How seriously do we take this point system?

[JayJhabrix]

Seriously, do points matter? Do you want them? Why if so, why, if not? Are points any good? Do points make you feel more secure? Are points pointed and sharp or are they blunt and blunted? Do points encourage you to answer questions or do they discourage you?

Points are not a line... but connecting two pints makes a line... So do points awarded in an answer draw aline and stop all further discussion?

I've been following threads in DW General and AI General. I notice that threads, by and large, stop far sooner than they would have. I put that down to the lack of participants for various reasons and the 'Correct' answer flag. So much knowledge and information is not being shared.

True, a lot of the posts came from the NNTP side... but a lot also came from the web side... these forums are killing all spontaniety.

However, the killers are:

1/ Lack of NNTP

2/ Points

3/ Correct answers

[Guest]

How come a person can get 10 points for simply pointing out the OP is in the wrong forum, and nothing at the conclusion of a lengthy, technical, trouble-shooting exchange which fixes an obscure problem?

[Claudio González]

John Joslin wrote:

How come a person can get 10 points for simply pointing out the OP is in the wrong forum, and nothing at the conclusion of a lengthy, technical, trouble-shooting exchange which fixes an obscure problem?

Simply because the original poster is most often the least qualified for evaluating the quality of a response. And newcomers in need of urgent help rarely even notice the buttons.

I am afraid we (all of us, not just JJ and me) have already discussed this matter in length in at least one other thread, and are  repeating most of what has already been said.

[Kath-H]

Where is that thread? When I follow your link I arrive at a page with no heading, no breadcrumbs, nothing. Very odd.

[Jacob Bugge]

Sorry Kath,

I copied the URL of the Print Preview, which is what I use for archiving. As early as the test period I asked John whether it was possible to have such a format live, and he said what you know, basically the same answer as to every hopeful question.

The live thread is here:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/434881?tstart=0

[Kath-H]

Thanks Jacob - that's my friend Patty - how odd that she was able to give 3 lots of 'helpful answer' stars instead of two. I don't see the 'punishment' angle though.

[Jacob Bugge]

Kath, see this, http://forums.adobe.com/message/1923175#1923175,

last post referring to this, http://forums.adobe.com/thread/424522, keyword retaliation.

That is what happens when you are not as cautious as Ann, and even she is not unscathed.

[JayJhabrix]

Jacob Bugge wrote:

How serious is it possible to take it when a thread can have 3 stars for helpful answers, all of them given as a punishment for Ramón and myself?

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/434881?decorator=print&displayFullThread=true

Jacob,

Two strange things about that link....

1/ Three helpful stars? How come? All Questions come with one 'Correct' and two 'Helpfuls'... where did she get the third "helpful' star from?

2/ The link was stripped of all the top part of the page... meaning it was visible from just the actual thread. How did you do that? I can understand that you've set your styling in to strip the flim-flam, but why should it affect me?

Cheers...

Edit: Never mind 2/. Posted before i read Kath and your exchange... However, even relocating the post shouldn't increase the stars?

[Mark_A__Boyd]

Hey. Hey. HEY!

How soon I forget. That ?decorator=print&displayFullThread=true link fragment results in a view very similar to many requests for a default (no-tree) thread display. But we (I) seem to forget about the "View print preview" link in the "Actions" box in the side bar (and I don't normally have that hidden).

It is very close to my display with all my Stylish tweaks, except that it lacks any identification as to which forum is in view. And the display of a complete thread (sans-tree) regardless of number of replies is beyond user style sheets. Still, that link fragment can be very useful within a given forum.

Thanks for that reminder. Similarly, I shall remind myself about "View as PDF".

--
Mark "Cheers" Boyd
Keep-On-Learnin' 🙂

[Kath-H]

From a knowledgeable and helpful 'Community Expert' in the ID forum:

If you want points, just answer every third post, whether you know the right answer or not. The people giving them out don't know, and as far as I can tell it's sheer volume that gets you credibility around here.

[Mark_A__Boyd]

Kath-H wrote:

From a knowledgeable and helpful 'Community Expert' in the ID forum:

If you want points, just answer every third post, whether you know the right answer or not. The people giving them out don't know, and as far as I can tell it's sheer volume that gets you credibility around here.

Good grief. I have no idea what points mean to newbies - real newbies - youngsters.

I am enough of a newbie myself in several realms where I lurk to learn - not in Adobe [Web] forums [anymore]. But even in the one or two Web-based forums that I can barely tolerate, I give no credence to points/post counts, though I sometimes do appreciate longevity.

Which is another oddity with the Adobe forums since they had to try to merge all of the old WebX and FuseTalk people in one place. And for NNTP people like myself from the MM side, we were all grouped as Newsgroup_User, regardless of which newsgroup we posted to. And therefore, WebX, FuseTalk, and NNTP users (from both news servers) have "Member Since" dates that have nothing whatsoever to do with forum participation. So much for my longevity qualifier.

I HATE Web forums! I have never seen one that is as useful or as productive as a plain text news server - or even an old ListServ mailing list.

Good thing this particular thread is no help to the team trying to improve things. Else I would feel guilty posting so much unhelpful noise in here. Too bad they can't hit a simple key combo to "Ignore Thread".

