January 17, 2012 at 5:32 am
We do have ASK.SQLServerCentral.Com if you really prefer posting to a place with a reputation system.
The thing is, some questions lend themselves to that style of web site. But many (most?) questions here on SSC need discussion. I've talked about this to the guys that built StackOverflow. They hate, and i mean HATE, the discussion. They want to post a question and get an answer. So they went and built their system to make that happen. I get it, but as I said at the time, what about questions that aren't answerable with three lines? What if you need clarification? What if the question is rubbish?
I like both approaches but they both have weaknesses and strengths.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 17, 2012 at 6:19 pm
Grant Fritchey (1/17/2012)
We do have ASK.SQLServerCentral.Com if you really prefer posting to a place with a reputation system.The thing is, some questions lend themselves to that style of web site. But many (most?) questions here on SSC need discussion. I've talked about this to the guys that built StackOverflow. They hate, and i mean HATE, the discussion. They want to post a question and get an answer. So they went and built their system to make that happen. I get it, but as I said at the time, what about questions that aren't answerable with three lines? What if you need clarification? What if the question is rubbish?
I like both approaches but they both have weaknesses and strengths.
BWAA-HAAA!!! I've seen some of the more complicated questions over there. It there was ever a place where discussion actually needed to take place, that's one of them. 😀
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
January 17, 2012 at 9:09 pm
Jeff Moden (1/17/2012)
Grant Fritchey (1/17/2012)
We do have ASK.SQLServerCentral.Com if you really prefer posting to a place with a reputation system.The thing is, some questions lend themselves to that style of web site. But many (most?) questions here on SSC need discussion. I've talked about this to the guys that built StackOverflow. They hate, and i mean HATE, the discussion. They want to post a question and get an answer. So they went and built their system to make that happen. I get it, but as I said at the time, what about questions that aren't answerable with three lines? What if you need clarification? What if the question is rubbish?
I like both approaches but they both have weaknesses and strengths.
BWAA-HAAA!!! I've seen some of the more complicated questions over there. It there was ever a place where discussion actually needed to take place, that's one of them. 😀
Well that's just it. It requires a pretty high degree of knowledge to post a question so that you can get straight answers. A lot of people don't have that level of knowledge. Not if the question is at all convaluted. Ah well. To each his own.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 18, 2012 at 6:36 am
Sorry but I don't really care about someone's reputation/points; I just care that they had responded to me. Even if I thought the answer was gibberish, it made me go back and look at my task/post again. Often light dawned.
I often spent more time reading than posting so my points would never win prizes.
Now that I am 'semi-retired', I still read the editorials every day and trawl through the forums. Am I sad or just keeping the brain going?
Madame Artois
January 18, 2012 at 8:48 am
S Hodkinson (1/18/2012)
Now that I am 'semi-retired', I still read the editorials every day and trawl through the forums. Am I sad or just keeping the brain going?
Hopefully I am entertaining you on a daily basis 😀
January 18, 2012 at 8:51 am
Grant Fritchey (1/17/2012)
Jeff Moden (1/17/2012)
Grant Fritchey (1/17/2012)
We do have ASK.SQLServerCentral.Com if you really prefer posting to a place with a reputation system.The thing is, some questions lend themselves to that style of web site. But many (most?) questions here on SSC need discussion. I've talked about this to the guys that built StackOverflow. They hate, and i mean HATE, the discussion. They want to post a question and get an answer. So they went and built their system to make that happen. I get it, but as I said at the time, what about questions that aren't answerable with three lines? What if you need clarification? What if the question is rubbish?
I like both approaches but they both have weaknesses and strengths.
BWAA-HAAA!!! I've seen some of the more complicated questions over there. It there was ever a place where discussion actually needed to take place, that's one of them. 😀
Well that's just it. It requires a pretty high degree of knowledge to post a question so that you can get straight answers. A lot of people don't have that level of knowledge. Not if the question is at all convoluted. Ah well. To each his own.
