[squeakland] the reasons for ranking

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

At Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:44:47 -0400,
Timothy Falconer wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sep 29, 2009, at 11:08 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
> 
> > At Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:45:08 -0400,
> > Timothy Falconer wrote:
> >>
> >> I think the piece that's missing here is that it will be pretty rare
> >> to actually change from one level to another, especially for younger
> >> children.
> >
> >  Is this based on the logic described at
> > http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-361?  It would be a bit
> > surprizing to hear because "maxMojo" change alone affects everybody's
> > rank.  Since the owner of maxMojo probably will earn more points
> > quicker than others, and the ranks are linear scale of the point, I
> > would expect to see bigger disparity over time.
> 
> Some of the details have changed since that list, but yes, the  
> mojoLevel formula is current.

  Ok, so the single person's behavior alone can change the whole
system, yes?

> Over time, some people will continue to contribute and others will  
> stop.   The formula rewards sustained effort, not past performance.

  Hmm, are you saying that the top person will eventually stop so it
is not going to be a problem?

> Again, this is not a grade ... it's a thank you.

  You usually don't take "thank you" away after giving it, right?

> >> Yes, we could take the colored circles off the website.   I think  
> >> that
> >> people are finding them fun, at least the people I'm talking to,  
> >> and I
> >> think there's genuine value in knowing that a commenter is a regular
> >> and not a puppet account.
> >
> >  Well, people should actually look at the contents to judge the
> > quality of comments.  I've been writing fairly stupid comments.  They
> > should be treated so.
> 
> Originally we were going to rank comments, but recently I decided that  
> would be just too much for people to have to do.
> 
> Comment points are a recognition of effort ... not a grade, but a  
> thank you.
> 
> When comment scribbling gets turned on (see the tracker), we'll have a  
> way to prevent bogus comments from gaming the system.

  ... I wasn't talking about comment points.  I wasn't talking about
gaming the system either...  What you said above was that people
should feel good when somebody with higher level comments on their
projects.  And I said that people should read the actual comment and
feel good when it is good.

-- Yoshiki