Why do we get experience for voting?

[Felonious]

Though I'm sure this question has to have been asked and answered (more than once), I cannot seem to find it. Why do we get experience for voting? The only answer I can think of is that it encourages voting, but is this truly necessary? I would vote on nodes I think worthy (or extremely unworthy) even if I wasn't "rewarded" for it. It just seems to me that this "feature" encourages abuses. What do other monks think?

-- O thievish Night, Why should'st thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars? --Milton

[thelenm]

I think it's fine. Personally, I gain more experience (not XP) from reading nodes than from posting. I see the "XP reward" for voting as an encouragement for people to read, thereby gaining real experience.

Of course, as you say, people can just click the radio buttons without reading posts in order to gain some quick XP, but the amount of XP you will gain that way is extremely limited. And the amount of experience you will gain is zero.

Anyway, I see it as a nice little bonus. It can be exploited, but not excessively.

-- Mike

--
just,my${.02}

[Aristotle]

Even Pontiffs and Saints (level 9 and 10) with their 40 votes a day gain about 10 XP per day on average from voting - and that's if they spend all of the votes. That's about as much as you'll get for two "nothing special" good replies. A good toplevel node will likely gain you 4-5x as much, minimum. And that's with the 40 votes Saints get; lower user levels get much fewer votes than that.

I think the balance is fairly good.

You're encouraged to vote, but hardly so much that it makes a big difference. Writing a single well thought out toplevel node will get you more XP than weeks of voting. It works well to reward those who contribute and be too tiring for those who might like to make it a game.

Update 2002-09-11: changed 15 XP/day to 10, changed ratios accordingly.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[jryan]

15 XP a day from voting? I don't know about you, but I usually average about 3 XP a day from voting :)

[Aristotle]

It does require spending all your votes every day, mind you. And originally I was going to say 10 on average, but that seemed a bit low. Since I have no precise idea of the amount, 15 sounded like a decent guess - but still a guess. Still, it works for the point I wanted to make: it is a mild encouragement, but an order of magnitude lower than what you get for posts, and thus not abusable.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[sauoq]

According to Voting/Experience System there is a:

25% chance of +1 every time you vote

So the average for a Saint that uses all of his votes would be 10 points.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

[hossman]

XP is basicly an indicator of participation on the site ("monk community experience points" if you want to think of it that way)

Even if you never post, and never use the chattbox, and all you ever do is read and vote on posts you read, you are still participating in the community, because your votes contribute to the collective "community opinion" of the nodes you vote on.

So for your participation in the community (however small it may seem) you have a chance at earning "community experience points"

[Chady]

I agree with thelenm that you should not confuse XP with eXPerience.

I'm level 9, I'm almost a Saint, but does that make me experienced in anything? I don't think so. I'm still learning Perl, and I still have a long way to go.

That's why "experience" is gained by reputation, not by XP, and I mean by that; "the value of your posts, the amount of devotion and contribution you invest within the community."

just my 300L.L. ( = 0.2 cents)

---

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/

[webadept]

I personally like the voting because it helps the community see itself and us as monks to see ourselves through the eyes of that community.

But to direct my thoughts on your last post here, I don't believe it encourages abuses, very rarely do those that abuse need encouragement and it wouldn't matter if we got experience or not from voting, the abuses would still occur.

What you say is commendable, that your voting habits would be the same. I like to think mine would be as well. Really I stopped caring about my level a few months back, but the new ones, the ones who are borderline lurkers, those fascinating new brains out there that come up with all kinds of great ideas, sometimes need some encouragement to jump in and start some action. Small incentives are good for this. Above all, its just kinda nice to come in here during the day and get "thank you" from the monks for doing something on here. The rest of the day has a way of dropping into the background with these small vanities. :-)

webadept

Every day someone is doing what someone else said is impossible.

[Felonious]

I'd like to make a clarification; I agree with everyone else here that experience (the XP kind) matters little. My reason for questioning this feature isn't because I begrudge anyone the pittance of points they receive from voting, but rather because I think it leads to people blindly upvoting/downvoting nodes to use up votes. Also, isn't this the reason for most votebots? Or are they mostly used for "character assasination"?

Thanks to everyone who has replied so far.

-- O thievish Night, Why should'st thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars? --Milton

[Aristotle]

No, votebots are generally either used to "assassinate" by targetting a specific account with downvotes or to bolster an account, probably one that belongs to votebot owner, with upvotes. The XP the votebot account gets for voting is not a concern at all. Remember that the chance to gain XP for a vote you receive is much higher than the chance to gain XP for a vote you spend.

Also, I remember when I got only 15 or 20 votes, they rarely were enough to upvote all the posts I wanted to. Now at 40, I'm somewhat hard pressed at times to spend them all, true. Other days, I spend them thoughtfully and they're still too few.

So, if anyone puts up even a semblance of participation, I don't think they can even afford spending votes blindly.

Makeshifts last the longest.