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Luc,
Thanks for the comments.
Firstly, I'm sorry if awarding and recording reputation points now makes you feel that you no longer wish to write articles. My goal with reputation was to award those who were starting to motivate them, and to recognise those who are established to show they are true experts in the eyes of the commnunity. The reputation system was never meant to be the reason for someone posting an article: Authors should still post based on their desire to share and educate, not to simply gain a badge.
Also, the reputation system is based on small rewards from lots of users.. You wrote "I can churn out ten messages in programming forums in a matter of minutes, and collect over 100 points on them. It takes a couple of days to provide a decent article. The balance is screwed". It is correct in terms of the time taken vs rep points, but the system works over time, not instantly.
You post 100 messages and you get 100 points. Your messages are voted, maybe, and you may get more points, or if you post 100 peices of rubbish then your 100 points erodes. You post a single article and then from then on each time a member reads and up-votes your article you get points. Your article will be read and voted on way, way more than a message and so will, over time, get far more than it's initial 100 points.
This is why upvoting an article is worth far more than upvoting a message: we've designed it so that someone who posts 10 crap articles will never stand a chance of getting the points of someone who posts 10 gems. The motivation for this? It was too easy to achieve gold and platinum.
Other Points:
1,2: I have been away and so have not had enough time to review what happened. I'm jumping in here halfway through (and have not yet followed up with Sean) but my feeling is this is a usability issue our end. We will improve this
3 - no enough approvers. We've had the opposite complaint: too many approvers so that the only articles an approver sees are the poor ones. We then limited it so that poor articles, after sufficient "poor" votes, drop off the list.
4 - way too severe:. You are correct. It was too easy to get Silver before, so we chose gold. The rejigging of the system means Silver is now more appropriate. I will adjust
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Hi Chris,
yes, I have missed you being omnipresent these last couple of days. 
I understand and agree with most of what you say on rep points and votes.
However, offering instant points will influence instantaneous behavior.
FYI: messages accumulate votes over time too; I have quite a collection of standard replies, and every time a fitting question pops up, I dump a standard reply and collect votes on that!
I wish to write articles and I won't stop (I have several in the works); all I said is I won't publish them on CodeProject right now as it is too much pain, I would rather spend my time on content rather than on fighting the system.
Changing the gold requirement to a silver one (for avoiding the approval list) would solve it for me, not for people who have even fewer author points (fewer articles) so far. The fundamental problem here is you try and use rep points as a quality filter, however rep points are to a large extent quantitative, they reward the number of articles; yes they also reward votes, hence quality, but that only works over time, as you just pointed out; so a recent author has a choice of creating more articles and going through the painful process for each of them, or just sit and wait for votes until he reaches the right color, then write more. That can not be what you intended? IMO you want something that measures quality from the start. Here is my suggestion:
needNoApproval=articleCount>=5 || (averageVote>=4.0 && coloredVoteCountOverall>=5)
where coloredVoteCountOverall could be the total number of unweighted up-votes by silver/gold/platinum authors and authorities (i.e. excluding new accounts and backroom debators).
The formula means a single article, appreciated by the community, is enough to open the gates; and getting 5 articles published is also good enough no matter their rating (you might bring in a rejection ratio here, however I'm not sure it is available nor necessary).
Please remember, you want to stimulate article writing, and the approval scheme got introduced to avoid the real crap. Your sentence said something like "...if the author made an effort, by all means, approve". IMO your current system does not really fit the original goals.
Chris Maunder wrote: We've had the opposite complaint: too many approvers so that the only articles an approver sees are the poor ones
We have had this conversation before. It still is my opinion that your approval scheme is completely flawed. You want to discourage and hide bad articles, and the only immediate tool you offer is an approval button. Well, if one uses that, the better articles disappear from the list and the lesser ones remain. Normally, the quality assurance department has a "reject" stamp, yours has the opposite.
Due to this situation, I have chosen to install AdBlocker and hide the articles-needing-approval list from my CP home page, as that list is tempting but always ended in a disappointing waste of time lacking the right tools. Give me a reasonable way to judge entries, and I will be happy to participate though.
IMO the major problem with unrighteous approvals is caused by historic golds. All it took to get approved was a single old account willing to click the button. I suggest you increase the number of approvers, install a voting system, and make sure not a single person (except maybe platinum) is capable of approving or disapproving. Hence my 10-point suggestion.
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Hi Luc,
Just curious about one thing you said: "the only immediate tool you offer is an approval button." What about the Report button? Or do you not see that?
