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in reply to Zen and the art of ignoring XP
I sure agree whit everyone else that XP is rather useless... for those intrested in it I post the reason why I believe that. (I decided to put it inside readmore-tags since the post is rather long and since I don't think many will be intrested in it)
The problem as I see it is that there is only one 'Experience number'...
For example, what do you do when someone posts an intresting/funny/whatever reply to a poll? which is not really related to perl coding at all? you up-vote him, and this accounts for his Experience. So basiclly, one could be a "saint" without knowing a single bit of Perl (by replying to polls), does this make sense?
The other thing that botters me is that the older a thread/node gets, the less people look at it, meaning that if you post a useful answer to a question (assuming the thread was a question) then you will not gain much XP (if you gain any at all)...
Another thing one can wonder about if XP represents how useful your reply was to the OP's question... My answer to that is no... I remember a thread about DBD::Proxy, there were a total of 4 replies, the total reputation was 7, does this mean the replies were bad? Ofcourse one could say then don't botter to reply to questions that the general masses aren't intrested in, but then the OP isn't helped at all...
Not to mention down-voting that some times happens by people not having a clue at all... for example I remember making a post which gave another approach to a problem, the one posted was really memory intensive, so I posted a CPU intesive one... Needless to say that I got downvoted (also because that thread was not the newest one on the list)
The way XP is seen is bad... There are people with more experience then me, who know less... (ofcourse not everyone). And the votes you get the highest XP on (or atleast in my experience) are the ones that get front-paged and are faq-like, or of which there is a good POD available (references for example)...
And one can ofcourse wonder wheter or not the votes for the top-node adds up to the Experience... perhaps it would be better to create a question-xp or something like that... Should you be able to reach the highest level only by asking intresting questions? (questions that others might ask, and which probably are answerd in many FAQ's)
Also giving a pointer to the FAQ or the correct POD results in less Experience (or atleast as far as I can see) then given the full answer... but what is the most useful? telling someone where (s)he finds the DOCs, how (s)he should search them, and how to read them? or giving the full answer? meaning that (s)he will most likely come back at a later time asking a question that would have been answered by the same POD...
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Re^2: Zen and the art of ignoring XP
by Joost (Canon) on May 12, 2005 at 09:39 UTC
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So basiclly, one could be a "saint" without knowing a single bit of Perl (by replying to polls), does this make sense?
Yes, because the XP doesn't represent your perl knowledge at all. If it represents anything it's probably your investment in this community.
Another thing one can wonder about if XP represents how useful your reply was to the OP's question... My answer to that is no... I remember a thread about DBD::Proxy, there were a total of 4 replies, the total reputation was 7, does this mean the replies were bad?
The OP can only cast one vote. The rating of a node represents "the usefulness" of the node to all of the monks. It might not even be a direct answer to the OP.
Ofcourse one could say then don't botter to reply to questions that the general masses aren't intrested in, but then the OP isn't helped at all...
I usually just answer the questions that I find interesting, or that have no (good) answers and I can answer reasonably quickly. My time is limited. XP isn't really a concern.
The way XP is seen is bad...
How is it seen?
There are people with more experience then me, who know less... (ofcourse not everyone).
See my point above. XP has nothing to do with knowledge.
Should you be able to reach the highest level only by asking intresting questions?
Definitely
(questions that others might ask, and which probably are answerd in many FAQ's)
FAQs are not interesting questions. All questions might be asked by others, that's not an indication of interestingness.
Also giving a pointer to the FAQ or the correct POD results in less Experience (or atleast as far as I can see) then given the full answer... but what is the most useful?
Do both for maximum node-rep :-) Pointing to the docs is a good and quick way of answering a question. If you take the time to explain the problem in some more detail, that can be very useful too. See my point about "investment".
And yes, the XP system is flawed, but then, we're dealing with people, so it won't ever be perfect. :-)
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How is it seen?
Well, look at dragonchild's post:
Funny thing - every job interview and independent contractor discussion I've had over the past 4 years has, at one point, referenced the fact that I'm a saint on Perlmonks.
This indicates to me that people (or atleast some) see it as a representation of Perl knowledge, if not then why would they botter to refer to him being saint on Perlmionks at all? It would only mean he spent some (or maybe a lot) time on a website posting messages, maybe by asking questions, or posting to polls. (ofcourse a lot depends on the one doing the interview and the research that has been done, someone could easily look at his post and see, but I can't tell wheter or not that is done)
And that's the same way I saw it when I first visit this site... Silly me though it would somehow indicate the knowledge of someone, ofcourse it didn't took long before I realized it doesn't.
XP sure isn't about Perl knowdledge, but where is that explicitly stated on this site? Someone that is not a regular visitor here (maybe someone doing a job-interview) might not know that. Which would IMHO create an unbalance between people knowing perl (and helping at other places then this site (such as mailing lists, IRC, ...)) and someone in here asking questions, and getting XP for it...
