Hey! The Bars changed!

[Joe_H]

I will continue on with the forum because I simply love it here. I know some of you personally. Some of you I have met briefly (Altenbach at the champions table last year at NI week, I had my son with me, he talked alot)  most of you i will never meet. I do not answer questions here just for any type of recognition or even a Pat on the back (Kudoes). The reason that I feel degraded is this. When I first started answering questions here on this forum, I answered one question in particular. This person asked what I considered a very simple question, so I gave him/ her a very simple answer. The person then started another thread asking the exact same question. Another person with a higher ranking then me (i was only 50 or so questions in) gave him pretty much the exact same answer. The person gave him 5 stars, and a big huge thank you. No big deal really but I did chime in to that thread and told the person that I had given the exact same answer. He told me that  he did not believe my answer because I was only considered an active member (or something to that effect) so when I finally made it to proven active veteran I felt that people actually listened to what i said. Now without that recognition it feels as if I am starting over again. I have spent a great deal of time on this forum, both answering questions and asking them. To me it does not matter what the ranking of the person that answers my question is as long as it works, but to some it does. I have even seen post that said to others, "I want some of the higher ranking people on this forum to answer my question".

I am here to stay. I pick and choose which questions I want to answer and I do not post just for post count. It still feels degrading none the less.

Besides Proven Active Veteran sounds a whole lot better than active participant

Message Edited by Joe_H on 03-22-2010 12:15 AM

[Mathan]

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Joe_H wrote:

I pick and choose which questions I want to answer and I do not post just for post count.

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Dear Joe,

Just my 2 cents. I understand your feelings. Do not worry about specific people who wants answers only from Veterans and did not care about other people who are willing to help.

Please consider this. If the question is appropriate and sounds good to answer, don't mind about the OP, just go ahead and post the best answer. OP is just the creator of that particular thread and he will not turn back to see it after his problem is solved. Its only the next generation people who are facing similar problems will look back for quality answers and solutions.

Please don't hesitate to post your best answer and think that you are helping millions of people and not just the single person the OP.

Thanks,
Mathan

[Broken_Arrow]

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Darin.K wrote:

[...] 

 Mark's posts are usually geared more for developers than users like me

[...]

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Darin, based on what I've seen in your posts, and based on yourself being perhaps the fastest rising Kudos star in board history, we have very different opinions of what a user vs. developer are.

To me, a "user" is someone who may "use" my programs. I keep the user in mind when developing GUI's. Most importantly, I don't allow users into the block diagram.

If, by "user", you mean that you are the end user of programs that you develop, then maybe I see your point.

Most of us have come across self-proclaimed "LabVIEW Programmers", only to find out they've just tweaked front panel controls or maybe plopped down an Express VI. These are users. 

In fact (and I digress here a bit but it is the BreakPoint board) I've found due to LabVIEW's inherent ease of getting a "Hello World" program working, and the comparatively simple leap from "Hello World" to actually getting a relay to click, that people will proclaim that they are a LabVIEW Developer much faster than someone who recently took the shrinkwrap off their Borland C++. Hence, your modesty took me by surprise a bit, that's all.

[Darin.K]

I guess my use of the word "user" is indicative of my disconnect with the developer world.  Yes, I was mostly referring to the fact that I am judge, jury and executor (pun intended) of most of my VIs.  LV is a tool I use to get my experiments running, so my usage is not day-in and day-out like a developer's.  It also means that in almost 20 years of using LV I have never laid eyes on the style guide.  On those occasions where I hand off my code and move on to the next project, the warranty I leave is basically "You touch one wire, it is now your problem not mine."  Sometimes it also gets the "It worked fine when I used it" stamp. 

I am modest enough to think I am here primarily to learn new things, and keep my skills honed when my day-to-day routine does not involve LV.  

Now that I think about it, I was reverse-"dissed" which normally is a good thing, but there is a certain enjoyment in sneaking up on people.  Harder to do with all this color now.

[James_W]

From what I've seen about as many people are upset by the change of gating requirements for the different level as are happy. Personally I don't care, and I'm probably conraversial when it come to Kudos as I rarely give them. In my personal opinion, Kudos should be treated like a financial bonus - the sort that normal people get, not bankers, so any system rating people by Kudos seems wrong. It encourages a Kudos culture and people to be bitter when they don't get Kudos for something instead of happy to recieve Kudos for a particularly helpful pointer that points solves 75% or more of a difficult problem, or is a ground breaking idea.

Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old (before my time) man in this respect.

[Intaris]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... Do away with the rankings.

At best the rating system is an innocent distration of no real value.

At worst it's a misleading and confusing system leading to elitist attitudes.

Recently someone with little previous participation posted on base ten floating point representation in a thread about rounding errors.  He got ridiculed.  After doing a bit of research (Google is your friend) which took a whole two minutes I found out that it is indeed a serious area of computer research for certain applications.  IEEE 754 is not the be-all and end-all of floating point representation my friends.  Yeah, we've all been there and done that regarding rounding errors but when somebody suggests a different approach, to ASSUME they are a N00b based on their forum participation and forego having a quick look at the topic is just not what the forum used to be about.

Had the poster had some coloured bars, maybe his question would have gotten more useful answers than he ended up with (and the people reading the posts may have learned something).

I just feel lately (last 2 Years or so) the Forum is becoming more and more a multi-class environment with "us" and "them" which ultimately leads to a lower quality of forum.

Maybe it's just me but I think we'd be better off without any rankings whatsoever.  The perception that bar colours = quality of post is silly (but human) and ultimately counter-productive.

Shane.

[Broken_Arrow]

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Intaris wrote:

[...]

... a multi-class environment with "us" and "them"...

[...]

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 Hmmmmm. Volcanoes some to mind.

Message Edited by Broken Arrow on 03-23-2010 08:05 AM

[Laura F.]

All - we are certainly open to changing the name from "Active Participant".  Previously we had the rank names based on three metrics:

Average Rating                    Post Count                                Logins

Less than 3.5 no name         Less than 200 no name             Less than 25 Member

3.5-4.5 Trusted                    200 - 1999 Active                    25 - 249  Regular

4.5 + Proven                        2000 - 4999 Enthusiastic          250 Veteran

                                            5000- 9999 Zealous

                                            10000 + Knight of NI

Quite a while ago the average rating became obsolete when we introduced Kudos.  As you can see the login levels were set very low and everyone quickly progressed to Veteran status.  With the rank changes I tried to come up with names that would fit our new "engagement" category of kudos, solutions, and tags but Trusted and Proven did not really fit any longer.  In addition, we introduced one extra level so we would have needed something beyond Proven as well.   Instead of logins we now use messages read.  I don't know if you can really equate messages read with Veteran.  There was a very good suggestion to simplify the names to be based strictly on post count.  We did not want to completely change the names so we went with the two word names that are related to the previous rank terms. 

In no way did we mean for it to be degrading, only slightly simpler and I apologize to those who feel their rank has been degraded.  I am happy to entertain additional suggestions as the names are not set in stone.  Your participation is very valuable to this community and we try to take as much feedback as possible before making changes to the forums. 

Regards,

Laura

[Joe_H]

Laura,

Why not just go with Something like: Proven Veteran, Enthusiast, Zealot, Knight

And bas it on avg rating(Kudoes, stars, Recieved) and post count.

[Darin.K]

I think the name for this thread should be changed to "Who Moved My Cheese?"