Puzzles Etc. - 2016-05-17 (page 6 of 8)

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6:00 PM

He does not agree that implementing the requested feature will have the benefit we are seeking. He has also pointed out that we would need to come up with a better motivator than rep... that is what needs discussing. We can discuss it here and then write up a meta of course

and again, like, I don't get his point about being extrinsically rewarded - it seems like he's saying that giving people a better reward for a good question (whether in the form of +10 upvotes or bounties awardable to questions) isn't going to pull people in... but... that's literally the whole point of 100% of our voting/bounty/rep/privilege system in the first place.

like, by his own logic, upvotes (and bounties) are worthless anyway.

@JonathanAllan That's a valid topic to discuss

@JonathanAllan Why would we need to? We seem to be fine with rep as a motivator for everything else.

yeah the only extrinsic rewards we have are badges and moderator-privileges.

I feel like bounties on existing questions specifically wouldn't have a huge effect on the general number of questions posted.

Increased upvote value might.

6:02 PM

Rep will motivate at least some people to write good puzzles. We already lost one good puzzler because of the paltry rep that good questions sometimes receive: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/20227/what-commander-am-i/…

2

but it might nudge people toward writing bounty-worthy questions

@Zandar true! either one of these things could be encouraging!

again, if his claim is "well offering people more rep won't convince them to do better" then... why is everything rep-based?

why do we have an entire system built around it, where it's the only reward for anything

So, we want more questions to be asked, right?

We want more good questions.

we have rep competition

stackexchange.com/leagues/307/year/puzzling/2016-01-01

holy crap, good catch @pacoverflow

6:05 PM

With my interpretation of the bounties (which wasn't in line with what yall wanted according to shog9), why wouldn't that work?

yeah @pac, that's huge

Since to him, we're looking to award existing questions rather than new questions

which makes it "extrinsically motivating"

omg he had 6.5K rep

Yes as @Deusovi says we want a way to encourage more good questions. In order to do so we need a way for the community to recognise those questions and provide feedback to those who post them.

@WesleySitu honestly, I don't see how bounties on questions wouldn't motivate people to write good questions

if you know there are people out there awarding bounties to good questions, wouldn't you want to write a good question?

6:06 PM

I personally think the bounty for questions would be nice, but not necessary, I am keener on question ^v being valued higher

yeah

this doesn't have to be a fight for one XOR the other

none of us ever said anything about setting general bounties for good questions

@question_asker oops misread the double negative...

@Deusovi right

yeah I mean, number one, I want my upvote on a question to be worth more.

general bounties would be a lot harder to implement and probably not necessary

6:08 PM

I want the person who wrote the question to get the same rep I get for my answer

BUT

Why are our upvotes on this site worth so little in the first place?

Because they're worth that little everywhere else too.

Another thing... If a question have 100 ^votes, then it doesn't necessarily mean that the user got 500 rep. Reputation earned per day is limited to 200.

I also sometimes see a question, and I see the answer, and I think, damn, that is a really clever puzzle and I wish it got more than 5 rep from me

*almost everywhere else

6:09 PM

@Deusovi All we have to do then is to get more people on the site, then.

Which should be achieved through other means

well no

that doesn't take care of the problem

which is that good questions are undervalued

^

We can't just raise the upvote power then, because we cause inflation for questions that aren't good and are overvalued

I don't know about you guys, but my votes often don't go out to puzzles that they probably should. I often don't read posts that have answers selected. Good questions might be great but I don't see them to vote on them.

(also, consider that, just with the population we already have here, a lot of questions don't even get the same number of votes as the answers do)

6:11 PM

@LeppyR64 I also do it sometimes. :p

think about it this way: on most other SE sites, a question can be pretty much anything, as long as it's a) not a duplicate, and b) not unintelligible, and c) not something you could find in the first page of google results

so an answer, on a question elsewhere on SE, is almost always necessarily more work and effort than the question

A summary of our position: Questions are important here, moreso than on other sites. Currently they are undervalued. We want to be able to give the question posters the recognition they deserve, preferably through rep. Two potential ways to value questions as much as they deserve are: (1) increasing question vote rep, and (2) a modification of the bounty system to recognize good questions.

