[squeakland] the reasons for ranking

[Timothy Falconer]

Hi all,

Let's talk more directly about the reasons for ranking . . . early  
today I wrote:

>> It also gives us more colored dots.

And Yoshiki wrote:

>  And the explanation of why this is a good thing is not described
> yet.  Kathleen wasn't happy with it and I think your response wasn't
> answering her concern.

I'll try to be clearer.

As I see things, there are three related issues that are getting  
combined in the same conversation:

1. showing individual rankings (which is what I think she's most  
concerned about ... google "Punished by Rewards")

2. showing levels of ongoing community involvement (aka, "top ten  
contributors")

3. sorting things so the good stuff stays on top and the lesser stuff  
falls to the bottom

The colored dots next to people's usernames are really about #2.   You  
can get points by voting, by commenting, by submitting projects, etc.   
It is *not* merely a measure of your project vote points.  It's not an  
average either.   One person who submits ten projects that gets 5  
points each will earn 50 points, which is the same as another person  
who submits two projects that get 25 points each.   There's no way to  
tell which person got 25 points apiece and which got 5 points apiece.   
In a normal grading situation, the 25 pointer would clearly "win out"  
over the 5 pointer.   The Squeakland showcase measures *sustained  
effort*, not specific performance.

Displaying the colored dots is a motivational thing.  When someone  
sees a comment by "yoshiki with the purple circle", they can see  
you're an Etoys enthusiast with a history.   It's not "Yoshiki who  
get's straight A's", it's "Yoshiki who's put in a lot of effort over  
time and has earned that purple circle."   Seeing the purple circle is  
a reward to you for effort, and a signal to others that your opinion  
might matter more than "puppetAccount31252" with a white circle.   The  
colored circles are a measure of credibility.

Which leads to the most important reason for them .... people with  
higher levels get asked to rank other projects.   They get asked  
because they've earned the right to have a say in what's valuable.

Some important things to keep in mind:

* no one ever sees your votes

* no one ever knows how their project was ranked, only that it places  
higher or lower than another project

* there are no displays of "raw points" anywhere ... only relative  
levels.   Today the top points is 362.  In a year, it might be  
23,252.   No one ever sees this.


As for the more general question of why do we even want to rank  
projects (#3), the answer is quite plain ....

because when there's 250,000 projects on the server, it'll be a big  
mess that's useful to no one unless there's some ordering that's  
generally useful.

The Squeakland ranking system is an attempt to sort with a measure of  
actual worth, not mere popularity.  The way to gauge this worth should  
be tied directly to sustained merit.

Tim