Help/How To Guide

[cpratt]

Also - what is "Reaction Score" ? What's the range? Is 0 good or just average? Can it be -ve?? Does is get re-evaluated periodically? Am I the react-er or react-ee? I'm reminded of a sign at old workplace (and a bygone age) it read "Sxxual harassment will not be tolerated - however it will be graded". Love the "how to" - I'll keep an eye on that. Many Thanks.
The XX is because there seems to be a Karen AI censor that is real uptight !?!?!

Reaction score is sort of a rank system of who has provided interesting contact to other people. Initially I set everyones reaction score to their post count because we've never had anything like that and frankly, it's a field seeded with Bouncing Bettys. Ranking is a subjective concept in a forum so we've yet to take steps to do anything with it. Certain pressing the Like button gives "reaction" and I think that counts into it. But the value of the reaction is extremely suspect right now because it was not initialized to anything useful. If it seemed of value to use this, it probably should be cleared of its current value and even then, as it increments, it would be important for the community to buy in to it's use.

I participate in a software forum needed for the type work I do. I provide solutions to people when I know something they need, I also ask questions and get answers to which I react (by clicking a like). In doing so, I get "trophies", meaningless little virtual trophies that are suppose to represent how "good" I am. In talks with several YTers privately, we all agreed that while this might trigger ego based help in a few people, and admittedly be kind of fun, YT people tend to be more individualistic than that and aren't seeking some sort of acclaim that shows them to be better than the rest of the community. This might be a little too judgmental of an attitude about the whole thing, because everyone does respond to getting a pat on the back, even those of us who put down the concept. We'll be talking about it more to see if it would be good or bad in the eyes of the community. But for now, we'll be leaving the issue open.

This topic actually goes deeper. If you notice, in the manufacturer forums, there is a tab when you post a new thread that lets you select "Question". If you click that when you are posting a thread, it means that when people answer, you can select the best answer when you've had your question resolved. If the person asking the question chooses your answer, you get reaction points. Obviously this has the same issues associated with it. Even if the person asking the question selected a specific post as their answer, most often, a complete answer is the collection of answers from the entire thread, in other words, the entire group is working together to solve the problem. So it seems a bit silly to say that only one answer solved the problem. That then goes into issues such as the first person to answer may have had the answer, but their grammar was not as good as say the fourth answer, even though they were the same solution. Also, if five people give the same answer, still only one answer can be selected and that's not fair either.

Not a simple topic and not one I can answer. All of us in the community who can understand what it does, might be able to come to an agreement on the way to use it that adds some fun to helping people with tractor problems... or not. It's really that up in the air.

 

[Dober_paw]

cpratt
Thanks for full answer. So, basically it's an answer looking for a question? Agreed - ranking/evaluation is an area where "here there be dragons".

I'm familiar w/ Googling a problem and finding an answer on a forum - and that answer is flagged as "best answer" - to which my response is "says who?" and also what about the runners-up - which is 2nd, 3rd and (important) the worst answer? Don't we deserve to be told that too? (or is it better to avoid that sort of implied responsibility)

Certainly you can easily gather meta data on posts and count the clicks and likes and ignores and follows etc.etc.etc - but in drawing conclusions from that deep bucket of data brings up the old but still very true acronym - GIGO.

And many thanks for all the time/effort you all put into this site. Happy New year.

 

[cpratt]

cpratt
Thanks for full answer. So, basically it's an answer looking for a question? Agreed - ranking/evaluation is an area where "here there be dragons".

I'm familiar w/ Googling a problem and finding an answer on a forum - and that answer is flagged as "best answer" - to which my response is "says who?" and also what about the runners-up - which is 2nd, 3rd and (important) the worst answer? Don't we deserve to be told that too? (or is it better to avoid that sort of implied responsibility)

Certainly you can easily gather meta data on posts and count the clicks and likes and ignores and follows etc.etc.etc - but in drawing conclusions from that deep bucket of data brings up the old but still very true acronym - GIGO.

And many thanks for all the time/effort you all put into this site. Happy New year.

GIGO, exactly. Several people pointed out we were already doing that with the old ranks we had since you can't draw any valid correlation about quality from a post count. I realized they were right, especially since someone contacted me once who just likes tales, and said it embarrassed him to be a Tractor Expert or Tractor Guru, he was just in it for the chit-chat and had me clear his post count (more than once). I was impressed with what I consider to be a man of integrity and honor. We were attaching false labels and that's cause we had a meaningless metric.

On computer forums, actually question and answer sites, normally it's the 3rd or 4th runner up that has the best answer for me, often the 1st answer is clouded with "the correct way" to do something that can be done trivially. In computer terms, who has 4 hours of configuration time to do something that 2 character hack can accomplish. Sometimes it's more practical put an occasional extra quart in, than rebuild the engine depending on the situation.

 

[HFJ]

what is subjective about the reaction score?

it should have started at 0 for everyone, and is incremented by 1 every time another user reacts (clicks one of the reaction buttons at the bottom of a post) to something u posted. isn't that how it works?

as for the other thing:

in my opinion, it's very hard to come up with a forum post of less value than "google it"

 

[cpratt]

what is subjective about the reaction score?

it should have started at 0 for everyone, and is incremented by 1 every time another user reacts (clicks one of the reaction buttons at the bottom of a post) to something u posted. isn't that how it works?

as for the other thing:

in my opinion, it's very hard to come up with a forum post of less value than "google it"

The question came up several times as we readied the server. I didn't know what to do with reaction score as it was tied to other tables. I think we will do some sort of adjustments making it relative to the cutover time at some point. Right now it has not bubbled up as critical enough to address. In my remembrance, it may have started at post count which is incorrect, though looking at it, that doesn't seem to be the case, but rather that post count fed into some internal calculation that began only after we started up. It will be addressed eventually though.