GA-s

"The participant with the highest number of comments at the moment I made the analysis is Del who deserves a special mention for the intense participation!"

He's a cat. What else has he got to do besides eat tuna and type. _{Oh, and lick himself.}

I doubt the discussion of GA's will ever stop. I say if you don't like the way it's done here, start your own forum.

Cheers.

You could take you analyst one step farther.

And that is a tangential discussion of the topic. ie off topic but not listed off-topic because the interests is there.

And in stead of starting a new topic, the discussion continues to solve another issue. Not always but its there.

Or as in brainstorming, because you get off topic you actual solve the original problem by addressing it at a different angle.

otherwise......make note to self, "less is more"

p911

So where do I fit in?

I have held a fairly constant average of around 9% GA to total posts ratio. (77/822 at this posting).

Your chart and method of sampling suggests you could work as an environmental studies consultant though. (humor intended)

My comments were not clear. Sorry for this. I was not inviting you to leave, but rather telling the complainers to be quiet. You were responding to the other GA post, right?

I should have been more clear. I think the present system is fine.

Analysis by nick shhows more talkative you are, less GAs you will have. tomtech, you can surely increase your rating from 9% to much more, if you reply with only very serious abd best answers.

But, many others like del, get less GAs, but enjoy the forum fully. (Also these people make the forum much more interesting)

I think you're taking this way too seriously and have a few false assumptions in your analysis. (Or I misunderstood what you meant. )

First, all GA's tabulated must include at least one vote not from the OP, you cannot vote twice. (Let's not talk about Guest votes.)

Second, many threads stop when somebody clearly knows what is happening and very succinctly answers the problem. Too often though this answer collects but one GA vote and does not grant the responder a new GA to this list.

I still like the idea of a GAOT vote category for the brilliantly humorous comments. (With this added category, we could even have an regular goat award for the best GAOT total. What about that idea Chris Leonard?)

Lastly, I reserve all of my GA awards for the 5% discount I can get to use at the "compensation time" reimbursement store where I can cash in all of the extra unpaid hours I've spent at work for tangible goods.

I've always looked at this site as a place where I can let my mind and warped humour get challenged while collecting a group of telecommuting friends.

So there's my point. The GAs are not the real reward here, its the serious and silly time we spend with each other.

You rang?

A couple of quick things.

First, an unregistered guest cannot vote. Period.

Second, when (if) we get some programmers time (everyone who works on CR4 has other responsibilities within GlobalSpec, which often take precedence), we do plan to change the GA/OT system. My current thought is to remove the the ability to mark other peoples comments off-topic, although self-OT will remain. We haven't discussed it in detail and just because I'm leaning in a given direction doesn't mean the full CR4 team will agree to go that way - and of course we're very open to opinions from folks who use the site as to what we should do.

As for a "humorous" vote, at one point, way back in 2005, we had a voting system that included such options as "insightful," "informative," ""interesting," "funny," and a few others. It was barely used - less so than the current model.

Simply put though, it doesn't matter what system is in place if it isn't used. And only a small percentage of comments receive votes. So go ahead and give GAs where they're warranted.

_{Oh my, that was fast.}

I stand corrected, unregistered guests cannot vote. Thank you for the clarification.

I do wish to put my two cents in about others marking a comment as OT. Presently marking another individual's comment as OT is the only method this community has to correct a wrong GA marking. (I'm thinking specifically about a recent tangent thread I made about star formation.) So as long as we can self police this community based recognition award, it will retain the meaning I get from it. _{(Still looking for that comp time store though. I'm now taking my tongue out of my cheek.)}

Possibly the earlier system had too much flexibility to be practical. While I do love some of the warped humour many have shown here and certainly don't want to discourage it, it just doesn't seem right for a joke that has nothing to do with the original question to get the title "Good Answer." But nobady said it had to be perfect, either.

Perhaps you could force a rating to an existing post, when a user posts a reply. (preview stage - must select rating)

When I create a new thread, I'm forced to pick a category for the thread to be hosted by, so it would not much different.