The thing is, there are still discussions in the comments, but they tend to take place in a strange form, and they don't make sense later. Joel/Jeff's idea of canonical knowledge doesn't work when the questions are edited and the discussion isn't clear.
There's also the "voting" the answer up, which sometimes results in poor answers in some situations as the question really can apply in multiple ways.
I like what they've done, but it doesn't always work, and it doesn't suit me.
January 18, 2012 at 8:56 am
Addressing a couple items.
Jeff Moden (1/16/2012)
The problem with reputation systems is that bad answers frequently get voted up until someone comes along with the correct answer (or at least a better answer). Ironically, the corrected answer frequently doesn't get voted up even though it's much more correct than the original.
I'm not sure I worry too much about this. I think we can add some voting beyond a simple thumbs up/down that might help here. Also, I'd hope that we have a better user base, and a narrower niche, so we wouldn't see this as a big problem.
Points mean nothing... or at least they shouldn't. Either you do this stuff because you like helping others or not. Your "reward" (if you're looking for such a thing) should be the responses you get from people you've helped directly or indirectly. If you're interested in "reputation", post good answers and you'll earn one.
true, but the gaming systems show that people get more engaged, and they become more social with bonds. The point stuff helps here, if it's done well. Not sure I can do it well, but I'd like to experiment.
To wit, neither points nor reputation points will actually help a newbie select the correct answer from posted solutions.
Correct, nor does the newbie have an idea of what's a good answer. They shouldn't be allowed to mark as an "answer", but rather merely "this worked for me". I'd hope that we could add a few axes that might help describe a solution in a few ways.
- works/doesn't work
- slow performing/high performing
- use in limited set of situations
- off topic/comment
- etc
I'm not sure how to build some votes, but I think that we might be able to add in some quick clicks that would allow someone to follow a discussion and get some opinions about the various solutions.
January 18, 2012 at 9:53 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/18/2012)
S Hodkinson (1/18/2012)
Now that I am 'semi-retired', I still read the editorials every day and trawl through the forums. Am I sad or just keeping the brain going?Hopefully I am entertaining you on a daily basis 😀
Entertaining?? Its brilliant!
I still do some consultancy work (mostly on legacy systems). I trawl through the 2008 forums to make sure my legacy stuff comes out in a suitable format and I'm not rambling on the wrong topic.
We set up a forum for 'retired' members but no-one seems interested..that's the trouble with legacy systems........until they rise up and bite them!
Madame Artois
January 18, 2012 at 10:56 am
This is about the 10th time the idea of rep on this site has been discussed since I've been here, and I still don't see a valid "solution". Nor do I see a need for one.
Instead of voting for an answer, how about testing it and seeing if it works? Then test other answers, if any are provided, and see if they work. Check if performance differences between them are as-claimed, and so on.
I couldn't care less who posted a solution. If it works well, it works well.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
January 18, 2012 at 1:27 pm
I have a dream that I will be judged not by the points in my reputation, but by the content of my posts.
[font="Arial Narrow"]Apologies to Martin Luther King, Jr.[/font]
January 18, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Michael Valentine Jones (1/18/2012)
I have a dream that I will be judged not by the points in my reputation, but by the content of my posts.[font="Arial Narrow"]Apologies to Martin Luther King, Jr.[/font]
well paraphrased, and if only we could be there.
The problem is how does Joe-newbie judge the content of your posts? Or yours v Gus'? It's not quite so simple, and I think there might be a way to help. Not so much to amass reputation/points/badges/etc, since those are more gaming/engagement items. But a way to better help someone that is ignorant learn from some posts, and perhaps learn less from others.
For example, I watch The Thread on this site, and have seen Tom T. wax on about esoteric ways of examining technical issues, or seen philosophical discussions about xx. I can only gleen from those posts the knowledge that I know enough to know I don't really understand much of what they've said.
If I post
select myUDF('someCol')
, othercol
from Mytable
and that solves a problem, don't we want to somehow call attention that this is possibly slow performing? Or a source of future issues?
The rating/voting/gaming on the site should be designed to make things better, both for the expert poster/answerer, and the newbie/questioner.
