The neologysm XPwhore is used more and more often, together with its relatives. Someone, suffering by persecution mania or, more probably, by sense of guilt, organize polls to know if he's actually a XPwhore.

Once you came to a deal with your XPwhore nature, it's better to do things with a method. Scientific, I mean. I propose some principles, observations and rules to plan your XPwhoring activity. I'd be glad to receive comments by other whores :)

Be logorroic

If your posts are not so bad they deserve downvotes, many posts, even with few votes, assure a great number of points. And it's a matter of facts that one must be able to write a node that deserve a lot of points.

Be smart

Be pleasant and enjoyable. A well placed comment is a good way to dissimulate you can't write programs in Perl. Or a good way to proof you're great but lazy programmers: virtuous indeed.

Advertising

You know, advertising is commerce. Be disgustingly autoreferential. When you write, try to put things in such a way that it will be easy to point to your nodes, or, at least, to other threads that contain your pleasant and enjoyable comments.

Home sweet home

Of course, your homenode is the best place where you can conduct your campaign. Update it, put here your best nodes and hope.

To be a bot or not?

It follows that the monks whose homenode is visited more often has more probabilities to receive points. Your nickname should be very visible. Spend a lot of time in the chatterbox.

Revenge of the friar

When you reach a sufficient level, use the moderation system for your plans. Put in the frontpage everything you write.

Sociology

Try to write pleasant and enjoyable posts on XPwhoring: someone will get confused, he won't think you're actually a xpwhore and...

It must be a camel

Among other tecniques, this is surely more insidious and subtle. Learn Perl. You will be able to answer those obscure Perl-related questions, reaching higher levels of XPwhoring.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
XP-Woring not necessary evil
by arhuman (Vicar) on Jun 11, 2001 at 12:57 UTC
    You forgot : Be the first to answer

    ;-)

    UPDATE :

    More seriously, I'm really a XP-WHore but I don't feel it isn't something necessary bad.

    Let me explain :
    I like recognition from my peer (through XP, reputation, rank...)
    It's not my goal, however, it's only a good support in my path to Perl Mastery and sometimes and indication of my progress/weknesses when I post technical posts...

    As long a you're aware that rank is not a tied only to your Perl level, but to the way you contribute to the monastery it doesn't seem so evil.

    • A lot of posts often mean, a lot of answers or questions which leads to answers => Lots of info (you contribute!)
    • Being pleasant is not only a way to gain XP it's also a way to make discussion pleasant and more interesting (or even possible)

    --
    Arhuman (Master of XP-Whoring)
[reply]

      And of course you also need to know the rules of XP-not-whoring or "how not to get XP's with a detailed, accurate and sound post":

      • post during the week-end: a killer, no one reads "technical" posts during the week-end, discussions are OK because people just read them quickly and upvote the whole thread just to use all their votes, but no one downloads and check code when they're still half asleep and in a hurry to ++ as many posts as possible before making breakfast for the whole family,
      • post after 7pm GMT: by that time even West Coast monks have used up all of their daily allowance and by the time everybody gets their votes on the next day your post will be burried way down at the bottom of the Newest Nodes list,
      • correct a mistake by a high-ranking monk: yeah, like anybody's going to believe you!
      • post a Re: Re: Re: Re node: of course no one reads those,
      • Q&A answers: for some reason these always get a ridiculously low amount of votes, if any, probably because the name of the poster does not appear and Monks like to know who they give their favors to,
      • post something about security or cryptography: of course general advice like "Though shall use CGI.pm" or "Net::SSL does what you want" rack up the votes, as no one can argue with the Gospel, but anything more detailed and specific seems to scare the s*** out of Monks who are very hesitant to give their blessing to a method they have not seen approved by higher authorities,

      And by the way you forgot the easiest trick to get XP's, even without writing a new post: just type "Hey, just 6 more votes and I'll gain a level" in the CB and wait...

[reply]

        Your last comment about the CB reminds me of a trick I once used on someone, I /msged him telling him: 

        "Oops, I mestakenly downvoted your node xxxx. How many XP did you loos
+e?"

        [download]
        and he replied: 
        "I lost 3 XPs, help!!!!"

        [download]

        I did that because that guy was XPWhoring and I just wanted to be sure that he'd do anything for an XP..