As in, who do you guess has a better starting position (at a job interview)? Someone helping out in other places, or a level 7 (for example) at PerlMonks? (how he got to that level is completly irrelevant ofcourse)
(update, typos)
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This indicates to me that people (or atleast some) see it as a representation of Perl knowledge, if not then why would they botter to refer to him being saint on Perlmionks at all? It would only mean he spent some (or maybe a lot) time on a website posting messages, maybe by asking questions, or posting to polls. (ofcourse a lot depends on the one doing the interview and the research that has been done, someone could easily look at his post and see, but I can't tell wheter or not that is done)
When I look at Saints in our Book, especially the top 100 names, I see people whose responses I've read over the past 4 years. Most of those people have said useful things regarding Perl and programming in general. As Perlmonks becomes one of the primary sources of useful Perl knowledge, those names become more and more well-known. It doesn't hurt that nearly all those people are also well-known outside Perlmonks, primarily on CPAN. (I'm not positive, but I'd be willing to bet that 80 of the top 100 Saints have modules on CPAN.)
It's probably also similar to why going to college is important, but which college you went to and what degree you got isn't as important. I actually learned very little about programming at college. The fact I finished college is what people care about. It's the "investment in something" idea that Joost was referring to. Perlmonks, CPAN, comp.lang.perl.misc ... doesn't matter which one you invest in - just invest in at least one - your reputation will come.
- In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is. :-)
- "What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?"
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And that's the same way I saw it when I first visit this site...
Funny - maybe it's because I used to participate on /. that I realised before even joining PM that XP was merely a measure of participation, not a measure of knowledge. This is obvious. When I joined, it was patently obvious to me that there were some Saints who didn't know nearly as much as I did. And now, it's patently obvious that there are some with lesser XP than I who know way more than I do about Perl - tlm and TimToady are two obvious examples off the top of my head. TimToady doesn't participate much, so that's why his XP is so low. Meanwhile, tlm hasn't been here as long as I, but, rest assured, he'll pass my XP level in the not-too-distant future - a week or two at most, barring some grave problem, such as a vacation.
So I turned XP into a game. Not one with winners and losers, just one to see how much, how fast. And, before I even reached Saint, it was obvious that tlm would shatter any record I may have on reaching that level ;-) Ah well. I think I did well to get to Saint in under 3 months ;-) But, before someone claims "XPW" - does it matter? The point is that, according to the way other members spend their hard-earned votes, I made a significant positive contribution to PM. And that's really all that XP is measuring.
Update: The ever-so-humble tlm (hey, isn't Hubris the perlish virtue, not humility?) doesn't like the comparison with TimToady. :-) So, let's put it in a bit of context. I read somewhere that all it takes for someone to seem a genius is 3%. If someone knows merely 3% more of a subject than you, they seem to be a genius in the subject, even if they really don't know very much. Think of a grade 5 student teaching a grade 3 student math - the grade 3 student would think the grade 5 student "knows everything" about math, when we all know that most PhD's in Mathematics know very little about math. (At least, that's what my manager claims - who actually has a PhD in Math.)
And that's kind of how I'm using tlm and TimToady in the same sentence. If we assume, on a scale of 1 to 10, that TimToady's knowledge warrants a 10, and I get a 3, tlm seems to be getting a 5 or 6. (And that's on a logarithmic scale ;->) From my perspective, that's more than 3% - can't tell the difference from here ;->
Update 2: Oh, here's another one who would be the "less XP than me, but oh-so-obvious that he knows more about perl than I could ever know": TheDamian.
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Note that there also isn't a big sign saying that XP == programmer quality. This isn't a certification institute, which should be very obvious even if you come here for the first time.
Being a monk means that you spend some time in the perlmonks community. I would consider that a plus if I was hiring a programmer, the actual level isn't all that interesting. I'd be more interested in the kind of nodes that person wrote.
People who don't know perlmonks should know better than to infer some kind of quality from the XP level here. People who *do* know perlmonks should too.
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Re^2: Zen and the art of ignoring XP
by ghenry (Vicar) on May 12, 2005 at 09:22 UTC
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"There are people with more experience then me, who know less... (ofcourse not everyone). And the votes you get the highest XP on (or atleast in my experience) are the ones that get front-paged and are faq-like, or of which there is a good POD available (references for example)..."
I totally agree with this. Look at my XP. I am still a beginner, having read the whole of Learning Perl twice and only doing the exercises up to chapter 8 so far (finding time is an issue). But I read a lot of Programming Perl, spend most days on here and read a lot on perldoc.
I put my XP down to having raised a lot of interesting questions (most stupid, I might add) and making a lot of replies that help people out by way of pointing them to the right CPAN module or place on perldoc, or testing their code for them.
That's why XP is just a number I guess!
Walking the road to enlightenment... I found a penguin and a camel on the way.....
Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!
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