some nodes worthwhile, just not that worthwhile.

I disagree that votes become more or less valuable. They're as valuable as you think they are. Another option is if you vote ++<10 and it's already there, you don't spend a vote.
Several monks actually -- votes that are at certain levels because they feel that the rep has exceeded the actual worth.
Sometimes you want to vote on a node just to see the rep and this would allow that.
Of course you could extend the logic so that a vote with a cap of 10 would -- a node that already has 20, or set up some mathamatical expresion if you want to get more complicated.


Anyway, it's just an idea. I'm not attached to it.

I believe that, under your proposal, votes cast later would be more valuable than votes cast earlier.

Here's a statistical proof. This code tries random orders of voting, keeping track of where in the order your vote is cast, and calculates the average reputations.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;

$| = 1;

my @all = ((5) x 6, (10) x 6);
# twelve voters: six voting up to 5, six voting up to 10

for my $own (5, 10) {
    # your own vote

    my $i = 0;
    my @others = grep $_ != $own || $i++, @all;
    # remove your vote from the list for now...

    my(%r, %n);

    for (1 .. 5000) {
        my @voters = shuffle(@others);
        # shuffle the other votes

        splice @voters, my $pos = int(rand @voters+1), 0, $own;
        # put your vote back in, and save the position

        my $rep = 0;
        for my $v (@voters) {
            $rep++ if $rep < $v;
        }
        # calculate the reputation

        $r{$pos} += $rep;
        $n{$pos}++;
        # adjust the stats for this position
    }

    print "$own:\n";

    for (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %n) {
        printf " %2d  %4d  %4.2f\n", $_, $n{$_}, $r{$_} / $n{$_};
    }
    # print position, number of occurences, and average reputation

}

sub shuffle {
    my @list = @_;

    for (my $i = $#list; $i >= 0; --$i) {
        my $j = int rand $i + 1;
        @list[$i, $j] = @list[$j, $i];
    }

    @list;
}
[download]

And some results (your position / occurences / mean reputation):

5:
  0   411  8.77
  1   404  8.80
  2   409  8.77
  3   414  8.74
  4   411  8.76
  5   452  8.25
  6   393  8.36
  7   425  8.28
  8   409  8.32
  9   417  8.31
 10   444  8.29
 11   411  8.23
10:
  0   386  8.17
  1   439  8.15
  2   420  8.25
  3   435  8.14
  4   393  8.21
  5   407  8.74
  6   437  8.73
  7   412  8.71
  8   444  8.69
  9   402  8.67
 10   399  8.77
 11   426  8.75
[download]

Observe that the node's reputation will be closer to what you personally want if you vote later. If you're voting low, a later vote leads to a lower rep; if you're voting high, a later vote leads to a higher rep.

Several monks actually -- votes that are at certain levels because they feel that the rep has exceeded the actual worth.

<rant>
If this is true, I do not see how this is any different from the personality voting that has been railed against so strenuously. Instead of voting (or ignoring) a node's content, you are voting its Reputation.

If those doing this are against personality voting or would rather see more votes given to code, then I ask them to reconsider this practice. I do not believe it's necessary to "take a monk down a peg" for anything other than a bad node.

Vote the node's content, not the poster nor the node's reputation.
</rant>

--f

In an attempt to spark a better idea, what if we consider borrowing an idea from (Heaven help me) /.? Namely, the ability to flag nodes with certain attributes, such as "Insightful," "Funny,", "Underrated," "Overrated," "Interesting," "FAQ", and so on?

If pursued, I'd see this as:

• Being a Level Power (say Level 6 or 7, to provide cues to other senior members that this may be a node needing extra attention).

  The idea here being that it should only be available to folks who've been around long enough to fairly assess the "properties" of a node.

• Briefly summarized in Index pages underneath the posters name. For example:

  Choose a maximum for Rep on May 24, 2001 at 17:37

  2 replies

  by lemming Interesting

  Note that this only requires the addition of a <BR> tag and a description.

• Summarized in threaded views after the post date.

  For example:

  Re: Choose a maximum for Rep by chipmunk on May 24, 2001 at 18:34, Insightful, Underrated

  (Apologies for to chipmunk for borrowing his node for example purposes. No offense intended.)

• Specifically summarized only to the poster when viewed in its own window, again in the header, e.g.:

  Re: Re: Choose a maximum for Rep by chipmunk on May 24, 2001 at 20:28 Insightful (3), Underrated (2)

++ < [text_box_here]
[download]

- p u n k k i d
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein