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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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1 comment thread

General comments (1 comment)
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+15
−2

We didn't set out to have a reputation stat, but because we started by adapting code that had it, we started out that way. When we brought up removing it, a few people objected strongly. (See, for example, this discussion.)

We've "nerfed" reputation; unlike on SO, reputation doesn't affect your abilities. It's just a number. Abilities are instead governed by specific, related activity; for example, you earn the privilege of editing directly by having enough of your suggested edits accepted.

We've also made the "usercard", the stats that accompany your name and avatar on posts and in the users list, configurable. A community that feels strongly that rep is important can show it; a community that wants to downplay it can remove rep from that block of stats. I now realize that might be a good thing to try here on Meta; I'll discuss that with the team.

We don't yet have a way to show you which of your posts have gotten recent voting. We've kept the rep number in the header (when you're logged in) so that, as a poor substitute, you might at least notice when that number changes. We do intend to do better there; it's on our list, but we're a small team and we haven't done that yet.

Some say that the reputation number is a measure of expertise. Maybe an average rep per post would be, but the total alone doesn't tell you whether the person has a few good posts, a bunch of mediocre ones, or a single hit. On The Workplace over on SE, we often saw a snarky answer on a hot network question skyrocket for the entertainment value. That someone has a couple thousand rep from that single answer doesn't actually indicate any expertise -- but, if people are evaluating posts based on author rep, that person's next answer would look stronger than it should. This is why, in the "usercard", we show the number of posts (by broad type). One of my early designs of that blob of stats showed more of a breakdown, something like "41 answers (39 positive)", but it was cluttered and we decided we needed to look for another approach.

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2 comment threads

Make high rep users' votes weigh more? (5 comments)
Median scoring a better alternative than total reputation points? (1 comment)
Make high rep users' votes weigh more?
Lorenzo Donati‭ wrote over 2 years ago · edited over 2 years ago

The problem of some good answers being dwarfed by "fastest" or "funniest" ones could be mitigated by allowing the votes of high rep users to weigh more.

I understand that at the early stages of a site this could be disrupting and create "self-amplification" effects. However, when a site matures and develops a solid expert-users base this could allow those experts to "lift" younger, active and knowledgeable users from the "masses" of lurkers and users that don't contribute effectively. ...

Lorenzo Donati‭ wrote over 2 years ago

This could be an increasing function of the difference (or the ratio) between the reps of the voter and the poster at the time of vote (if feasible), so that a high rep users' vote could weigh much more toward a low rep user. To avoid sectarianism, this could be implemented only for positive votes, so that high rep users could reward low-rep ones that deserve it without alienating users that still don't get how the site works. ...

Lorenzo Donati‭ wrote over 2 years ago

It achieves sort of what bounties did on SE network, but without all the "market" thing (i.e. "rep as money that changes hands"), and less intrusive (e.g. a high-rep vote can only weigh max 4 times more a "regular" one, decreasing quickly when the low-rep user rises above some rep level).

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 2 years ago

TopAnswers has a similar approach. They have stars (only up, not down), and the number you can cast on a post is an exponential function of your received stars. A thing I like about this is that it's an option; as an expert in a topic I'd like to not have the full weight of that expertise affect every vote I cast, but I'd like to be able to amplify really solid contributions. Some answers deserve it; some are good starts that I want to give some weight to but not if my vote implies too much.

Lorenzo Donati‭ wrote over 2 years ago

Monica Cellio‭ Yes. I agree that being able to weigh-in on a post-by-post basis is much better. I had thought of it, but I didn't suggest it because I thought it might be more difficult to implement: you must change the interface of the site, then probably define a new ability (or set of abilities) that allows multiple upvotes (do we need more expertise level? I.e. for example at 100 rep you can upvote 2 times, at 500 rep 3 times? etc.).