If in fact you don't see the Report button, then that is shocking. Rep points, silver, gold, platinum, etc., emit warm fuzzies, but if a serious CP member doesn't have access to a key feedback mechanism like the Report button, then this should be addressed immediately, with divine intervention if necessary.
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Hi Hans,
I am fully aware of the report button, however:
1. it isn't clear what it does, I'm just guessing it sends a notification to the editors; and whatever it does, there is no immediate result. When voting on an article or forum message, the vote count goes up, the average gets adapted, so as a reader you have several options and see some, albeit minor, result. Other readers also see the updated average vote. Clicking "report" on an article entry has no immediate or noticeable effect.
2. it is rather extreme, and I would use that with care; to me it means "I absolutely don't want this article to appear" which is quite a strong statement; as is the "I approve" button, which basically says "no matter what others think, this article now becomes public".
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Chris Maunder wrote: You post a single article and then from then on each time a member reads and up-votes your article you get points
Luc wrote: I can churn out ten messages in programming forums in a matter of minutes, and collect over 100 points on them. It takes a couple of days to provide a decent article
I have to agree with Luc here. Some articles can take a long long time to produce. I have a few in progress that are serious works that I have, believe it or not, spent many months working on, one of them has been over a year in progress already - meant as a study subject for myself but with a view to CP publication from the outset.
I will post them here at CP because I love the site and the philosophy - not because I want a pretty colour on my profile page! However, we have the pretty colours because they do mean something so should accurately reflect what they are rewarding. An article in itself without any votes should be worth more than 100 points. Maybe a stronger reduction if downvoted would be required to restore a balance if it's garbage if it were changed.
Dave
Binging is like googling, it just feels dirtier. (Pete O'Hanlon)
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn)
Why are you using VB6? Do you hate yourself? (Christian Graus)
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When we first released the beta version of the reputation system back in August there was a lot of discussion on the topic of how to award points on an article based on the effort put into it. It's impossible to say "an article is worth 100 times a forum posting" because one person may whip up an article in an hour, and another (like yourself) may spend months. We have no "How long did you spend on this article" field in the article wizard, and scoring an article by its length would not be realistic.
The discussions centered around trying to realistically reward authors for their actions, and the only method I could see that was fair was to have the community - those who actually use your articles - award you. If we increase the base award for articles then that applies to all articles, even the crud that gets submitted after final exam time. I, personally, don't think it's fair that an author churning out rubbish has a chance at Gold or Platinum status. It should simply be impossible for them to get it. Having the automated, one-size-fits-all award be modest means this is less likely, since the true value of the article will be in the votes, not the initial post.
This raises another side issue: what if an author spends a great deal of time on an article but it's simply of no value? It could be a long, well formatted article written over 3 months, but it could be simply the worlds most convoluted Hello World app. Our system can't (and should no) make s judgement call on this article. The readers who actually read and use the article should make the call.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Since we're now talking about metaphysical reality, how about giving each CP editor (I mean employees here) 10000 points per month, to award to articles as they see fit? Sort of like "editor's choice" rep points. Presumably, these would be awarded based on actual usefulness and merit.
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Why not just give each Editor's choice article 250 points?
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Too limited, lacks flexibility. I'm sure your editors all have different opinions, and they each see something different in an article, concerning its relative merits. Why not just trust their judgments?
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OK, so instead of fixed points, they can vary the points?
Hmm, I dunno. I'm prefer to have those who use the articles vote on them, instead of an editor pinning a start on, say, 5 articles a month while another 20 of equal value go unrewarded. My thinking is that a jaded editor will only award an article if it's really special, and will award big. Editors only get to briefly view all the articles that come in during any given month so the combination of running out of points and missing some deserving ones will mean it's uneven coverage.
Just seems fraught with potential for lots of emails begging to have points awarded to an author's articles.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I know it's complicated, Chris - that's why you get the big bucks.
I can't give you any solid proof for this, but I'm coming to the conclusion that many CP members vote on articles based on whether it's useful to them at the present time. Maybe they think that by voting that way, they can influence what articles get written? I don't know, but I think that the CP editors will have better judgment than these idiots.
I'm sure that CP editors each have different opinions, and letting them award points separately makes sense. They are also more likely to consider the whole package: code, article text, screenshots, and design issues/background.
Yes, it's possible that an editor might overlook some articles, but by forcing the selection of only a single article, you're overlooking a lot of articles. You can still keep the present system's net result: the article with the most editor points is the editor's choice.
