Enthusiasts 2

[shoneill]

Aren't we over-rating the stars system a little bit.

I know it's nice to get recognition for answers given, especially when it involved a bit of research or work for whoever answers, but the content of the answers is the most important thing, not the rating.

I also think the "one star wonders", although annoying at times, are also LV users, so they're entitled to their opinion. And that's all the stars ARE, opinions.

The only way to have the rating system represent anything more than (at times utterly baffling) opinions, is to move to an "independent" rating system which, in my opinion, would defeat the whole purpose.

Personally, when I started contributing to the forum after lurking for a while, I found it immensely encouraging to get good stars from time to time, but once I had improved to a level where I knew I was quite capable in many areas of LV (albeit far from the best), I feel the rating system is no longer of real benefit to me (the emphasis being on real).

Point in hand: How many posts in this forum have gotten 4 or 5 stars for not actually bringing others any factual help. Although I personally DO find that CC's list deserves stars, many posts don't seem to really live up to the "many-star" level I've come to expect in this forum.

Just speaking my mind (whatever's left of it)

Shane.

[Ray.R]

---

@Ben wrote:
The answer ratings have always been arbitrary and unless we wipe the slate clean, always will be.

---

Assigning stars is very arbitrary... How does one justify the value / validity of stars?
For instance, I see very good answers to complex questions (ex: LabViewGuru) and the answer gets 1 or 2 stars. I give a 5 * rating and it brings it to 3 stars.. The original low star rating was given for a number of reasons:
- the question was misunderstood
- the question was not well described
- the answer was a question requesting more info
- the person reading the answer does not understand it
...
and the list goes on...

So... what is a true 5-star answer when there is no control over who rates it.
Actually, what is a 1-star answer. I read some of the definitions to the star rating.
I don't know about you guys, but how do you feel about receiving a 1-star rating for a long winded, fully descriptive answer that you know is correct.. but misunderstood (or whatever other reason for the 1-star).

Maybe there should be a survey about the star rating.

I'd keep it simple.. Drop the stars. Look at the number of posts, only.

But, don't be shy to give 5-stars to this post ... 😄

Ray (aka. JLV)

[Ray.R]

---

@shoneill wrote:
Aren't we over-rating the stars system a little bit.
...
Personally, when I started contributing to the forum after lurking for a while, I found it immensely encouraging to get good stars from time to time, but once I had improved to a level where I knew I was quite capable in many areas of LV (albeit far from the best), I feel the rating system is no longer of real benefit to me (the emphasis being on real).

Point in hand: How many posts in this forum have gotten 4 or 5 stars for not actually bringing others any factual help. Although I personally DO find that CC's list deserves stars, many posts don't seem to really live up to the "many-star" level I've come to expect in this forum.

---

Shoneill,

You get 5-stars for this one.. 😄

I agree with you.. and that's the point I was making in my last post.

<> 😐

The way I interpret them now is as a recognition to those who contribute to this forum. The value of an answer is arbitrary and a point in time of the evolution to the person reading the answer. How many "serial port" questions get 5-stars, whereas .NET, Database, or complex answers get either none or lower star ratings...

What is the value of the stars???

Hummm... so since assigning stars is arbitrary, why not give stars to this thread. It is, nevertheless, a contribution to this forum.. 😄

Ray

[Enrique]

---

@Ben wrote:
2) >1000 posting ONLY iF we all gang up on poor Molly and convince her that 1000 postings justifies recognition.


Hey! Everybody is hanging out here, talking about gold and stuff. Neat!

I just wanted to mention that I appreciate a lot that Molly is around.

[Ben]

Ditto that Enrique!

I have to admit taht was not pleased to hear that Carrie was moving on, BUT,

Molly has done a great job and my fears were completely un-justified!

Ben

[Molly K]

Thanks!

[Rich_Y.]

---

@altenbach wrote:

I wonder if anybody from NI remembers details of the "big bang".

my attention was brought to this thread by my former supervisor here at ni. that was a lifetime ago for me, when he was a project manager for web support and i was an engineer for product support. he tagged me with my first big assignment in my position: get public newsgroups up and running for national instruments.

the evidence has all been archived by google groups:

an array of "welcome" messages i posted to all the new newsgroups

some memories brought up from reading these posts:
- the original name of the service was going to be "USN," for User Support Newsgroups (with apologies, after the fact, to the US Navy).
- our "web portal" into these NNTP newsgroups from our website was provided by deja.com (RIP--they were eventually bought by google and turned into google groups)
- the groups first went live on 7 may 1999*

after the deja.com web interface, we decided to serve up our own HTTP interface via a small DNEWS server we had running in house. after that, we outsourced our groups to (RIP) QUIQ, which was the first real jump from old-fashioned NNTP to a web community. somewhere along the way DevZone factored in, and a while later, the groups find themselve where they are today.

i'm in a completely different position at NI now with software r&d, and in the grand history of the community, i played a small part. but i'm very happy to see the user community thriving after all this time. it's come a long, long way.

regards,
rich yavorsky
national instruments

* note that this does not include the NNTP group comp.lang.labview, which was created years before the natinst.* groups by others outside of NI.

