Sorry, I don’t like this much. It defeats the reward for writing a really good answer.
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This is backwards. SE did get a lot of things right. Most of the issues with SE are with management and their attitude towards the people that contribute the actual value to the site. The SE system as a whole works pretty well. The default is therefore do what SE did unless there is a good reason not to.
So the questions really are Why would you NOT want rep? What problem are you trying to solve by taking rep away?
The ‘problem users’ that I’ve had to deal with in my time were problems because they want either rep (/more upvotes) or power - mostly the former (albeit possibly as a way to get the latter). Getting rid of rep and introducing a better voting system should get rid of most of this.
Ultra high-rep users have a tendency to be very quick to answer questions (because answering first gives you the rep first and prevents others from answering) - there’s nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with this but it does lead to fundamental issues on the thinking of how the site works - my best answers have been the ones where I’ve had to do the learning in order to teach, so I get as much use out of the question as the questionner got out of my answer. If there’s already an answer by a high-rep user, I’m much more disinclined to answer and so, learn less, defeating the point of a community for learning.
In addition, the above leads to extra competition, which tends to lead to ‘putting people down’ and ‘beating the other person’ instead of ‘lifting people up’ and ‘encouraging the other person’.
It makes the other important stuff less noticeable (e.g. editing, flagging, reviewing, cultivating the site, using comments to clarify and improve questions etc.)
A number by itself doesn’t say whether someone got that number by answering lots of easy questions (i.e. is quick at answering questions) or by answering lots of harder questions (i.e. is an expert, at least in some sense). It also doesn’t say what they’re good at. In addition, there are some amazingly wonderful people who don’t have the same rep, yet can be just as knowledgeable and good at answering questions as someone with loads of rep, perhaps because they answer stuff on an obscure tag.
If you can loose rep for being wrong, why risk being wrong? Yet being wrong is a part of life, something everyone needs to learn to deal with and an essential part of the learning process. Being wrong is bad for getting the right answer. Being wrong is good for learning.
The ‘HNQ effect’ where people would write controversial things and clickbait for the sole purpose of getting upvotes and rep. I like neither of these.
the “Someone downvoted me, so I lost reputation, so they’re unwelcoming!” misconception. (Perhaps conflating votes with rep a bit here, but votes and rep are explicitly tied, so they’re hard to separate) Whoever had the idea of a system called ‘reputation’ and a way to loose reputation may not have thought about the consequences that ‘loosing reputation’ in real life is a very bad thing, so people are naturally going to consider this a bad thing online as well. Perhaps even the choice of word used matters?
The above may lead to fewer people using downvotes as much as they should.
It places the emphasis on something other than what we want the emphasis to be on and heavily related to this, it provides an extrinsic motivation. I’d like a psychologist to confirm this but I’m led to believe that if anything, extrinsic motivation doesn’t generally last long and often decreases intrinsic motivation.
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That was true for the first few days, if I recall correctly. (I wasn’t here on day 1 either.) But if all we want is an SE clone without the company, that exists now – there’s a long list of clone sites/software listed somewhere on this forum and also on Meta.SE.
We aim to do better. We’re starting from scratch, and that means we can go back to core principles: what serves communities best? This has led to a lot of innovations and there will be more.
Once reputation is granted it will be very hard to take it away. In the absence of good reasons to have it, we chose to leave it out. We do need to provide suitable feedback to users in a way that encourages participation; I just don’t think a single rep number is it. Let’s look at what users have done. For example, if somebody answers my complicated question on a niche topic, I don’t really care that the person has 50k rep from answering totally unrelated questions; that tells me nothing about this answer. Knowing that this person has answered dozens of other questions on these tags and those answers have been well-received, however, tells me something. When reviewing an edit, seeing that someone has 20k rep means nothing, but seeing that this person has suggest 97 edits, 96 of which were accepted, tells me something. Etc.
I want us to develop these ideas – for version 1.2 or so. Meanwhile, rep should stay out of MVP to avoid later confusion and loss aversion.
Does the fact that you can’t see my “rep” here on this forum affect how you read my posts? Demonstrably it hasn’t kept me from posting.
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Those who have been core users and provided a lot of content on SE, however, are telling you it is important.
But it’s not about you as the asker. Rep is a reward to those who added a lot of content that others thought was useful to the site. It also highlights the heavy contributors and gives some indication that they might be “expert”. It’s not a perfect system. It’s not a resume, but it doesn’t need to be nor should it be.
Then you’re not going to have certain types of sites. The kind where you need professionals in the discipline providing most of the content aren’t going to work without a decent reward system. The professionals are willing to give you a lot for free, but just need some public recognition in return.
