Arch ranking system to promote growth of the community...

Allan · 2010-10-25 04:29:15

Not going to happen.

ngoonee · 2010-10-25 06:51:48

trusktr wrote:

See, if there was a ranking system, i would have gained massive points for starting such an active discussion.
Perhaps a "helpful" button next to posts would be neat? And users could have levels of "helpfulness" to encourage helpful activity and badges at certain levels of helpfulness? That might be interesting. People would be more encouraged to post helpful things than to post just for posting. I could go post 7,400 posts right now if i wanted to, but that wouldn't earn me one single point of helpfulness.

Post 7,400 posts and we'd delete your account immediately. No problem.

Post seemingly 'helpful' commands which aren't actually of much help but look well-intentioned and so are voted up? I don't look forward to having to moderate that.

For a good (actually bad) example of this, check out Ubuntu's forums. New topics can sometimes have 10-15 "perhaps you might want to try this" which is normally totally tangential at best or dangerous at worst. Now give all those 10-15 posters rights to gauge helpfulness.... disaster.

So yes, not going to happen.

tlaloc · 2010-10-25 16:03:44

I really had to laugh over skottish's post.

Otherwise, I think that this discussion is driven by mis-guiding categories. No-one gives a damn about forums. If you write a tiny little patch and send it to the appropiate ML - when it gets accepted, you will be helpfull to all of us, not only to a single user with a specific problem. Should count as 1000 (largely meaningless) posts in the forums. Not a programmer? Write a new wiki-entry, sell schwag, do some translation or moderating stuff - and some day, people may even remember your name, may look at your work more closely, may even start to trust you and may pull in stuff which they cannot controll or correct (which is the typical situtation in regard to translations).

So this boils down to a few points: First, there is already an informal, subconscious ranking-system. After a while, you know which posts you have to read, and whose posts you can safely ignore. Second, the informal social hierarchy thus formed is much more complex than the descent from dev > TU > user. After all, there are a number of highly-esteemed members of the community without any official position (let's say - a veteran programmer, or something like that). Third, this informal ranking-system is much more efficient than any kind of "objective" measurement which might be based upon post counts or credit points for helpfullness. And fourth, the entire system is based upon your previous merits - as it should be.

Any other ranking-system sucks, and since we hardly ever have to speak about it, you cannot step on someone's toes so quickly.

Last edited by tlaloc (2010-10-25 16:05:50)

drcouzelis · 2010-10-25 17:41:08

ngoonee wrote:

For a good (actually bad) example of this, check out Ubuntu's forums. New topics can sometimes have 10-15 "perhaps you might want to try this" which is normally totally tangential at best or dangerous at worst.

Oh my goodness I've seen that! I read response after response and think, "You have got to me kidding me". I never thought about why that would be the case.

As for the "informal, subconscious ranking-system", I really appreciate that so many members have unique avatars and very very rarely change them. It helps a lot. For example, I love seeing the Anikom15 fish, since I know there is going to be a fun comment with it.

So... is there a problem with the Arch Linux forums that this discussion is trying to find a solution for?

Arch Linux

#26 2010-10-25 04:29:15

Re: Arch ranking system to promote growth of the community...

#27 2010-10-25 06:51:48

Re: Arch ranking system to promote growth of the community...

#28 2010-10-25 16:03:44

Re: Arch ranking system to promote growth of the community...

#29 2010-10-25 17:41:08

Re: Arch ranking system to promote growth of the community...

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