[Ray.R]

---

@Ben wrote:
Ditto that Enrique!

I have to admit taht was not pleased to hear that Carrie was moving on, BUT,

Molly has done a great job and my fears were completely un-justified!

Ben

---

Ben...

You worry too much!!

;D


Molly,

You are doing a splendid job...
Even if someone lost his shooting star... 😄

LOL!!!

Ray

[Johnner]

How...touching...it is to be referred to as a "former supervisor!" 🙂

altenbach's real "big bang" was perhaps the fateful day when discussion forum access was really accentuated on the ni.com site (and it was finally ni.com instead of natinst.com by that time!) for the first time. That would have been February, 2001, when the QUIQ-hosted system that Rich referred to went live; among other things, we integrated the forums into our site login for the first time and we made conscious navigational changes elsewhere to drive more traffic to the forums. This event is also the reason why many old-timers have a registration date of 1/25/01, when existing newsgroup posts were used to pre-populate the new QUIQ databases prior to go-live.

Prior to this event, although ni.com did subtly front-end the newsgroup forums, growth in comp.lang.labview and the others was fairly slow. But by March or April of 2001, I think we had doubled and nearly tripled the number of posts overall. Traffic has continued to grow fairly rapidly ever since, as far as I know, though I haven't seen raw usage stats in a year or so.

There were justifiable worries about the quality of the discourse in the face of such growth, but I need only spend a few minutes in the forums today to be certain that the general quality of the questions remains quite high, while the quality of the answers is unbelievable--clearly a service far beyond what NI could ever offer with NI-affiliated participants only.

Pleased to see this community going strong,
John

[chilly_charly]

Still assuming NI interim, here is the weekly issue of the Enthusiast List.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I am sure you will forgive me. I’ll be soon off for a few days and I needed to express some ideas before leaving. These are NOT my last wills and I hope to be back with you by the beginning of March. Mean while our beloved Ben will take care of the List. I know that some wanabees will try to make an unfair advantage of this situation and could take over my position, but I don’t care (see Note 3).

En route pour les sommets
Things are moving (see Note 1). Apart Dennis performance (what about the idea of a submission to the Guiness Book ?), some significant evolution occured in the top50’s. Some contributors are making their route to the top at an impressive rate. Special cheers to the french speaking community (Cajuns and Canadians...). Soon, within 4 or 5 years, Dennis may be seriously challenged !

Quest for the Graal
The best correlation found so far links the rating number and the total number of replies, giving a straight line with a slope close to 0.25 (1 rating for 4 replies) and a correlation coefficient of about 0.9. Not bad. I tried to interpret the variations around this average value, but unfortunatelly, the information returned by the search engine (the Tracker) seems to be somewhat buggy, due to the Entropy law and to the SponGe effect...
The Entropy law was just a re-discovery, since JPD and JLV had already made the most relevant observations : the number of ratings returned by the Tracker can be much lower than the actual received ratings. For instance, Tim Dehne’s post (first to congratulate Dennis) was rated 7 times, while the Tracker reports a single rating. Accordingly, the Entropy law could stands as : “The Weight of a Rating is the Same Whatever the Outstanding Character of a Reply”. This would be a deep iniquity, justifying an immediate general strike of all contributors to this forum... Of course, you all noticed that this law is not applied with strictness. For instance, in the same thread, my contribution was rated 4 times, and I observed that the Tracker reported the result without any taxation.
The SponGe effect (SPONtaneous GEneration) was detected after a thorough examination of a few rating reports. While searching for a possible correlation between “quality” and a high rating/replies ratio, I found that some members had outstanding scores (see note 2). For instance, Tommy Sharmann was supposed to have received 42 ratings, for 60 replies, with an average of 4.9 stars. Impressive... except that his actual rating was only 31 (only ?!), even taking into account multirated answers (in evident contradiction with the Entropy law). Since we live in an Universe where nothing is lost, nothing is created, should we suppose that this apparent star creation is only possible by pumping dry somebody else stars (sponge effect) ? Now JPD, you know where your stars have gone...
I could not investigate more deeply this issue, since somebody at NI knows about my moves and is trying to conceal the scandal. This is a dummy move, Truth will win anyway!
Seriously now, I am sure that Molly and Nnmehta will not sleep until the Lithium team solves these terrible problems. Keep them working, Molly !

Accordingly, we are now left with only two descriptors of the contribution to the Community:
The overall number of replies, and the average daily activity. However even these variables can be biaised : During the last 15 days, there has been an undeniable tendency to chattering, without any clear contribution to the technical quality of the forum. This is NOT a criticism (I have my part here) and my opinion is that this behaviour is strongly desirable and should be encouraged. However, I believe that a special board should be devoted to these chats, and the stars given there should be counted separately, with a fourth golden bar awarded to the most deserving countributers (humor, social interest, philosophical deepness, you name it...).
According to previous posts, there seems to be a general agreement on the subject. May be somebody (Ben, Altenbach ?) could try to summarize the various opinions that have been presented.

That’s all for today. See you next month !

CC