CR4 Guru with Highest % of GA's?

It wouldn't be meaningless at all. I don't see anything meaningless about giving recognition to those who are the most help to the community. And with a 500 post minimum, your concern of those "who never says anything except to get a GA.", wouldn't apply. And exactly what is wrong with giving an honor to someone who never says anything except to get a GA??? Honors are given all the time to the best, the most knowledgeable, those that contribute the most to their field. And this site is a site of peers, dedicated to the engineering sciences. I think it would be very appropriate.

Yes there is a social aspect to this site, but it is first and foremost a place to get and share engineering information. The social aspect is secondary.

I'm quite surprised at the quick negative comments to my suggestion. Sounds a bit like sour grapes to me

And this is coming from someone with a 1% rating.

Okay, so 20% sounds too high. 10% or even the 911 sound respectable.

Seriously, OoBE, you are really oversensitive about your idea. Why don't you search for past threads about GA's, and when you're done reading you will know where my perspective came from.

In my opinion, the number of posts is one record of a person's contribution to the forum. And the number of GA's is another record of the contribution. Since the ratio can't be calculated accurately for the well-respected founding members who contributed without GA's for several years, I don't consider it a valid basis for "higher honors".

I am not one of those founding members, BTW, so it has nothing to do with my own ratio or with any 'sour grapes' about it.

If admin decides to make new categories or higher honors I will certainly congratulate the honored, but I doubt that the worthy are worrying about the need for higher honors. Like many participants on this site, I accept the GA system as a somewhat flawed but still useful system mainly for the readers' benefit (to find a helpful answer quickly), and mostly ignore it otherwise.

This subject in discussed many times on CR4 and almost every time, many of us agreed that it is meaning less to calculate or weigh the value of comments based on GAs.

Many times GA is awarded which may be not so worth. Many times real GA gets neglected.

Besides, as #1 says, few of us are only give GAs very sincerely like Mr. Galala from Egypt, whose answers are really very hard core GAs. Hats off to him. But you will see almost no comment from him out of hard core engineering. But many of the members give GAs, but at the same time, they give many other general comments also, which drops their % of GAs. But this doesn't at all mean that the GAs were of the less worth or they do not have capability to get good % of GAs. If they stop giving general comments or general guidance, their % GA figure will surely shoot up.

In short there is no point in calculating and making any other catagory beyond Guru. In fact Guru is also not really worth of Catagory Guru, as it is just based on no. of posts. Even if one crosses 500 post and no GA, still that is called Guru.

A couple of years ago I made a statistical analysis to show that the ratio trends to a limit if the commentator does not pick up only a narrow specificity of threads. It was strongly attacked since it was not understood. The ratio is higher for low number of comments and the trend is toward 3..4 % for those who are real participants. Those who make a choice can reach values as high as 10%. You can compute it without any difficulty since every participant has the 2 values indicated.

I think rating system is overall sort of pointless myself. I had a rating at one point up around 13 - 15% I think but having been more social here I have manged to get that down around 10% now.

(Okay I was not more social rather I just burned up a lot of post counts having fun kicking a few trolls around attempting to educate some misguided members.)

Someone had commented one time on having a 911 club. That being that if your GA ratio was 9.11% or greater you are in. I sort of liked that one.

I like the 911 idea.

The current rating system is rather pointless. Who cares how much gossip you share. There are sooo many other sites where you can chat and be social. I'd like to think there is a bit more maturity here, and more benefit and reason for the site's existence, than so many other forums. This place actually helps people worldwide.

I still like the idea. Again... I find the quick objections puzzling. It wouldn't be a perfect system, but it's be a HELLUVA lot more meaningful than number of posts. And I'm not suggesting getting rid of the current system. Simply adding another special level, of a different sort. This would satisfy both the intellectual pragmatics, and the social butterflies.

And by the way... you having a 10% is very admirable.