        He who asks will be a fool for five minutes, but he who doesn't ask will remain a fool for life.

        Chady | http://chady.net/
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      Seriously: if you have a posting that deserves more reputationpoints than it already has, ask someone to promote it for you in the CB. That works like a charm!

      Jouke Visser, Perl 'Adept'
      Using Perl to help the disabled: pVoice and pStory
[reply]
Re: (Kidding) XP-whoring HOW-TO
by azatoth (Curate) on Jun 11, 2001 at 13:00 UTC
[reply]
(Vynce) (Kidding) re: XP-whoring HOW-TO
by Vynce (Friar) on Jun 11, 2001 at 13:18 UTC

    I cannot believe you advocate such dirty rotten nasty tricks -- learning Perl ! and for what reaason? Just to get more XP? do you know what this will do to the youth of today? There are impressionable minds here; there are young people who might take you at your word and go this vile, reprehensible route of buying books and learning perl. how could you sleep at night? how could you rest, knowing that they will spend some of the best hours of their lives engaged in a mental activity destined to do nothing but alienate them from their peers and lock them into a thankless career of unending slavery to the machines. How Heartless! How unthinkable! Learning Perl to get XP!

    i can not think of anything that could be better.

    .
[reply]
Re: (Kidding) XP-whoring HOW-TO
by RhetTbull (Curate) on Jun 11, 2001 at 17:59 UTC
    When you write, try to put things in such a way that it will be easy to point to your nodes
    All kidding aside, I don't understand the reasoning behind downvoting posts because a monk links to his or her own nodes. I've done it a couple of times to avoid repeating something that was already said. I don't know if the posts were downvoted or not since I don't much care what my XP is but I have noticed more than one discussion about said practice.

    As far as I'm concerned, the whole post ++/-- thing is about improving the quality of our community, not about who does or doesn't have the most XP. If a monk has already written a post that can help answer a question or provide value to a conversation, why shouldn't he or she link to that post?

    And one more thing, why do people feel a need to place value on their XP? Are we all really that insecure? Seriously -- I don't understand why it matters. Any thoughts?

[reply]
      I think the reason people feel the need to place value on XP, or
      at least in my case, is that it's exciting to gain levels. It's like
      in games, you get really excited the first few levels that you increase.
      After you have gone up several levels you don't need that feeling
      anymore.

      I think that a bit of XP-whoring when a new user is good,
      because new users have to learn things like how to post here, how to
      respond to nodes, and they actually have to learn, instead of just
      posting a question and getting an answer without any effort on their part.

      On a side note: I wonder if subliminal XP-whoring works? ^_^

      -xPhase

[reply]
Re: (Kidding) XP-whoring HOW-TO
by strat (Canon) on Apr 02, 2002 at 12:51 UTC
    Thank you for all the good hints :-)

    I'm afraid that in some manner, I'm an XPwhore as well: I like it when I get experiance and reach a new level. It's like a new game.

    E.g. at the german-language forum at www.perl.de, I had the most writings for a long time (about one year). But when I reached about 3500 messages (there is no exp), it became less important to me, and in the meantime, I mostly answer questions nobody else answers or the like. So, another one overtook me and now is leading at about 800 messages. :-)

    I think here at perlmonks it might be about the same: as long as you are rising, it's important, but after a while it is not so important any more.

    Ps: another hint for XPwhoring might be: write down some of your thoughts and ask the people how they'd use it or what would they do, and that in a less technical way, just in a more common way :-)

    Best regards,
    perl -le "s==*F=e=>y~\*martinF~stronat~=>s~[^\w]~~g=>chop,print"

[reply]
Re: (Kidding) XP-whoring HOW-TO
by suaveant (Parson) on Jun 11, 2001 at 18:05 UTC
    Where is your footnote to bambam, King of the XP Whores?

                    - Ant

[reply]
Re: (Kidding) XP-whoring HOW-TO
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Jun 13, 2001 at 19:13 UTC
    How about posting when it's slow? People will have less distraction and you'll have less competition, and people trying to use up their votes will be more likely to spend them on you.
[reply]
      Posting when it's slow is not XP-whoring - writing a large article or tutorial and waiting UNTIL it's slow to post it is XP-whoring! ;)

      Jeff 

      R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--
L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--
[reply]

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