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Welcome to Codidact Meta!

Codidact Meta is the meta-discussion site for the Codidact community network and the Codidact software. Whether you have bug reports or feature requests, support questions or rule discussions that touch the whole network – this is the site for you.

Comments on Why is there a rep system in Codidact?

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Why is there a rep system in Codidact?

+9
−5

I had visited Codidact quite some time ago when it was still being built. At that time, there weren't many talks about having the reputation system built on this site.

Partly, The reason why Slack communities and Discord communities are so easy-going and helpful has something in common between them both - the lack of any actual rep points.

You don't need a number to show your expertise - your arguments should do that. Treating everyone on an even playing field produces a much more productive debate than any other measure.

I am going to be brutally honest here - I was initially interested because Codidact seemed something new, but now it's another StackExchange in the making.

The rep system is completely useless and negatively affects the flow of debate:

  1. Your arguments should be your support in a constructive debate, not reputation

  2. Trust Levels seem to be a better way (established by upvoted answers and the like) but showing a title rather than a flashy number.

  3. Making it a rep game would lead to lower quality answers and questions as the primary aim would be points, not for spreading knowledge.

  4. People who want to answer questions (and are knowledgable) really need no 'fake internet points' as an incentive - having a trust system would work pretty well giving them extra privileges, while not signifying that they are all-knowing.

Simply put, there is no amount of reasons or arguments that can offset an actual real-life example - StackOverflow has already become what it was always destined for, and now is the last chance for Codidact.

Either you have a smaller range of numbers (1-10) to denote their moderation powers, or you take trust levels. That would be the closest simulation to Slack and Discord while working far better than both by having a formal framework.

Please don't spell death for this forum!

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General comments (1 comment)
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+6
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Actually Codidact should support rep better than it does now. Most of the dislike of rep seems to come from a misunderstanding of its purpose. It's not to show who is "better" somehow, but a measure of how much someone has contributed useful content to the site as judged by all the other users.

Your arguments should be your support in a constructive debate, not reputation

Right. Rep has nothing to do with validity of arguments. However, it might give a sense of trustworthiness when other direct metrics aren't available. In that sense it works like reputation in the real world.

Let's say you like reading horror stories, and there are a bunch of book in front of you to pick one from next. You've never heard of any of the authors, then you notice one by Steven King. You've read and liked his works before. You pick that one because his reputation suggests that you are more likely to enjoy that book than a randomly chosen one.

Trust Levels seem to be a better way (established by upvoted answers and the like) but showing a title rather than a flashy number.

But "established by upvoted answers and the like" is this reputation you don't like. Even if you don't want to show it, the system still needs to calculate and track it in this scheme. The only difference is that you want to show one result of that rep score instead of the score itself, but haven't explained how that is supposed to help.

Making it a repo game would lead to lower quality answers and questions as the primary aim would be points, not for spreading knowledge.

Wrong. Gamification means people will want to do those things that they get rewards for. If you've chosen the incentives correctly, then they'll be doing exactly what you want them to do, which is mostly providing high quality answers. Remember, the quality of these answers will be judged by everyone else, so they have to be good to get those points you don't like. Giving out free internet points with some recognition seems like a pretty easy way to incentivize people to contribute good content to a site.

People who want to answer questions (and are knowledgable) really need no 'fake internet points' as an incentive

This is hopelessly idealistic and naive at best. People do things for a reason. There is no such thing as pure altruism. Some people may feel internally rewarded by helping others, but there is always some reward or reason. Few people are going to spend the significant free time you need from them to provide good content with nothing in return. Giving them a little recognition for all the volunteer help is doesn't cost you anything.

What you are basically advocating is that volunteers should come here to contribute their time and expertise for free, and not even be thanked or recognized for doing so.

having a trust system would work pretty well giving them extra privileges

Privileges are different from public recognition. Privileges might be an incentive for some, but isn't going to be as powerful as public recognition for many.

I know from personal experience on EE.SE (I was #1 with about 280 k rep when I left there in 2018), privileges weren't much of a driver. I found some privileges useful, but didn't use others much at all. When I got a new privilege it was more of a surprise, and wasn't what I was aiming for. My thought was more "that's cool, maybe that will be useful some day".

Rep, on the other hand, made things competitive. We couldn't have Andy or Spehro with higher rep than me. I mean, geesh, that would tear up the fabric of space-time and end the universe as we know it. Can't let that happen.

while not signifying that they are all-knowing.

Right, and rep doesn't do that. It's a measure of appreciated and useful contributions.

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1 comment thread

General comments (4 comments)
General comments
Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 3 years ago

I have a bunch of rep on Writing from technical-writing questions. People shouldn't assume I have special standing if I answer a question about poetry. In fact, if I thought people would judge all my answers based on my rep, that might push me to not answer other questions (that I can also answer, but maybe not as well), for fear of misleading. We've wanted to show some form of tag-based background for a while; just haven't worked out how yet. (Show my expertise on TW Qs, not poetry Qs.)

Olin Lathrop‭ wrote over 3 years ago

@Monica: If you screw up on a question somewhat outside your domain, others will downvote it fast enough. You can also start with "This isn't my area of expertise, but ...". People seem to be more forgiving of errors that way too.

Lundin‭ wrote over 3 years ago · edited over 3 years ago

One point that's missing here is a way to measure domain expertise. Rep was always a poor way to measure it, but it's better than nothing. At best rep might reflect your overall broad knowledge of the topics that the community is about. What worked best at Someplace Else was badges. You got bronze, silver and gold badges depending on the number of votes of your posts below a certain tag. These are much harder to gain than rep, and it was actually the best way to measure domain knowledge.

Lundin‭ wrote over 3 years ago

And domain knowledge matters for more than "bragging rights" - quite often you need extensive domain knowledge to moderate certain posts, to judge if they are on-topic, duplicates etc. Codidact will get there too, where specialized knowledge is needed to moderate certain topics.