You’re going to have to have something like rep in the end anyway. Designing it in now won’t discourage certain types of sites (like electrical engineering), and it will probably be less of a kludge if considered in the original software architecture.
Please stop doing that. I am a core user who has provided a lot of feedback on SE too. You don’t speak for me. You speak for yourself, just as I speak for myself. Don’t assert things about the larger group just based on your own experience. (Note that I have not done that.)
Citation needed that professional won’t help. Citation needed that rep actually works as a sufficient reward. You’re telling me that professionals who could charge hundreds of dollars per hour for their services won’t do it to contribute to a community but will do it for internet points. I disbelieve.
But maybe you’re right; maybe there are whole communities where if there’s no rep, they won’t participate – regardless of what other recognition we build in, a door I’ve clearly left open. And if that’s the case, maybe those communities are not really functioning as communities and aren’t our top priority.
Codidact will continue to grow beyond MVP. For some communities our MVP won’t be good enough; for many it will be. Over time as we improve Codidact, some of those that didn’t think MVP was good enough will join. We’re never going to get every community on the internet, and that’s ok. We’re not trying to get every community; we’re trying to provide a good experience and good reasons to join for the communities that do come here.
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The ‘problem users’ that I’ve had to deal with in my time were problems because they want either rep (/more upvotes) or power - mostly the former (albeit possibly as a way to get the latter). Getting rid of rep and introducing a better voting system should get rid of most of this.
There always will be ‘problem users’ with or without reputation system. The community should help to understand/teach that it’s not the reputation that matters, but the knowledge and people they communicate with. For some people it’s a matter of growing up - it reminds me playing boardgames with those who pay too much attention to points, they become nervous, sometimes even agressive, I hate this, they lose all the fun and main aim of meeting people, but this doesn’t mean that the game shouldn’t have points.
Ultra high-rep users have a tendency to be very quick to answer questions (because answering first gives you the rep first and prevents others from answering) - there’s nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with this but it does lead to fundamental issues on the thinking of how the site works - my best answers have been the ones where I’ve had to do the learning in order to teach, so I get as much use out of the question as the questionner got out of my answer. If there’s already an answer by a high-rep user, I’m much more disinclined to answer and so, learn less, defeating the point of a community for learning.
If you get a good quick answer then it’s good, what is wrong with that? If you have the same situation on Codidact - you see that the question already has a valid answer, are you somehow more inclinend to answer and learn more, just because you don’t see number beside user’s name?
In addition, the above leads to extra competition, which tends to lead to ‘putting people down’ and ‘beating the other person’ instead of ‘lifting people up’ and ‘encouraging the other person’.
Why look at competition only as laeding to beating and putting down? Competition also has advantages, help to develop, learn. Everything depends on people and the whole community.
It makes the other important stuff less noticeable (e.g. editing, flagging, reviewing, cultivating the site, using comments to clarify and improve questions etc.)
This just depends on implementation. It doesn’t mean that reputation must be strictly connected with moderation.
A number by itself doesn’t say whether someone got that number by answering lots of easy questions (i.e. is quick at answering questions) or by answering lots of harder questions (i.e. is an expert, at least in some sense). It also doesn’t say what they’re good at. In addition, there are some amazingly wonderful people who don’t have the same rep, yet can be just as knowledgeable and good at answering questions as someone with loads of rep, perhaps because they answer stuff on an obscure tag.
Numbers very rarely say something about people. I met wonderful people with high and low reputation, however usually the high reputation ones had less time for conversation. When I got the answer the most important was the knowledge/solution not somebody’s reputation.
If you can loose rep for being wrong, why risk being wrong? Yet being wrong is a part of life, something everyone needs to learn to deal with and an essential part of the learning process. Being wrong is bad for getting the right answer. Being wrong is good for learning.
Risk being wrong to learn something. If you put the skates on you can fall down, why to put them on?
Losing reputation is fairly cheap price for learing on being wrong. Learning that you can lose something is also very important.
The ‘HNQ effect’ where people would write controversial things and clickbait for the sole purpose of getting upvotes and rep. I like neither of these.
I also don’t like this, but I’m not sure if it’s just a matter of how big the community is.
the “Someone downvoted me, so I lost reputation, so they’re unwelcoming!” misconception. (Perhaps conflating votes with rep a bit here, but votes and rep are explicitly tied, so they’re hard to separate) Whoever had the idea of a system called ‘reputation’ and a way to loose reputation may not have thought about the consequences that ‘loosing reputation’ in real life is a very bad thing, so people are naturally going to consider this a bad thing online as well. Perhaps even the choice of word used matters?
