How is this possible?Just curious....
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Hi guys,was sifting through the forum and stumbled across this " member":http://qt-project.org/member/137531 . Just wondering how it is possible to hit 4k+ with around 90 posts.As the title says, I am curious and I apologize if there is something I do not understand.
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Hello,
mostly tagging and retagging, also editing some wiki entries. You get "two points for each tag added":http://qt-project.org/ranks.
As I am learning Qt I thought that correcting tags while reading is a good idea. Plus I try to tag every new forum topic appropriately.I also do hope that I am not doing anything wrong, but threads about tags are not very lively.
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Thanks Alek Śmierciak,
Guess I had missed that tagging thing.And it really helps in improving the findability of threads.Thanks for the enlightenment. -
I think some people are getting the wrong idea about the "ranking" system. Mostly because of promises of authority and "special attention", causing newcomers to enter in a "scoring frenzy" to race towards "awesomeness". This actually has bad aspects to it - a lot redundant actions done in the name of "scoring", and a lot of useful time wasted to gain points instead of development experience.
The whole idea of the rank is to indicate the state of expertise of users. That means users with long term experience and lots of knowledge, who have been around for long enough to be skilled and adept in Qt development. Such "long timers" are people that are trusted to help out with the forum and are usually the first users to respond to questions. And when a still learning newbies with just a few weeks of Qt experience does into a scoring frenzy it just defeats the entire purpose of the ranking system. It no longer serves the purpose it was intended to and becomes an inaccurate measure.
Rank can be a good motivator, I've seen raking motivating people into "contributing" even if the rank is just a meaningless number with nothing more to it, but many times it is possible to abuse the system and enter a "race" that was not intended and is of no benefit to anyone.
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I think that your implications are a bit too far fetched. Since you are addressing the issue of ranking system in a thread concerning me I feel obliged to answer as being accused of amassing points cheaply.
This is in no way my ultimate goal here; as I said before, tagging while learning and improving Qt resources is. All in all, a little more than a hundred posts through one month run isn't that bad as well.I am familiar with the "Ranking system":http://qt-project.org/ranks and I of course understand the math. The ranking system was designed to either reward tagging in such a way deliberately or was simply overlooked. Either way, time spent tagging isn't a couple of hours - time spent correcting tags isn't short either. I ask any person able to do so to look through my tags and rule whether they are junk or not.
As my points amount apparently garner some negative thoughts (and I assure you I understand that to some extent), I ask the forum administrator to purge my points amount completely. Some of my points came from posts and other actions such as wiki, but I don't know whether administrator can differentiate between points sources.
Furthermore, I could not care less for a badge, the knowledge is what I came here for - though knowing that by tagging I helped someone/anyone is nice.Moreover, if the ranking system does matter (I bet it does) and the way I achieved those points is not fair, then revise the ranking system - for example cut down points awarded for tagging or remove them at all. I will still help with tags (of course as long as they are needed!) no matter the rank rewards.
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If I wanted to address you I'd do it directly. There is a good reason I didn't, and I can assure you it wasn't so that you make that exact assumption.
That being said - don't take it as accusation. The fault for exploiting that feature is yours, but the door to exploit it has been left by the people who designed the ranking system. That is why I feel the ranking system of places like SO is better, because it does not work based on user activity but the subjective evaluation of it by others.
As of the "far fetched" implications - I am far from the idea you came here to rank up. But what you came here for in the first place may not necessarily be the same thing as you end up doing. To be honest, your case really made an impression, because I don't recall stumbling upon anyone who raked so much on tags. There are some people with high rank and somewhat low post count, but they have ranked up on creating, editing and translating wiki entries, writing doc notes, snippets and other stuff that is actually useful. Believe it or not, tagging doesn't help all that much, and the more tags the less helpful they will become, especially when the motivation is to quickly rank up. All this considering the number of untagged threads is not very high.
You have like 540 points on your posts, a few on wiki edits, the rest approx 4500 points are equal of approx 2250 tags. That is in less than one month, that is like 100 tags per day. And as good as it is to have content tagged, this kind of behavior in such intensity indicates your primary motivation is the rank. Come one, who else goes half way to "Mad Scientist" in less than a month entirely on tags and above all - unintentionally? You probably felt unconformable becoming a "Mad Scientist" your first month, so decided to leave the rest for the second month ;)
Up-voting content also gives you a point, you might just as well set up a script to open each and every thread on the site and up-vote it automatically. This way you can get almost 30 000 points... And at least it will be clean instead of polluting with redundant tags.
To be honest, I haven't read the "eula" or license agreement or whatever I was presented with when I registered. The user agreement may very well contain something on the subject. But in case it doesn't - then ranking exploits are perfectly legal, and my insights regarding irrational human behavior are irrelevant and your "points" are "fair".
