[locked] A Different Perspective On The Point System

Well the main point is that:

People asking questions about things they don't have a clue about should not be marking that their question as answered. As has been pointed out there are many ways to accomplish the same thing in Adobe apps. marking a question or a thread answered stifles the dialog of the these other methods.

If Zeno is so smart about Adobe apps he should know this and see that its killing further discussion. Oh thats right Zeno wasn't around in the old forum so he doesn't know that.

Steve, I was reading your opening post, and found very interesting this phrase in the text you quote:

If you wanted to hire an iPhone developer, would you rather know that person’s Stack Overflow stats in the iPhone tag and read their answers to technical questions?

I went to the original source and, as I understood things, the emphasis is not in a person's statistics, but in actually reading what that person has written when answering technical questions. The quality of those answers is what would really matter for me if I wanted to hire a developer. In fact, if you click on a person's avatar, you not only get several numbers that were meaningless for me, but also a list of links to that person's answers, with ratings I didn't try to discover how they are obtained.

So, I don't see your quotation as an argument in favour of the points system. Maybe it is helpful over there (it wasn't clear for me how and by whom points are awarded), but that doesn't necessarily make it helpful here, where it is the original poster who awards them. And, in the case of newcomers, this can be done for completely wrong reasons... And I very much doubt that someone wanting to hire an expert in using, say, InDesign, would come to the InDesign forum looking for orientation...

S.D.A. wrote: I was reading Joel on Software today and he was talking about "Stack Overflow" which is a very successful Q&A forum for programmers by programmers.  Joel makes the point that the Stack Overflow board (which is similar to these forums in that it's a technical support forum) uses a point system. Joel goes on to write; "It’s not much of a secret, but Stack Overflow is already a great place to find good programmers, because you can see how good people really are by reading the answers that they post. I’ve noticed a lot of people putting their Stack Overflow reputations on their resumes, and we’re starting to hear stories of people who got jobs through the site. Jeff and I are committed to building features to make this easier in the next “six to eight” weeks. For example, I’ve always hated traditional resumes, which just don’t give the right kind of information about a candidate. If you wanted to hire an iPhone developer, would you rather know that person’s Stack Overflow stats in the iPhone tag and read their answers to technical questions? Or would you rather know where they went to college? If we pull this off, getting jobs in the tech industry will be a lot saner." I'm not sure at this point where I sit in this debate; but I thought you all might be interested in a reasoned opinion on the pro side.

personally it doesn't affect me one way or the other I don't give points and I don't answer question for points. Frankly the only time I notice them all is if I happen to mousover my avatar.

But I get the impression from most of the people Fussing about the points. Have the opinion anyone other than them have the brain of a Turnip. So people asking legimate questions, with their Turnip Brains don't know enough to decide whether an answer, solves their problem. They think that only a 100 page disertation on the subject is the only correct answer to the question.

The object of answering questions is to solve problems. Whether the answer is a 5 liner, or ten page disertation; if  fixes the problem is all that matters.