2 x "helpful" is not enough

🙂 I have the opposite problem, Barbara. I developed "logician's grammar" at university and interpret every disjunction as inclusive (roughly equivalent to "and/or" in natural speech) rather than exclusive (A or B but not both A and B) unless explicitly specified otherwise. This is one of the reasons why people look at me funny. (Probably not the major reason, though.)

Thinking about it, I bet the ToU verbage most likely has nothing at all to do with grammar, disjunction or conjunction: it was composed by a lawyer and only he would be able to successfully argue his interpretation of it. 😉

+So, more than one account? Yes, guilty, but not to game the system, due to not taking things that seriously and forgetting what the old account name was.+

Just to clear this up: I was trying to lighten up the discussion based on the previous humorous comments..... 🙂

As long as you remember we are disjunctively conjunctive, all is well.

😁

Hi, AxL - The main reason the other system was dumped was that the WebX software couldn't handle the traffic here, and the Jive system took its place because it could handle the traffic. The rewards systems (+/- and stars) are features of the available software, and only represent what is/was available from their vendors. No design/ethical choices were involved in the implementation of either system.

I preferred the previous system, too, btw.

Happy Halloween!

Barbara Daniels1 wrote:
I totally agree; occasionally I feel as though I'm a real "pickle" because I have to choose two out of 3 - 6 helpful suggestions.

I try to pick the ones with the lowest level or points to help them out.

MGW wrote:
Axl, the OT part of what you seem to be mourning certainly still exists, vide this thread. Any one can, and does jump in. Not to be disputatious, but I believe the old system (thank you for reminding me that it was + and-) led to gross excesses, with people minusing posters they disagreed with, whether in that thread or others. That was, I believe, one of the major reasons that the + - system was discontinued.

Sounds to me that just eliminating the "-" option would have fixed the problem.

Thanks, Tuttle, it makes sense.

I am thinking, and I think Tuttle is, as usual, right, although the previous system was regularly gamed. However I still believe this is a better system once posters are prompted to award stars for correct answers. I have no quarrel with you AxL, we simply see the purpose of Discussions in a different light. I believe it's a service that Apple provide (which saves them a h*ll of a lot of money in tech salaries) to help Mac owners with their problems. The threads started by the OP, while technically owned by Apple, in practice belong to the OP because s/he is the one asking for the information and help, therefor the OP's interests are paramount.

My curiosity got the better of me what with all these back and forths about points: if I remember correctly, it took more than 1,700 posts for me to get to level 3 (1,000+ points), whereas you were able to achieve that status by getting almost twice as many points than the number of your posts - congratulations, that is quite an achievement!

Hi Barbara,

Under the Previous System a poster also got a single point for actually posting.

After that comparisons about Point to Post ratios depend on Posting styles.

Regular Posters in Feedback About Discussions tend to be the sort who are willing to post a comment here and and comment there that improve the overall "milieu" of the Discussions.

For Posters I see with 1 post (Or sometimes two in quick succession in the same thread before I read it) I post:-

Welcome to the  Discussions

If a Poster come back to say Something works - I reply like I have in this Thread.
It does nothing for my Point to Post Ratio but I feel it helps overall.

Responders that can get their Knowledge across as Useful Answers will generally pick up points for it.
Points to Post ratios are for the most part a mixed bag of data as it can be interpreted in different ways depending on your slant on how the Discussions Point System should work.

A range of Buttons could be suggested:-

Solved, and Helpful as now but also something along the lines of "I learned from this one" and "That Aided my understanding".
Maybe a choice of icons could be added as Comments (Similar to Smilies) in the new Support Communities forums when they get here.

Personally I also wish that "Answered" did not get the same Green Star as "Solved".



8:10 PM Monday; November 1, 2010

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

Ralph (UK),

I really wasn't "complaining" about how long it took me to get 1,000 points; rather, I was trying to convey my amazement at how the OP achieved that ratio. We had a similar discussion here not that long ago about getting (or not getting) points and I said then that, although I appreciate the points, I still get a "feel good" feeling having helped someone when they say "thank you, that worked" without awarding points.

+Glad to hear that. Thanks for letting us know.+

I generally do the same thing and, although I try to post helpful answers and/or suggestions that actually solve the problem ...

+Responders that can get their Knowledge across as Useful Answers will generally pick up points for it.+

In my case, I'd change your "generally" to "sometimes":

I get quite a few of these (obviously answered their question):

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630729

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12504301#12504301

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12494938#12494938

and a lot of these (no feedback/response whatever):

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2631264

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630624

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12501903#12501903

Again, absolutely no complaints, especially since my ratio is about 3 : 2 (which I think is just fine), but just the facts.

I really wasn't "complaining" about how long it took me to get 1,000 points; rather, I was trying to convey my amazement at how the OP achieved that ratio.

*No criticism whatsoever implied of Redarm in this post,* but his/her point-per-post (PPP) ratio at the moment is mostly governed by the boundary effect produced by the changeover from WebX to Jive forum software.

Note the difference between Redarm's total post count and online post count? That indicates that the bulk of his/her posts were made in WebX and possibly earlier forum softwares. At the Jive changeover, a new starting point count was generated for previously active posters based on double the existing post count (and also a certain number of points were calculated based on the total "points" the user had gained from "helpful" and "not helpful" votes), rounded to the nearest 5 point. So every previous-actively poster started with a PPP of at least 2 on the Jive software.