I see SO/SE as a v3.0 of this issue, and a very good implementation, but one that lacks a few things, especially for discussions. This is compared to the v1.0 version of rating posts on this site, and also points, and the v2.0 method that Slashdot had of rating/hiding comments.
I'd like to evolve what SO/SE does, and learn from it, but do something different. However I'm lacking dev and UI help right now.
January 18, 2012 at 6:14 pm
Jack Corbett (1/12/2012)
My question is how would you define a reputation? Who decides? Who decides who decides?What happens when a new person comes along and doesn't have a reputation, not because they don't know what they are talking about, but because they are just new to the site? They might give better advice than someone with a top reputation that gets ignored. I think especially of someone like Paul White (SQLKiwi). He actually hasn't be on SSC as long as I have, but he's brilliant and I'd take his advice on T-SQL before just about anyone else's. Yes, eventually he'd probably get to the top anyway, but without a reputation system it is a little easier to get started.
The other thing that many people like about SSC is that it is as much about discussing the problem and learning together as it is about getting a quick answer. Where sites that have you mark an answer as correct don't have that same feel, and, in my experience, I see some poor answers marked as correct. They aren't necessarily wrong, but they aren't the best answers.
I think you have a very good point there Jack. Post counts are indeed pretty meaningless, but reputation systems with votes are probably no better. There are some people here who I regard as providing absolutely wonderful infomation/help/advice/new take and I don't look at post counts to determine that (some of them so have high post counts: my top 5, not in any particular order, are Jeff, Gail, Paul (we evidently have that one in common), Jason and Gus. There are some people here that I respect who think I'm useful (which is rather flattering - I think maybe 15% of my posts are useful, the other 85% are a mix of clowning, crap, just being polite, and just plain wrong) and that respect is far more important to me than my post count or anything a reputation system could deliver.
Tom
January 19, 2012 at 7:29 am
Personally, I still don't think an algorithm should do my judging and thinking for me, on a subject like this.
There are far too many holes in the idea.
All things considered (including Tom's flattering inclusion of me in his top 5 list), I'd probably have a pretty high "algorithm derived reputation" on this site, if there were such a thing. (I'm sure I've got one reputation or another with the actual humans who use this site, but I'm specfically talking about something mathematically derived, potentially using human input/guidance from users/moderators/whatever.)
So, assuming I've got a good reputation, what happens if I post a junk answer because: (a) I misread something in a requirement, (b) I'm sleep deprived and doing stupid things all day, (c) I'm posting on a sub-subject of SQL Server that I know less about than I do about other aspects of it, or (d) I'm actually an evil mastermind with plans of world domination that start with posting the exact wrong answer to a that exact question after covertly gaining everyone's trust by building a good reputation? (Okay, the first one is a bit of a stretch.)
I've posted answers I thought were correct, but which had to be corrected by someone else, because of all of those except d. That one hasn't come up yet.
Also, reputation on the site probably won't have a time dimension to it. Answers I posted in 2007/8, when I first started on this site, aren't going to be as trustworthy as ones I posted this morning, simply due to the fact that I know more now than I did then. But, like my signature and icon, my repuation score (or whatever) will probably be right there next to those posts, saying, "He knows whereof he speaks" (Steve: that should be one of the reputation levels, regardless of system implemented). Did I when I wrote it? Would I answer the question the same way today as I did 5 years ago? Who knows? I was recently shocked by some of the posts I wrote in the discussions on my audit logs articles back in '08. Wow! My ignorance on some things I consider trivially easy these days, was truly amazing at that time! But at the time, it was the best I knew.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
January 19, 2012 at 7:46 am
IMHO, I think a potential issue with introducing reputation points at this stage, and Gus touches on it, is that people who already have a reputation would naturally garner the new reputation points, even if their answer was not necessarily the first correct\most helpful\best one in the thread.
This is because people naturally pay more attention to and believe answers from people they are already aware of or have dealt with before.
This could disillusion others.:(
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