25%? Wow. That's amazing. And I assume you don't mean 5 GA's out of 20 posts? He has over 500 posts? Man, I don't see what the problem is with giving someone like that some recognition. Think of all the people he has helped.

And for those who are in it for the social interaction and BSing .. fine. Most say they don't care what title they have anyway, so why refuse giving some actual deserved honor to those who really make the most positive impact?

For me -as an example- 187 GA and 1567 Total Posts.

• GA % = (187x100)/1567 = 11.93 % , or

• How much posts per every 1 GA : 1567/187 = 8.38 Posts

Whatever, I think all of us when we started sharing at that forum, we didn't put in our mind how much the GA shall be grant, which is a meaningless compared with the actual benefits for other forum members.

Abdel, you are the gold standard in my book.

milo

I agree.

Milo, lyn, and Tornado many thanks.

It's MSamad, then. Thank you. GA

I do not think that people try harder at start, if you get a GA with your 1st answer - which possible - then the ratio is 100%. When one participates the probability to have his answer appreciated will automatically decrease since the number of "trials" increases. For a general participation there an asymptotic value oscillating around 3...4 %. Take few examples of participants with low and big numbers and this will be demonstrated. As you very well noticed those who have a higher percentage of "success" are those who narrow their participation to the fields where they are the best. It is logical.

Aside from agreeing with those above, and stealing the term 'social' to describe my often frivolous behaviour;

The people who post threads, (such as you have just done), will 'blow their ratio' conversing with the participants, as it's rare the OP revives a GA for 'asking a question'.

So in that measure, those who keep the site 'interesting' and 'functioning' and 'dynamic' - alive - will have a poor ratio.

Conversely; if the 'ratio' meant something to do with 'genius' - there would be no members posting threads and no one prepared to post a comment, in case they did not receive 2 votes.

So no content, so who'd be reading?

LOL, oh come on 34.5, there's no way that implementing what I suggested would decrease participation. That's really a stretch of cause and effect.

And I didn't mean genius in the literal sense.

Everything would remain the same, except for a very few of us would get some well deserved recognition.

On second thought, it should probably remain a high number, Like 15 - 20%. I see no reason for holding back a deserved honor for someone simply because they don't have time to socialize, and only are interested in helping other engineers.

I see this suggestion is dead in the water. But I thought it's worthy to discuss.

LOL?

You suggest and accolade - that to 'win' you must post minimally, and tactically, and never start a thread.

And never participate in such as this conversation?

Never participate in any 'general discussion' on say events in New Zealand, or Japan?

And this won't affect participation?

Might have to send you back to "cause and effect" school

I find it simply amazing that there is so much backlash at suggesting recognition. And with my ultra low GA's I clearly have no agenda on this.

There is no "winning". A teacher does not teach to win a plaque on the wall. There is no competition. Only recognition for someone who doesn't come here to banter or argue or gossip or degrade... but instead, takes time out of their day and comes to an engineering help site, to do just that. It's nice to reward people like that. Particularly if most of their suggestions are great suggestions and they've taught people.

Yet you're okay with someone that may very well be retired with nothing better to do, so socializes on here, answers an occasional question, and gets awarded various titles for simply being here.

Ah. Never mind. My idea is only a good one if there is common consensus that it is. That is clearly lacking, so it's a moot point. I'm a minority of one.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Alright then. It's all good.

Hey! That's a Good Answer, if ever I saw one!

[_{But I won't give him one award him a GA because I'm a miserable old sod. And he's got enough. Oh, maybe he hasn't - think I detect a flagging Ratio....} ]

Signed JohnDG.

Now we have removed guests from CR4. How do you have an anonymous that wont query a membership?? I know JohnDG.

Oh, well if that's all you really want, here, have one.

I contributed 100% of my GA

Happy?

What's wrong with a battle?

