USB sliceKIT Competition Round 3 - NEW Activity Points Score

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DavidW
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USB sliceKIT Competition Round 3 - NEW Activity Points Score

Post by DavidW »

And now onto our final round...

Round 3 - Activity Points Score


Miguel has been hard at work getting all this activity points stuff done in time for this month. The following link is currently accessible from the footer of the home screen (but will be surfaced in a more friendly location soon).

New Points leaderboard for this month

Whoever finishes the month first will be the final winner of a USB sliceKIT.

The new leaderboard shows your points for the month in real-time, and we will not count an XMOS employees in the final standings (for the competition).

So you have just a couple of days left to make it to the top!

Also.... We are reintroducing badges and other awards using this new points system, so expect further updates in August, on how this will all benefit you.


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TSC
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Post by TSC »

I have discovered that there are several ways of gaming the activity points system. I.e. making your score increase without actually contributing anything. I could have added a thousand points to my score in just a few minutes by exploiting one of these methods.

Anyone who's been monitoring the monthly leader board over the last couple of days may have noticed that Bianco and I have engaged in some friendly activity point rivalry on account of the USB SliceKit on offer.

Can an XMOS employee suggest a resolution to this issue? I think both Bianco and I have made some really great contributions to the XCore community.
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Bianco
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Post by Bianco »

TSC wrote:I have discovered that there are several ways of gaming the activity points system. I.e. making your score increase without actually contributing anything. I could have added a thousand points to my score in just a few minutes by exploiting one of these methods.

Anyone who's been monitoring the monthly leader board over the last couple of days may have noticed that Bianco and I have engaged in some friendly activity point rivalry on account of the USB SliceKit on offer.

Can an XMOS employee suggest a resolution to this issue? I think both Bianco and I have made some really great contributions to the XCore community.
I fully agree
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DavidW
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Post by DavidW »

One of the aims of the point system is just that, to encourage some friendly rivalry. Theres nothing wrong with simply chatting on a forum for example, it may not 'add' anything of great value but this is supposed to be a community after all.

The projects you have added have been gratefully received. I don't see it as 'gaming' the system as long as they are genuine projects. If, however, they are just invented for the sake of points grabbing (and don't actually exist), then obviously this IS an issue.

These are early days for the points system. It will no doubt require 'tweaking' here and there to get the right balance. Also 'gaming' is something that cannot be avoided, but it can be deterred, through good moderation.

In fact one of the reasons we started with a points based competition was to hopefully try to uncover any areas where 'gaming' was easy so that we could fix it.

If you message myself or Miguel with the methods you think are the easiest to 'game', we can look into them and suggest some alterations.
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DavidW
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Post by DavidW »

Actually i'm going to rescind the winner announcement, not for any malicious reasons, but mainly becuase it also seems it's possible to affect the score of a previous month at the moment!

We were hoping that this 'incentive' would highlight loopholes, and it has, which is great. We just need to sort them now before we move on.
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Folknology
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Post by Folknology »

Maybe points should also be awarded for finding and reporting ways to game the system as long as such gaming is reported and explained to xCore organisers. Also that should perhaps happen through messaging rather than publicly on the forum in order to avoiding others taking advantage of revealed gaming techniques. Better this than folks gaming the points system in a clandestine manner IMHO...

P.S. I also think isolating/reporting spammers/abusers and or others that degrade/abuse xCore could also be rewarded with activity points assuming policy was clear enough, this could help keep xCore a quality resource and better community

regards
Al
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DavidW
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Post by DavidW »

If we did implement a points reward for highlighting people 'gaming' the system, it would have to be after the problem had been confirmed and fixed. I also think that any points given here should not count until the next month or something like that so that people are doing it 'out of the kindness of their heart' rather than to try and win a prize in that specific month.

Also for the sake of transparency, we should publish who got what points for finding holes. Any time where we are essentially doling out points 'behind closed doors', it's important that the rest of the community can see exactly why these points have been awarded. Like i say, this should only happen once the route to 'gaming' has been plugged.

What we dont want are people spamming the 'report user' button just to gain points. As not only is this annoying, but it also means we'll have a huge moderation queue, 99% of which will be spam, and genuine problems may be missed.
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DavidW
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Post by DavidW »

Ok, We reset the points to clear out the gaming and Bianco came out on top, with TSC still close behind. The next nearest was XMOS staff member Ross, so Bianco's and TSC's lead is pretty conclusive.

Because it ended up so close and there were obvious issues with the points system, which clouded the initial results, we're going to give USB sliceKIT's to both Bianco and TSC.
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