8

@Khale_Kitha pin this please ^^

but on puzzling, an answer is at most the same amount of effort that the person writing the question put in, but almost always less.

@dev - oh I definitely second your application :)

6:13 PM

(q_a: not always - for example, the "plastic bag" question)

ok yes, there are outliers

but in a majority of cases you are correct

but there will always be people who, intentionally or otherwise, 'take advantage' of any system that doesn't have individualized scrutiny at the time of content creation

so we say, OK, some outliers will get through, because it is unfeasible to prevent them from doing so

May be worth pointing out that the current model encourages rep seakers to answer simple puzzles rather than ask good questions!

@manshu done

6:15 PM

@Khale_Kitha thanks :)

@JonathanAllan SHHH do not give away my secret

heh

And for your first tag

You said number of questions

Which isn't what he said :)

well if anyone is not rep seeking it's me - see my CW contribution ratio (eg yesterday's fun and games)

I make and solve for the challenge :D

i shamelessly admit that i am partially rep seeking

6:16 PM

I'm bummed out to miss out on that maze one

i shamelessly admit that i am fully rep seeking

like I say, "rep-seeking" is pretty much built into any gamified system

f'' is not rep seeking and has a heap :p

sure, there are probably some people who are 100% in it For The Love of Puzzles, but most of us probably have a nonzero level of interest in upping our rep for one reason or another.

I'd like to get to 3k so I can see stuff :p

6:18 PM

@JonathanAllan you need 10K for that

(ftr I'm not drawing a distinction between actively and passively rep seeking - if you're trying to get higher rep at all, you're rep seeking)

I dont think 40 rep is too hard to come by though :p

see close votes @ 3k

@JonathanAllan Oh..I thought you wan't to see deleted questions and answers

that was nice for the couple of days I had the ability, but it's not something I am desperate for

@JonathanAllan I am. And maybe that's why I seek rep.

6:21 PM

Most people are motivated by rep. Allowing the community to reward good questions with rep therefore will generally encourage what the community considers good questions. QED

right?

man. I wish my job allowed me to talk to people like shog does

agreed

Do downvotes give negative rep?

yep

@WesleySitu yes it gives -2

6:22 PM

yes and yes

-1 to you too

OK I'm confused

hm?

I love this part

because I feel like, when I've downvoted an answer, it takes my rep down by 2

@manshu the part where I'm confused?

@question_asker yes :p

6:23 PM

but when I downvote a question, no change to my rep

@question_asker +1 why?

it doesn't show up in the notification thingy

If we change upvote power we also need to change downvotes then

until you've gotten more rep, and then it'll add them together

no but I mean, the number itself doesn't change

the only time I've seen my rep change is when I downvote an answer

6:24 PM

Questions are more likely to subsequently be closed/deleted, I guess.

(or when my answer has been downvoted)

look at reputation in your user entry you can see your downvotes at -1

and it's -2 each time

there is -1 if you downvote an answer

that does not appear to be the case

6:25 PM

there is -2 if someone else downvote you question or answer.

yes - I have ONE -2 in my entire history :p

Look at the achievement box, which you can find near the inbox

OK so I'm looking, and it looks like I've gotten -1 for downvoting someone's answer

but I've never lost rep for downvoting a question

ahhh

hm

(I don't like downvoting so I don't do it often, but I do do it.)

6:27 PM

@question_asker yes you can downvote any number of questions without causing it any affect to you

If the question's deleted you get your rep back, not sure about if it's closed.

ok, fed.

Oh, really? Weird.

Here are a few meta posts I'd recommend chiming in on:

8

Q: Can we award bounties to questions?