I think Ed is on to something, CR$ is entertainment

or maybe infotainment :D

My wife describes many of us as Neeks = Nerd + Geek

As has been pointed out the most helpful answer may not receive a GA

Having the Off Topic votes [including self inflicted] listed would be fun

sometimes we help a member decide to go somewhere else, which makes this a better place

I told you that it will come to a heavy attack!

GA-s are the "do not touch" aspect.

I just gave you a good answer. Now when you reply to a post, and I see that you have many GA's, and I will have more respect for your answer. Good job.

Damn it, I just lowered my GA ratio. Now no one likes me. Boo Hoo.

I suggest you go to the mirror and take a good look at yourself and your degrading remarks, instead of griping about others.

I am personally offended for the retired contributors to this site who contribute a lifetime of experience to the discussion of engineering topics. If they have more time to be here, and to socialize as well as answering questions, what's it to you?

I suppose it's normal when a person passes the 500 post mark, that you stop and wonder, what does this 'guru' title mean. Well it's simple. In this forum it means you have contributed 500 posts to the forum. Yes, you have been awarded various titles for simply being here. And when they got to "guru", they ran out of titles, so there's nothing to look forward to.

Maybe the best thing for CR4 would be to get rid of the titles altogether and simply let the number of posts be the record of participation, without any milestone or rite of passage. I bet admin could easily do this, just strip the titles right out of it.

I hope this is the last time I will see you make degrading remarks about other participants in the forum.

"I nearly always follow threads like this one, just to see where it will go & how many posts it will take before the OP stomps off in disgust :D"

Personally for me I like doing that to the over unity nutters and those who show them selves to so very blatantly clueless about the principals of physics who stumble in here thinking they will change the world with half baked and outright lame claims they themselves can't substantiate let alone prove.

I sort of think of it as a game of saddle the troll! First I set out my bait then I lure him in and lastly I sneak a saddle on him and take him for a ride right out the CR4 front door if I can!

Yeah that's good too!!

every once in a while the message gets through & one of those guys joins the rest of us in this dimension :)

Do you think there is hope for This guy?

he thinks that he can cool a greenhouse by burying a 5gallon bucket full of water & bubbling air through it...

he isn't quite understanding the scale needed,

Masu made him flicker a bit last night

still dark though

Hi Tcmtech, you get a GA from me for you honesty, but the vote is still out there!

If you get another GA it will take you over the 10% threshold, but I am sure that you can regain that status by your good honest technical answers and that opinionated SOB Engineering Mentality. Not that you care anyway.

But while we are on this post, what happens to the Off Topic Votes?

I am not the most active contributer, but guys like you and JohnDG and many others have assisted me and many other users of the CR4 Forum, with intelligent answers and also a bit of humor.

A lot about this forum requires interpretation of the of the question asked, sometimes it is not that easy.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that every answer could be right or wrong, we don't contribute to this forum to get the cudos of GA's, we contribute, to help other users and sometimes also to satisfy our own humor, or in some cases to scold people that have no idea what they are dealing with.

Oops it looks like I have just lowered my pathetic GA ratio by replying to this Thread.

Best Regards Tcmtech and all CR4 Contributers

Joe

Good on you mate, just keep the good humor up and those practical answers up

Cheers

Joe

I could give you an OT if you like, just to help you feel better?

Nooooooooooooo!!!!!

I would like to maintain my ratio of genuine GAs to at least a tad above the GAs for jokes, opinons, etc., that don't really help anyone.

Hey don't knock the BBT. It's the most awsome, cool, longest running form of infotainment ever known to modern man!

Happy Gurudom!

Think you'll find that anyone with more than one or two k posts really doesn't give a bugger about percentages. Many of the posts will have been asides in (for want of a better name) 'social chat' threads, which you may not have yet stumbled upon.

Why?

I got rid of about 50 one time and 27 another time - it's easy - just annoy someone who takes exception to you being right.

I recall some of that... but perhaps you have an unfair advantage in this type of competition?

Can I suggest not to accumulate the GA 's of the contributors?