Presumeably when some one is replying to a post, they have an interest or a disagreement with what is being said, so it should not cause a conundrum.

Chris

nick name, there's a source of error in your analysis which I've seen mentioned before in other threads about GA's. Some participants were here for several years before the GA system was introduced. They had thousands of comments to their name before there was ever a system to give a GA. So the ratio in your results and your conclusion is not correct. You will have to subtract those thousands of GA-free answers, before you can get a meaningful statistic.

uh, is this the thread where everyone who posts gets a GA?

This is the thread where EVERYONE deserves a GA ... just to mess up the statistics

GA. You made me laugh .........again. EW

GA's are given in most cases not for the quality of the answer, but just to show support, which is why so many members seem to have an issue with how GA's are given out. "friends" vote for "friends" (friends as in the cyber sense of the word not friends as in the realy world)

Please Sir: May I have another?

The thing that sort of seems odd is apparently I am the second highest average GA person here so far yet I am one who by nature thinks that peer based ratings systems are usually useless and often times greatly sceewed.

My getting a honest GA is Okay so maybe I have earned most of them but still some times what I see that I got a GA just makes me go WTF? How the hell did that even get considered for it?

But apparently some here do take their GA rating seriously being I tend to get a few nasty and or rude PM's from some at presently unnamed members over my posts in threads where I got a GA for a something basic and they got nothing for a long drawn out scientific rework of basically what I said in the first place. GO figure.

But for those who felt the need to GA me, thanks! If nothing else you are making some other members here far more jealous than you realize! (Or maybe you do realize.)

I think perhaps you have a singular way with words that more people connect with, combined with technical insight. I give a lot of ga's to guys like you, ed, blink, etc, because they clearly state the case and provide a good problem solving critical thinking regimen. That is what we are on an engineering discussion group for, n'est pas?

Chris

I accept the fact that GA are not from the start of participation. I came too late so that as far as I remember GA were already "in" so that I was not aware of it.

I want to eliminate the error in interpretation of data : the statistics I do are not lies since they are not political statistics. If data are wrong then a correction is needed.

So please tell me, StandardsGuy, from the 1211 participations you have up to now how many thousands do I have to take off ? (fractions of thousands are also accepted).

In the sample following have more 1950 participations and could have been active before changes.

May I kindly ask every one from the list to estimate how much has to be deducted ?

I would sincerely appreciate this help for a serious and consistent result.

If anybody not in the sample has a possibility to make same estimation actual number of comments and how many were made before the apparition of GAs this will help to make a better overall estimation and give more reliability to results.

I am sure that the trend will be same, only possible change can be power function's exponent.

Thanks in advance,

Nickname

Nickname,

It seems you are trying out some R&D on G.A statistics. To me the G.A means the following.

*An answer of relevance and real understanding of the problem.

*Possible exposure or experience or spotting similarities.

*A convincing and a pleasant answer appealing to most viewers.

*Participative reference to other posts and views.

*Gentle and non hurting wordings.

*Scientific evidence and reference.

*Uniqueness and speciality of the answers amid st common expressions.

*How educative or knowledge sharing or frank the answer could be?

* How neutral and unbiased it is of?

* Better survival against off-topic voting.

* Views and counter comments by expert members to the field.

* Ideas and smart solutions.

* Concern and hands of support in solving other's problems.

* The other main criteria is calculated postings, where one has a sound relevance and sure to hit the bull's eye[ a G.A]

*Not the least but more worthiest of all is the GENEROSITY OF OTHER MEMBERS TO VOTE ON POSTS.

I suppose that's possible. But it seems to me to be an unlikely scenario. Whatever, I don't think I'll ever test that possibility unless it is to go back and mark one of my own posts as off topic. I think the kind of self centeredness that would motivate a person to give himself GA's runs counter to the very characteristic that makes most of us participate here. That is, the desire to help others.

Still, most of us have at least some other motivations to participate here. For me it's the desire to improve my writing skills and the way I express myself. GA's are a valuable scorekeeper to that purpose. However, the ability to express myself with some brevity seems to elude me. My wife frequently reminds me of that.

Ed Weldon