Is this a feature-request worth asking about? Is it too difficult to implement a system where questions can be awarded bounties as well? Are there any reasons why this should not be done? And should this be done on other sites as well? I think the justification for this is obvious - a lot of q...

feature-request bounty

seen

6:28 PM

15

Q: Giving puzzle questions the recognition they deserve

I recently saw a question requesting that the answerer upvote the question if they deem it worthy. I personally have no problem with this; I think there are a lot of very creative questions on this site, and they don't always get the votes they deserve. Part of what makes Puzzling different fro...

discussion question-quality up-votes favorites

@Shog9 we have been discussing in here so far, no meta as yet I believe

and most of all,

14

Q: How can we optimize for pearls?

To become a go-to site for great puzzles, we need to highlight our best content. We should make a good impression to a first-time visitor by having our finest puzzles be a click away. As is, I feel like the gems are getting lost among a sea of puzzles that are good but not exceptional. How can ...

discussion question-quality

That first one is a feature-request.

doesn't matter

@Shog9 there is no official answer.

6:28 PM

@manshu there's zero discussion.

@Shog9 There is no discussion tag

ah yes, questions with answers that refer to the other questions you've posted

"Is this a feature-request worth asking about?" it asks - crickets.

sooooo good

"Is it too difficult to implement a system where questions can be awarded bounties as well?" it wonders - no proposed system though.

6:29 PM

except we're asking you about it, and we've asked you about it already.

"Are there any reasons why this should not be done?" - I'm really interested in that answer too.

How many times are necessary? Also: please, by all means, show me where we said "the opposite" of what we're asking for now

As you have claimed.

"And should this be done on other sites as well?" - well, y'all think so I guess, and you know my opinion on it.

Four questions, and ZERO DISCUSSION ON THAT META POST.

@Shog9 we have been discussing our aims and how people are motivated. Don't come here and tell us what we've been doing. If you would prefer we can contact you at a later time when we have a more coherent message.

no no

6:30 PM

@JonathanAllan no, for the love of god, please don't do that.

Just let us know who else to ask

Either write stuff on these meta posts that I'm dropping in here, or drop the idea entirely.

If you don't do this stuff in public, it's like you're not doing it at all

chat's fine as... Like a scratch-pad

Someone who is capable of carrying out a conversation.

I dropped two of the same three in here earlier.

chat is not a forum for building consensus and hashing out hard problems though.

6:31 PM

Look at the vote counts on those feature requests.

Is that not consensus enough?

It's actually literally a forum

That's what a forum is

Yeah so maybe you should direct us to someone who is capable of handling this. This seems like it's outside of your abilities.

"A shovel is not a tool for driving screws" I asserted; "It actually literally is a tool" you respond.

it's exactly what happens here all the time

@Shog9 you really don't know puzzling-etc do you? :p

@question_asker handling what? The analysis of meta posts none of you care enough about to contribute to?

@JonathanAllan: No, and he clearly has no interest in Puzzling.SE either.

Shog9, look at the vote counts. Is that not consensus?

6:33 PM

@Deusovi We need to put our answers on that post

I'm gonna leave you with this; henceforth, you're on your own:

172

A: Can we talk about the voting culture here on Meta?

So I've been kinda chewing on this since your email, because... It's one of those simple questions that defies a simple answer. You're not the only person to raise this concern, of course: several respected users, moderators and even co-workers have expressed dismay upon seeing reasonable questio...

cc @Emrakul since I think you pinged me about this the other day

that was dismissive as fuck

2

US: hey, could you look at this?
YOU: not until you fulfill this nebulous condition
US: OK, done. how about this?
YOU: hmm, you're on your own

he obviously just sat eating his food watching the chat and planned out what to say Oh well.

like I said, he literally does not give a shit about what we have to say

6:36 PM

I like the part where I pointed out that a chat is literally a forum that can be used to build consensus and he characterized that as calling a shovel a screw

This guy must be a real charmer in person.

I am gonna answer the bounty feature-request.

I probably came back at the wrong time

that link he left us with was COMPLETELY UNRELATED

"Hey, we discussed this in the ch--" NOT GOOD ENOUGH, USE META "Well the votes on the meta seem to point to the same thing we already s--" SHUT UP I'M LEAVING

yeah, he never answered my points about vote counts

6:38 PM

you mentioned it at least twice, no?