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What if we could agree upon a number of articles you want awarded each month, and each editor kept putting them on a list and we collectively decided how to award points from a single pool of editors points, thereby balancing each other's jadedness out?
I am only swayed by envelopes filled with tater tots, not e-mails
Thanks,
Sean Ewington
The Code Project
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It's the word 'collectively' that gives me pause. This is your show, but personally I would suspect that group-think begins if you all get in a meeting and try to come to a consensus. All I'm saying is, let each editor get a number of points to award as he/she wants. Or don't you think that would work?
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Hans Dietrich wrote: . Or don't you think that would work?
I think it would be wildly inconsistent between editors and which side of the bed they got up on, as well as article load.
The more voters, the smoother the data.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Hans Dietrich wrote: Yes, it's possible that an editor might overlook some articles, but by forcing the selection of only a single article, you're overlooking a lot of articles. You can still keep the present system's net result: the article with the most editor points is the editor's choice.
The editor's choice is selected randomly whenever an editor comes across an article that just rocks. Just to make certain I understand you, you're suggesting instead of picking 1 random article every so often, editors should "award" as many articles as they see fit, with the award level varying based on their overall feel, and the most awarded article is the editor's choice for that day/week/month etc. Is that it?
My feeling would be we provide the editors with some radio buttons for each article:
Award Bonus points: o 100 o 250 o 500 o 750 o 1000
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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You left out the '0' points, but yes, that's it.
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Hi Chris,
I lost track of this thread, sorry for that.
The issues you raise are valid indeed.
However, I would turn those points into immediate stimuli, like so:
- have the wizard judge several aspects of the entry, and award points accordingly.
- here are some criteria:
number of downloadables, of images, of code snippets, of links to other CP material, of links to external material;
presence of table-of-content, of history, of acknowledgements, ...;
- This variable number of points would replace the constant 100 you now award.
The bonus CP gets from it is people better realize what they could do to create better articles, and when they try they get an immediate reward. Yes I know this deals mostly with form, not intellectual content, but that remains left to the readers and their votes.
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That would definitely filter out some of the bottom dwellers, but I strongly feel that someone like Sacah Barber who spent a month on an article would tell you he doesn't care how many downloads or tables of content an article has, if it's crap it's crap.
The value of an article is what members feel the value is. No more, no less.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: someone like Sacah Barber who...
Yeah, I know, he can't be helped, no matter what you do he will deliver a couple of quality articles a month.
I was only pointing out you probably could improve the average article quality by providing a small but immediate award to authors taking care of those form aspects you consider important.
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Just had a quick look at the who's who page and I immediately noticed that David Cunningham[^] has an Author rep of -60.
No articles or tips with any votes 
Dave
Binging is like googling, it just feels dirtier. (Pete O'Hanlon)
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn)
Why are you using VB6? Do you hate yourself? (Christian Graus)
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DaveyM69 wrote: Just had a quick look at the who's who page and I immediately noticed that David Cunningham[^] has an Author rep of -60.
The -60 does not worry me as much as the fact that Dave has not posted here since April 2009! Chris, you gotta do something about that! 
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Looks like a bug. I'll add it to the list. Thanks!
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This is just a thought and maybe it already has been addressed or used to be this way and was changed (probably for a good reason)...so consider this more of a discussion rather than a suggestion.
first, let me say that CP's search seems to be the best forum search I've seen in a long time. Usually, with programming forums, it is easier to search the forum with Google rather than the built in search. Kudos to CP for that.
but it seems to me that if the search results were somewhat date sorted before relevance sorted would make it slightly better...
example, the following search:
http://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Search.aspx?fid=0&kw=fantasy+baseball[^]
before I posted in the lounge resulted in the 2003 thread as the first result. I almost replied to it until I noticed the date.
I was thinking it would be nice to have results sorted by some very rough date order (perhaps by year)? And of course a simple note at the top of the above search result that says "No results from 2010" or something to that effect would be useful.
The reasoning is that many searches are for time sensitive subjects and it doesn't do any good to the person searching to see results from 7 years ago. Of course, on the other hand, this is a programming forum and many times those 7yo results are just as useful as if it were posted yesterday. So I guess its kinda a wash on that one.
thoughts?
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I have thought about this also. Example (may not be real): Working with SQL 2008 I find that the answers to SQL 2000 is good for 2000 but will not work for 2008 thus an answer from 2005 does not always help.
I am not saying what is here is bad as I could not even get a result this if I tried.
Just my two cents.
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