Update to Activity Points System

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DanB
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Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2011 1:13 am

Post by DanB »

Ross wrote:
mudz wrote:
Ross wrote:I disagree, I have seen plenty of bad "questions" - most of them are not actually questions..
Hmm.. Can't say about those but Guess what? sometimes the dumbest questions get you the best answers.
You misunderstand, the bad "questions" are usually not actually questions at all rather than "dumb" questions. I have moderated a lot of them - something i'd rather not be doing!

Example of an actual bad question: http://www.xcore.com/questions/2685/can ... nnect-link

Tags are also an important feature, for example this question won't be easily searchable due to poor tags (i.e. just the question repeated: http://www.xcore.com/questions/2684/lau ... -not-found)

Not really a useful reusable resource...
Either that was a bad example or I don't think it was a 'dumb' question. Given the time it would have taken you to compose your three letter response (particularly given you believe this is obvious to you) it was hardly consuming a great deal of moderation time!

I know that the answer was available elsewhere, in documentation, but as it is the response of many people is to 'ask first, read later'. That might be annoying, particularly for the 'old school' RTFM moderator, but it's just a fact of life. Given the relatively low traffic volume of this forum I don't think you can afford to turn anybody away for the fear or feeling 'dumb'. If you want to develop a community then you need to be accepting of new users... Those are the future of the community.

Finally, I don't think that the sort of user who asks such a question will give a second thought to the fact their 'Activity Points' will be negatively impacted... After all, that would require that they'd read the forums and understood how these worked.


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Ross
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Post by Ross »

DanB wrote: Either that was a bad example or I don't think it was a 'dumb' question. Given the time it would have taken you to compose your three letter response (particularly given you believe this is obvious to you) it was hardly consuming a great deal of moderation time!
I said it was bad, not dumb. Dumb questions can be good (if they help others). The idea of the Q&A is to build a useful, indexable shared resource, other wise use the standard forum. Bad questions don't lend themselves to being well answered, which is the most important thing. "Obviousness" is not relevant.

Perhaps if the question was "how do I..." then I would consider it a "good" question..
DanB wrote: Finally, I don't think that the sort of user who asks such a question will give a second thought to the fact their 'Activity Points' will be negatively impacted... After all, that would require that they'd read the forums and understood how these worked.
Quite. But that shoots down your argument also..
DanB
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Post by DanB »

Ross wrote:Quite. But that shoots down your argument also..
I disagree. The point is those that ask the bad/dumb questions are unlikely to know (or care) about the Activity Points system. Trying to disincentivise these people from asking bad/dumb questions will not work. However, as a result some people may decide not to ask a (potentially useful) question for fear of being considered bad/dumb because they do care about the community and their personal reputation.

Nobody benefits.
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migueljds
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Post by migueljds »

Hi everyone,

After hearing your feedback. I've updated the points system, so that you only lose points if your question, answer, forum post or project is reported as being inappropriate or spam.
If the moderators reject the report then the points which were lost are reinstated.

If your question, answer or project gets voted down, no points are lost; it just doesn't look good for you.

Also, you may have noticed that there is now a little points bubble next to everyone's name. This is your activity points, and if you go to your profile page, you will see a link next to your points that gives you a breakdown of what activities gave you points to make up that total.

We are planning on building on this activity points system. So what we are thinking is to give awards for specific exceptional activity.
They will just be simple badge of honours, ie. more than 5 project ideas gives you a project doodad badge or whatever. You input is welcome on what exceptional activity badges would be good to have.

This is a step towards bringing back project of the month, but also to build on that, to acknowledge people's contribution for more than just their projects.
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