@question_asker It reminds me of another same scenario.

yep!

if I'm reading this right, there's a consensus to better reward good questions (here at puzzling, at least), and a staffer says there's not enough of a consensus?

I noticed he does like to avoid answering questions.

@matt: Exactly.

6:38 PM

oh fun

he never answer my point about his claim that we were asking for "the opposite" of what he was supposedly told last night that we wanted.

What I got out of everything was: What's discussed in chat is not "official" discussion, so please move that over to the Meta post where the questions are at even though there's no discussion tag on a question that clearly asks for discussion.

he made that claim and ignored my requests for substantiation at least twice

From the link he posted: We need to define how we'll achieve our goal step by step.

We know it's not official; and we are using it as a scratch pad.

6:39 PM

q_a, that was in response to Wesley who was saying something different.

not sure what the problem is other than we were not ready to call him in when he finished stuffing his face :p

the problem is that he doesn't care about us

@Zandar that's an awfully generous reading of what he said...

so he won't listen to us

yeah

I mean, his (wrong) opinion is that we're a tiny site that doesn't deserve his attention

6:41 PM

We need what we want to be well defined, because apparently I misunderstood how we were going to get what we wanted, which is an example of how we don't have our method well defined.

we are a tiny site! kinda!

yet he gives it attention to berate it

Wesley, AFAIK everyone agrees with my summary:

29 mins ago, by Deusovi

A summary of our position: Questions are important here, moreso than on other sites. Currently they are undervalued. We want to be able to give the question posters the recognition they deserve, preferably through rep. Two potential ways to value questions as much as they deserve are: (1) increasing question vote rep, and (2) a modification of the bounty system to recognize good questions.

That's only a summary. We need to flesh that out in the answers section

But that's essentially what the question says too.

6:42 PM

And more to the point, whether we were saying "stronger upvotes for questions" or "bounties for questions", they amount to the same thing, really

And now we answer those questions!

1. Have a problem, state it clearly.
Good questions are not encouraged enough by the current model

2. Citation needed.
Users have left (someone had an example earlier??)

Yeah, JLee left

They're not the same thing, you just proposed both of them to serve a single goal.

yeah see, this insistence on using the answer section is like somebody going "WHAT'S 2+2?" and you go "4" and they go "WRONG, PUT IT IN WRITING" so you write it down and they go "LOOKS LIKE YOU HAVEN'T SHOWN YOUR WORK"

6:43 PM

eh?

"Is it too difficult to implement a system where questions can be awarded bounties as well?"

I guess not.

stackapps have +10 for questions

same thing can be done for PSE

@Zandar what is the problem?

right?

oh somebody please explain to me what was with his asinine thing of recounting parts of the question to us as if we're supposed to answer them, not him

@question_asker Unfortunately, that's how things work, so we'll have to do just that

6:44 PM

@q_a: like I said, he just doesn't care

@WesleySitu not really, though.

@WesleySitu you keep mischaracterizing this as a situation where he'll come around as long as we play by the rules

@Deusovi are you willing to clearly articulate the issues in a meta?

I was talking about q_a's post - bounties and stronger upvotes shouldn't be conflated, one can be a good idea without the other one being good.

but... like @Deusovi said, that's not really the case.

because it's not my strong point

6:45 PM

I'll try.

catching up, I think this place would benefit from +10 on questions

@question_asker I'm just not disregarding the possibility unless you have an example of where he's ignored a request despite having those rules followed.

Hold on, on one of the questions he linked, the bounty thing was PROPOSED AS AN ANSWER

I've also noticed that there are bronze and silver badges for questions, but not a gold badge

which was EXACTLY what he was looking for

4

A: Giving puzzle questions the recognition they deserve

One possible suggestion could be to allow bounties to be awarded to deserving questions rather than just answers.

