http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=19323

Many monks (including myself) have made it clear that they are feedback junkies. I would love to see a "Highest Reputations" page. It could break things out into four categories:
  1. Highest average reputations
  2. Highest average reputations on initial nodes (those who post the best questions|ideas (i.e. not responses)
  3. Overall averages for above two categories
  4. Your personal averages in the first two categories
Using this, we may find out that a third level monk has a great posts and be more likely to heed him/her.

This would also allow us to see how we are doing. If the average rep on a post is 5.62 and we're averaging 2.1, we know that we may want to figure out why our posts are not highly regarded.

I suspect that such a page would generate a lot of hits and due to the nature of the query, would probably be hard on the server. Perhaps it could be run once a day/week and have a heading like Highest Reputations as of 18 June 2000.

Cheers!
Curtis

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Reputations
by PipTigger (Hermit) on Jun 23, 2000 at 14:18 UTC
    It is my opinion that this is not a good idea if used as a criteria for Monk limitation of any sort. Maybe an accompanying comment to the author when a -- is given is appropriate and even replacing ++ && -- with a vote of -7 .. +8 would be great but my problem with this idea is this: sometimes each of us posts or replies on an obscure topic. These ones don't make the Gates and therefore don't get visited as frequently. They're much less likely to be seen to receive votes at all. That doesn't mean that they're poor posts or replies though.

    Certain Monks have advocated a recent average requirement to post new or awarding extra XP (which is redundant if you're already excelling in that department to achieve such a level) if a high average is maintained. These would primarily weigh towards anything landing in the Gates but that's not fair since many obscure posts are just as valuable and informative even if they aren't seen by everyone. Also, the Gates only holds like 4 SOPW posts at a time and the turnover will be great when many good SOPW posts are made in a short period of time. Meditations persist much longer and therefore, routinely achieve massively inflated valuations. I just don't think these statistics should be used to limit access or anything. If they're solely for informative purposes, I don't see any harm. TTFN & Shalom.

    -PipTigger

    p.s. Initiate Nail Removal Immediately!

RE: Reputations
by Shendal (Hermit) on Jun 22, 2000 at 00:58 UTC
    Good idea! I think this information should be included on the monk's home node. For example:

    ...
    Experience: 7,000,000,000
    Reputation: 3.28 (5.23 site average)
    Level : 10
    ...

    Perhaps we could use XP as an incentive? Keep your average above 200% site average and gain +1 XP per day?
      It seems to me that a better approach would be to rank the posts directly, by giving a score of, say, 0 to 10. Then we can list the people who have the posts with the highest average, the highest scoring posts of all time and, even, take care of the inflating reputation problem.

      Even the experience system could be modified to use the added benefit ranked posts would provide. Perhaps it might be interesting if, for a monk to progress past level x, it were necessary to have a minimum average score in the recent posts.

        Just to clarify, I didn't mean to NOT have a central page. I'd just like to see it on the monk's home node as well. For example, I could see wondering if a certain post were trustworthy -- I could simply click the author's name and get (at least) their reputation.

        A page with one central listing is useful, but I can see me using the individual monk's reputation more.

RE: Reputations
by nuance (Hermit) on Jun 22, 2000 at 01:24 UTC

    I like this idea. I think having the info in both places would be good. I don't think the XP bonus would be at all useful, not at those levels. You can get 1 XP for posting any old crap. It would need to be set at a much higher level to have any effect and then it would be counter to what seems to be the primary motivation for XP i.e. encouraging people to post.

    Nuance

RE: Reputations
by Russ (Deacon) on Jun 22, 2000 at 01:43 UTC
    I love the idea, and agree with nuance. The XP "bonus" is unnecessary (though I would still like to find a way to reward the "quality poster"). Perl Monks rewards those who post. Even "just" recognition (as this idea would provide) would be a good start toward the reward for high quality.

    Russ

RE: Reputations
by redmist (Deacon) on Jun 22, 2000 at 07:04 UTC
    I like the idea also. In addition, I think that it would be fun to extrapolate the data and predict who, in the upcoming week, will produce the highest quality posts. Perhaps a PM lottery is in order for who guesses the correct future winner.
Explanation with ++ and --
by Q*bert (Sexton) on Jun 22, 2000 at 08:16 UTC
    I would like to see an "explanation" textfield added to the voting radio buttons, so that people (or perhaps just the author of the original post) can see why people are voting them up or down. The ratings could still be anonymous-- in fact, I think they should be, to avoid the possibility of people retalliating for -- votes.

    I know from experience that it is distressing to see your posts modded down without knowing what you did wrong so you can act differently next time. By the same token, it's nice to know what aspects of my modded-up posts were useful to people. I think this change would have the further positive effect of separating discussion from meta-discussion; too many comments I see nowadays say only, "Great post! You were really clear on X, and I like the idea of Y." I think this praise is valid and useful in its own right, but I would rather not see it mixed in with more technical replies.

    What do you think? Does this make sense? I guess I'll know if this comment gets modded up. ;)

      I agree, in principle.

      Of course, the other side to consider: most of this site is geared toward encouraging us to post. While I really like your idea of a separate (and private) feedback system, the goal of Perl Monks is to generate traffic for the banner ads. Lots of posts to read means more excitement about the site, which means more traffic, which means more revenue.

      Since negative votes should be rare (and justified), perhaps a "middle ground" would be to require an explanation for negative votes, but allow normal posts for praise/positive votes. Explanations could be very short, and would be delivered only to the author.

      ???

      Russ

RE: Reputations
by TStanley (Canon) on Jul 17, 2000 at 16:52 UTC
    I like this idea. Makes sense and gives others a chance to see how their own posts rate
    and give them incentive to try and improve upon their postings.

    TStanley