And no, I don't think the ranking system was neither designed to reward tagging "in such a way" nor overlooked, I just think when it was imagined, nobody assumed a mentally sane individual will make use of it "in such a way" - let's face it, whether you are doing it for the rank or the "contribution" - 100 tags a day is obsessively unhealthy. Also, consider that this is an average value.
This can easily be fixed by applying some limits like it is with most similar sites with ranking. But to me it doesn't look like people are very concerned with how this place is running. That raking exploit is just one of many aspects this site needs improvement.
a small "truth table":
doing wrong for the wrong reasons = wrong
doing wrong for the right reasons = wrong
doing right for the wrong reasons = wrong <- this case
doing right for the right reasons = rightAnd as a finishing thought - since you mention "correcting" tags - do you think your less than 1 month of membership qualifies you to "correct" tags? Especially if that is motivated by the rank that you act like you are not interested in and yet are overly defensive about?
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You say that you do not accuse me of anything in particular, but your choice of words says otherwise.
I don't know you, I don't know your position at Qt DevNet either but you seem to have taken a closer look at my account activity, which you indirectly called "polluting with redundant tags".
That's fine, I value your opinion on this case as I would anyone else's.Spare me the hostility, though, and any remarks on my hypothetical mental problems. Those are simply childish, even if you don't agree with me and suspect me of exploiting the system I don't think that I deserve such words.
Regarding your "finishing thought", I don't quite understand where am I "overly defensive about [the rank]". I already said that you could strip me off my points amount and I would probably still be here. I think that both you and I know ("it is written in 'ol English":http://qt-project.org/ranks) that any rank higher than Hobby Entomologist gives nothing in itself.
Concerning the tag correcting, I would like to say that one does not need to be of exceptional intelligence to understand plain tagging rules ("1":http://qt-project.org/wiki/Tagging), recommendations ("1":http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/28213/, "2":http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/2336, "3":http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/2265) and "wrong behaviour":http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/28642/ and act accordingly.
I don't think that there is much place left for discussion, as we're confronting opinions.
Edit: you seem to have edited the middle of your post which I did not see earlier.
I stopped my forums activity lately because I have other work to do in my life. Of course, you don't know that and know nothing at all about me, but I guess it does not prevent you from accusations, doesn't it?
Believe me, I may not be exceptionally intelligent, but I would have made sure that my points count rise steadily and in an unsuspicious manner had I wanted it to.
Of course, this provided I wanted to become a Mad Scientist and provided it would get me anything beneficial. Becoming a Mad Scientist ranked person would surely bring some attention of administrators and Qt-related staff; I have no doubts that they would see my account history and that most points came from tags. This is perfectly fine for me, as I have nothing to hide. -
Don't worry - I am not hostile, this is just the way I sound to some people for some reason. I have no position here and would not accept even if offered - don't worry I don't have access to any of your private information. I see the same stuff publicly visible to all users. So, I have no way of knowing the quality of the "tag correcting" you do - but from what I've seen here - most threads are already tagged amply. In order to add tags you must either add vaguely related tags, or delete the old to add new. Surely, there are some bad tags that actually need correcting, but I've only seen a few so far.
But I am sure of one thing - If I am to do 100 tags on existing threads, it will take me a while, even without reading the actual threads, I mean finding threads that are not tagged and only using adequate tags. On the other hand I can speed things up by getting sloppy and extensively generous with the tags. Thus my suspicion involving "suboptimal" tagging.
So pardon my suspicion, but you are an unprecedented case, one way or the other. And I know you keep saying you are not, but that much tagging plus all those threads about tagging, the tagging wiki entry- it does kind of reaffirm my theory about your obsession.
One thing to keep in mind about obsession - you aren't really aware of it. Same thing for crazy people - you are not crazy if you are crazy and you know it - you must be crazy and not know it to be technically crazy. 1 of 3 adults suffer of some form of diagnosable form of psychological disorder. I know I do :) So, there is no reason we are not both right, but you will have to consult with a professional to verify that. It may very well be an obsession with learning Qt going the wrong way too... The human mind is the most mysterious and least understood thing in the universe... so far...
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I think that you are aware of the fact that the blade can be turned around with such arguments as yours and that you can be found obsessive about this case as well. It is not my point to do so, however; this brings us nowhere.
The best ending of this case would be to have an administrator look into it finally and have a final word. I already asked for what would be the easiest solution "here":http://qt-project.org/forums/viewreply/129673/. Now is time to wait - thanks for the discussion, though.
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bq. I think that you are aware of the fact that the blade can be turned around with such arguments as yours and that you can be found obsessive about this case as well
Nope, that will just make you a parrot :) Besides, I can't help myself having OCD - it is just neurons acting on their own. And no, my obsessions have nothing to do with you, I was just curious on how are you going to justify yours. Couldn't care less if you got a billion points, in the end of the day that is just a curious unprecedented case.