6:47 PM

@WesleySitu were you not here like ten minutes ago, when he was literally asking us our own questions?

q_a's right

I believe "exactly what he's looking for" is an exploration of the topic rather than a one-line suggestion.

hopefully @Alconja @GentlePurpleRain and @emrakul can contribute too

@Deusovi That same answerer was the asker on one of the other questions he posted

@Deusovi and in the comments of that question, someone directed them to the unanswered meta post

@question_asker I did read them, but none of answers to those that were linked seemed concrete enough to me.

GentlePurpleRain

6:48 PM

I'm currently working on a meta post addressing this. Hopefully it will help to forward the conversation. Should be ready in 10 or 15 minutes.

so... yeah, good point, when you ignore these things, people get sent in circles.

Yes what he has said he is after is a clear proposal statement like a project manager would want from a business user before assigning any developers to a task

ah @GentlePurpleRain brilliant!!

Wesley, we don't know the inner workings of SE's code. Of course we can't propose something "concrete". We have suggested an increase in the rep awarded for question votes, though - how can we get concrete-er than that?

yeah

just needssomeone more articulate than me

6:49 PM

@GentlePurpleRain I am answering that bounty feature request question

@Deusovi That wasn't one of the questions he linked us though. The issues he brought up were mostly related to bountys, not upvotes

he keeps responding to us as if we're supposed to be actually coming up with the fix ourselves

Well, if you read his last link that's apparently true to some extent.

We said both would be nice, but either would be an improvement. He refused to give us any direct answers to either.

like, in no other situation (wrt developers / users) would that happen

6:51 PM

According to the CMs, they cannot change the amount of rep per question upvote for a specific site: meta.stackexchange.com/a/242718/202205

Then how did they do it for StackApps?

I'm imagining a carpenter being like "well, I'll build you a house as long as you draw up the plans, cut the wood, and build the house yourself first."

stepping back a bit, if the problem is that questions don't result in enough rep for the asker, then why would be ask for both an increase in question upvote rep and awarding bounties to questions?

@Deusovi @question_asker I have seen this in the real world as a developer. That is why the CTO might decide to employ project managers (and then it can just get worse)

@JonathanAllan fair enough, but you clearly understand why I'm saying it's absurd

6:52 PM

yes, the business needs what the business needs :p

anyway, my brain is falling out

We are not project managers or developers for SE. We are users.

It's possible that more problems would show up with bounties on questions

yes we are the business side - the users :)

@Emrakul: Hey! We're pissed off.

6:52 PM

@Matt like what?

or are you just saying "more problems relative to a +10 upvote"?

user61230

@Deusovi Hi! I can tell! ;) And so the conversation continues.

bounties are way more rep than upvotes, but dependent on a single person

@Matt: So? We already have bounties. They are a thing that exists.

if someone with tons of expendable rep likes a certain type of puzzle and dislikes others, his liked puzzles will see more bounties

Gordon Allocman

*comes back from meeting with 260 new messages in chat

user61230

6:54 PM

I'm just here to listen, for the moment, though.

and his disliked puzzles, even if they are voted more highly, would not get one

If you're worried about bounty abuse, there was an issue with that in the early days of the site IIRC. The mods dealt with it.

@Matt: That's already an issue, just with answers instead of puzzles.

have people complained about it?

I don't think it's actually a big issue, the point is that giving bounties to questions wouldn't add a new problem.

@Matt Consider that bounties are minimum 50 rep

6:56 PM

Exactly.

In that regard, anyway.

You couldn't abuse bounties too hard before it became a problem for you, anyway

certainly not here, with the (relatively low) volume of Q&A we do

okay then

that said, though, I'm not even sure that is a problem - so somebody spends their own rep on certain types of questions - so what? that's not really taking away from anything

Let me clarify: I should've said that's already a potential issue.

6:58 PM

(I realize this is maybe a more controversial stance than the other things I've said about it, but it's an argument that could be made)

q_a, you're the king of controversial stances

*takes a bow*

Well, keep in mind that bounties are already designed to draw attention to questions.

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