The Ga's are only meaningful within a discussion and show the supports of others about our contribution but they are not meaningful over many threads as the "generosity" of the readers vary greatly.

Lets remove the cumulative number under the poster's name. Leave the GA's within the thread as a weak sign of peers' appreciation of one's contribution.

Some times I bet you would, even if you'd rather not (moral hang-over).

Yahlasit

I suggest to change the rating system for good answers. May be in 1-5 or 1-10 scale. the people who comment on the answer have to first rate the answer. On average above 50% rating should only be awarded good answer.

Off late, I observed many real good answer do not get due recognition and some average answers are rated good.

Vitriolic? I thought this discussion was relatively calm...

.... You can't always get what you want... but if yout try sometimes... you get what you need.

Was thinking the same myself ...

I have an old victrola does that count?

Close enough. .

you have to crank it three complete revolutions untill the OP spring is wound tight... but be gentle with the pointy thing on the groove.

I especially like when the spring winds down, and the audio sounds like super slo-mo.

"i ' m l e a v i n g y o u m e a n p p l "

like that.

You haven't added anything, yet.

Ok, take your ball and go home

You will be happy to note that this wonderful discussion has fetched you 3 GA's, increasing your tally of GA's by 50%. But at the same time it ratified my following observations at post 44:

"Off late, I observed many real good answer do not get due recognition and some average answers are rated good." In fact no answers or unrelated answers were also rated as GA's. For example please see the post numbers 20,22,34,63,64 and 77.

Is the purpose of this forum some kind of competition or is it a place where people discuss technical topics and try to learn,teach and help others without a quest for glory as indicated by " The Engineer's Place for News and Discussion"??

Too evil 288 - GA!

It isn't broken! Why are we even discussing this?

So long.

well.. if you are an artist... you could say Ars Lyn in Latin, which might translate to the Art of Lyn _{^{(I think)}}

Now I know what GA really stands for. G is for Gnome, of course.

I took the liberty of rating this thread

Son of Editor Crankshaft

I remember there was another thread where every one got a GA.

Why don't we start another one where every one gets an OT (not self inflicted).

In fact I would really love to see an OT count by the side of the GA count.

Then to think of it- if some one gets 25% GA, he has 75% OTs

"Then to think of it ..."

Izzat based on the "Those who are not with us are against us" principle?

"I remember there was another thread where every one got a GA ..."

- I'll have some of what you're smokingdrinking . i know, I know - you'll be saying "but - but - but I do remember it! It did happen like that" - yeah!

_{Self-doubt is dangerous!}

There have been various threads that turned that turned into reach around fests

I love to see the thread where everyone gets a GA :D

Well that turned out to be gangs of fun

Or'ite just to make it harder - thar's one.

One good turn deserves another

Is it just me or is it more fun to post a Anonymous Poster than it was to post as guest?

Yes

I think this thread has proved by its content that GA's are generally irrelevant, however considering the number of replies by some members they must have deep feelings about it to have spent so much time and effort to try to place GA's in the right category. I don't wish to be boorish but I do not think this thread has done much for the professional writings in CR4. I am sure someone will have the need to to reflect negatively on my point of view, so be it, thats life.

what is wrong with playful banter?

Certainly the trolls get bashed... but if a person comes to CR4, and hangs out a while, with an open mind, they will see the banter, but also those brilliant minds behind the banter and mayhem. we get all types of humourous wit and sarcasm... it really has feeling to it...

the question is whether one appreciates it or not, or whether that sense of humour crosses language barriers or not.

If someone comes and asks a question, they typically get pointed answers, depending on the perceived amount of self-prep and awareness they display. Others will come in and say (as in most recently.. "I'm an energy auditor.. please send me all your relevant hotel energy audit information." and of course they get shot down... they are really not getting the idea of engaging in a discussion with experienced people, of the finer points of a subject.

Chris

Thank you.