I guess most of the people don’t like criticism, but it’s also a part of life and the learning process. I believe that a good community can handle such cases. Even on Codidact some questions also will be downvoted/closed without reputation sysem, people also will feel unwelcome.
The above may lead to fewer people using downvotes as much as they should.
You can get a side effect - if downvote means nothing and cost nothing, what will prevent someone from downvoting all the questions so that his one goes up?
Guys, I don’t want you to get me wrong. I don’t want to convince you (maybe a little) to implement the reputation system, it’s just I think that lack of it can bring more issues than implementation. Implementing it on already working site can be also hard as well as taking it away. I wonder how you want to deal with voting system, what stops someone from voting everything up or down (not talking about serial voting possible to detect)?
I concur that badly implemented reputation can easily destroy community and do much harm. I’m also not convinced to single score number.
Just my two cents. And yeah, I know I’m little too late for this discussion, just wasn’t aware you were gathering.
All in all, life will show what this envolves. I always can be wrong and learn something new.
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We should treat each other as people, not as a combination of numbers.
Personally, I feel like having internet points just makes people misjudge each other. They obviously aren’t a good indicator of experience with the actual real-world problems we are here to help solve, because an expert programmer could create a new account and have no points. I’m glad I can come here and participate without a number making me feel like any way I choose to participate will be worth less.
I don’t think we need a score to show our expertise, and I don’t think this site needs try to be something I can show to my potential employer as work experience. I can point to one of my SE profiles and say I reached X million people, have Y rep points, have Z badges, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot in terms of professional programming experience.
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Romasz’s post sums up (very well) my opinions on the reputation debate. Far more eloquently than I would have been able to.
Similarly, I am open to the idea that we will come up with something new, which would be different, meaningful, and still fun to reach for.
My big-picture concern, looking forward, is that we might never achieve the “critical mass” of contributors/contributions that we need to keep Codidact successful. My fear is that, without rep, people won’t be motivated to be as involved (or as prolific). I feel this way because I, for one, probably wouldn’t have been. And I’m one of the users who truly enjoys helping people!
Of course, I may be in a small minority. To paraphrase a character in a Steven Brust novel:
“Everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do.”
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Most of the problems you mention are relatively niche cases, and pale in comparison to the much larger issue of rep draws out a lot of free contributions you wouldn’t otherwise get. No system is perfect. We need to keep the magnitude of a few flaws in perspective relative to the much larger gain.
Or because they are active, and generally know the answer off the top of their heads. But if rep somehow incentivizes them to answer faster, OK, that’s a good thing.
That is neither the fault of the system or of the high-rep user. You are certainly free to post your own answer.
I call BS on this. Yes, rep leads to competition, which has the benefit of drawing out more contributions from the competitors. There is very very little “putting people down” that I have seen. In fact, rep helps here. You don’t get upvotes for putting people down. You get upvotes for providing great answers.
As for not encouraging others, that’s also not true. Check my profile on EE.SE and you’ll see I have the “Sportsmanship” silver badge: “Up vote 100 answers on questions where an answer of yours has a positive score”. Look around and you will see many of the other top contributors have this too.
This simply makes no sense. How is a little number next to an answer author’s name going to detract from activities that happen elsewhere?
True, but there is really no problem with this. High rep merely showcases that someone has contributed a lot of content to the site that other people appreciated. Answering a lot of simple questions is useful to the site, just as answering a few hard ones is.
Because you can also gain a lot of rep for being right. I answered over 6500 questions on EE.SE, and I never worried about losing rep to being wrong. When I didn’t know the answer, I either didn’t answer, or decided to learn it myself and then answer. The main reason I didn’t want to answer when I wasn’t too sure was to avoid putting bad information out there, not about losing a few points of rep on one answer.
Keep in mind that any one answer is a small drop in the bucket. High rep only comes from consistently answering lots of questions in ways others appreciate.
First, I’ve never seen evidence that anyone wrote a question for the purpose of attracting HNQ status. Second, HNQ is about questions, not answers anyway.
Again, that’s a question issue, not about answers.
No, it overwhelmingly places the emphasis on consistently writing lots of good quality answers. There is really no other way to get high rep. Like any measure, rep has some noise. But the blips you get from HNQ, or just being a popular topic may get you a few 100 rep, maybe even a fee 1000 in rare cases, but that’s still small in the overall scheme of things.
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This has devolved into a discussion about the merits of reputation itself, which is a discussion we’ve already had and resolved elsewhere.