Progress bar indicating progress towards next rank

ZapB

http://qt.gitorious.org/qt/qt/merge_requests/2364
http://qt.gitorious.org/qt/qt/merge_requests/1014

I have had a couple of small bug fix MRs merged, but larger pieces of new API just seem to languish in gitorious forever. 2364 is coming up for a year now despite repeated attempts to get it reviewed fully. I have some other patches waiting for this to get merged that implement a thread-safe bounded circular buffer class that can trivially be used to implement a threaded producer-consumer pattern.

1014 is something that Andre and I discussed on qt-interest and then implemented after many people showed an interest in such functionality.

If you can find someone to review and hopefully merge them I'll buy you and them some beer at the next devdays (or whatever your poison is).

andre

To be honest, 1014 is stalled on my own side, not on Qt's. I need to test the patches that I wrote to address the issues raised in the comments. I'm pretty sure they're ok, but there is nothing like a few unit tests to proof it...

ZapB

Ah ok. Have you actually managed to get any trolls to agree that it would be a useful addition yet?

andre

I have at least not heard back from the one doubting it... I am fairly confident it will not be rejected because of that, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

ZapB

For the points from MR's how about the following:

1000 points for a MR introducing one or more new public classes
100 points for MR that fixes a bug o rprovides an optimisation etc

For joint MRs points could be split between developers.

goetz

I'm not completely against points for merge requests, BUT: While it is quite true, that an accepted merge request is great for Qt in general, it adds no immediate benefit to Qt DevNet. And the ranking system in it's current shape is - as far as I understand it - intended to reward activity on this site, not on a place somewhere else.

And just as an (obviously exaggerated) example:
10 new classes, and some other enhancements via merge requests and you are Mad Scientist without having written even a single forum post or wiki article...

andre

In theory you can also achieve that rank by just liking and tagging content. I'll admit, not very likely, but still...

The point is that there are different ways to contribute to the Qt community. DevNet is supposed to be catering to the community, and it would be nice if achievements in other areas are reflected. In a way, that already happens via the badges. You (and me) being a Certified Developer has nothing to do with your activity at DevNet itself, but it is still reflected here.

ZapB

Volker: what you say is true but you could look upon gitorious MRs as an extension of the developer network. Also, getting new public classes into Qt is very difficult for non-trolls so the points bonus could do with being a reasonable size. The absolute values I suggested were just starters for 10.

Of course this would require linking gitorious accounts with QtDN accounts in many-many manner since MRs can only be submitted by individuals at present.

goetz

That's only partially right. You get the certified badge as soon as you tell Marius your credentials. And you get no additional rewards from it (ie. no additional rights), you'll have to collect points too to make it to a forum moderator or the like. All you can do with it is to show that your a great Qt guy from the very beginning :) It's the same with the TROLL badge, all the cute Nokia guys must collect points too.

And if you just tag you have at least provided some content to this site (in the sense of categorizing already existing stuff). An accepted merge request is not visible to QDN at all.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not completely against some rewarding for accepted MRs, but 1000/100 would be definitely way too much for my taste. Leaving out technical implications (who "triggers" the adding of points from an MR acceptance?) completely for now.

andre

Well, in terms of time spend contributing to the Qt community, I actually think the numbers are not that weird. I know how much time goes into writing, documenting, unit testing and legitimizing a class takes to get it it into Qt. Way more than it takes me to rake in those 1000 points at DevNet.

I know the badges do not contribute to points, I only mentioned them to illustrate that there are in fact links to what's on DevNet and what's going on outside that. Some of us have already seen other plans for DevNet that also allow people to gain points, and that are already closer to contributing to Qt itself rather than DevNet. At least, that's how I view those developments (I think Volker will understand what I'm talking about, I'm a bit vague as I am not sure I'm at liberty to discuss these things here in the open yet).

ZapB

Well, I have no idea what you're talking about - but with my little brain that is not uncommon ;-)

Volker: Also MRs for new public API have to have full docs so although they do not directly post content in the forums or on the wiki they do make useful contributions to the wider Qt developer network (ie anyone who uses Qt not just those registered here).

Anyway, I realise that you are not objecting per-se so I'll shut up now :-)

troubalex

Now, that took me a while to read through this epic thread. Well done, folks! :)

Let me try to comment in a somewhat organized fashion.

First, the progress bar. While I understand where you're coming from, I don't really think it's a good idea to display in the forums itself. It might work on the profiles but that is really a design decision. I am reluctant to get in Super Gunder's way to be honest.

Then the leader board. That could actually work. We have the weekly top 5 and the Hall of Fame on the homepage but we don't display the whole list anywhere. I'lll toy around with the idea for a bit and discuss the options with the team.

And finally, points for MRs. Unsurprisingly, I have heard that before. :P Volker was already on the right track, our point system is not the answer to all questions. It is meant and designed to reward activity specifically on the DevNet. No doubt that there are a lot of very valuable contributions to Qt outside of the site - think external communities, translations, workshops, presentations and many many more. We have no sane way of tying those together with the DevNet.

And that's where the badges come in. The coming reputation system scales infinitely and we can add as many badges for all sorts of things as we want. I have a growing list of badges you will be able to earn and "code contributor" will certainly among them.

I hope this made sense (and I haven't missed anything important...).

ZapB

Thanks for the feedback. It started off as a simple idea for progress bars on the profile page so I would be happy to see just that one implemented. It should be an easy win and as you say for the profile progress bar, everybody likes to fill them up, so it might encourage more contributions.

Anything else like the leaderboard would just be an added bonus. ;-)

I understand the difficulties (conceptual/technical) of reflecting other contributions to Qt via the points system.