Message was edited by: Mark A. Boyd

[Kath-H]

Yes, the post count is misleading - Patty's no newbie She was around quite a lot some time ago, well before the new forums.

[Mark_A__Boyd]

Yes, the post count is misleading - Patty's no newbie She was around quite a lot some time ago, well before the new forums.

Ugh. Fooled by the Jive talkin' again!

[pattyclarke]

I am very sorry to have made you feel bad about anything. The Capitalization thread is one of the threads I have enjoyed the most since the days of the fair forums, before.

I, and Ramón, have been among the earliest and strongest opponents to the giving of points, even in the test period, before the new forums became reality, hence the jokes about punishment and retaliation.

Please rest assured that the points have no value. Your friendship has.

Jacob, thank you so much for your kind words—now I feel all better! Hugs to you.

Now on to Mark's question—"so, what do points and post counts mean to you as a casual visitor?" Well, a couple of things, I don't know how to see the number of points someone has, (explain please), all I see on my screen is the person's name, title (community expert, user, participant etc) and the number of posts. To be honest, (and I do recognize how naive this is going to sound), when I noticed someone's name with a large number of posts, I thought how fortunate I am to have this really busy person take time to respond to MY question. Yahoo, aren't I the lucky one! It never occurred to me to judge the value/credibility of the response based on the number of posts.

I'm still not sure about how a "new poster" (yes, I spent time in the forums years ago when I was going to college and taking graphic design courses back in the CS ver 2 days) would know how the point system works. I would appreciate a link to that info. From what Kath said, I understand that you can only give out two helpful marks and one correct answer. I don't yet understand how the OP should handle that. Do you wait until the end of the thread to do that so you don't minimize the conversation? So the recap of my feelings are, I think the point system is intimidating from the "uninformed, innocent poster stand-point" and greatly damages the helpful generosity of the forums from the good old days.

Hi back to Dave Milbut.

Patty

[Phillip M Jones]

Even the number of post are meaningless as well.

I've been on air since 2003 and I posted way more messages  than they have given me credit for.

[Harbs.]

PJ,

The post numbers only go back as long as the posts do. Since posts on the WebX forums only lasted about a year, that's not very long. We're all in the same boat there...

Harbs

[Guest]

Harbs. wrote:

PJ,

The post numbers only go back as long as the posts do. Since posts on the WebX forums only lasted about a year, that's not very long. We're all in the same boat there...

Harbs

Harbs, that's not exactly correct.  The post count goes back to when Adobe intended to combine the Adobe forums with the Macromedia ones.  They asked all the users on the Adobe side to re-register, which annoyed many regulars who were unable to maintain their monikers they had for many years.  In my case, I was known as Hopper and now I am to be known as greenjumpyone as someone on the Macromedia side already had the hopper moniker.  I am listed as being on this forum since only 2005, but in fact, I have been part of these boards since 1999/2000.

Post counts are really irrelevant.  As someone (Claudio?) pointed out, someone like Thomas Knoll could come into a thread make an expert reply, but might only have a few posts to his "credit".  Does that mean his information is less valid than someone with 8000 posts?  Nope!  Post counts are irrelevant.

hopper

[Harbs.]

[I wrote this some time ago, but emails were not working...]

Hopper,

Yes, we all know that post (and point) counts are irrelevant. I made a similar point to yours here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/1981583#1981583 However, when they stare you in the face, they have a tendency of making themselves very relevant. (That's what advertising is all about...)

I also had someone take my moniker, but I just added a period to the end of mine (i.e. Harbs. instead of Harbs) I noticed that Buko followed my lead...

Harbs

[Claudio González]

I have just lost a long answer to this when I was kicked out of the forums on clicking on the Post Message button. As this is not by far the first time this has happened to me, and I had re-logged less than two hours ago, I hope you'll forgive me for not feeling like writing my message again.

[pattyclarke]

Claudio,

I'm feeling like a freedom fighter with a cause, but no understanding of what I'm fighting for. It's as simple as this... if the OP is the only one that can award points where is this explained???

Patty

[Ramón G Castañeda]

pattyclarke wrote:

…if the OP is the only one that can award points where is this explained???

Well, it's explained in one or more of the FAQs in the Forums Discussions forum, buried somewhere.  And that's only a small part of the problem.

The short version:  The OP gets to award two "Helpful" stars, worth 5 points each, and one "Answered" star worth 10 points—entirely at the OP's discretion.

[Kath-H]

Case in point. I've just answered a question in Golive. Mine is the only response. The OP says that what I explained didn't exactly work, but it pointed him in the right direction and his problem is solved.

He marked the question answered, but didn't award any points - presumably, like Patty, he didn't know they exist. (Oh no, I'm so hurt! ) So far so-so, except that the solution he's come up with sounds like a bodge that will lead him into more trouble down the road.

But the question is now marked answered, so anyone else coming along will think it's sorted out.

[Kath-H]

Patty, hover your mouse over someone's avatar and you'll see the points count. Click for their profile. You can put some notes in your profile (via 'Your Stuff, which is also where private messages live) about what system, version of software you're using etc.

It seems everyone starts out with one red blob, 500 points gets you a 2nd one. And you become a 'participant' at that stage.

Who knew ?

[Claudio González]

pattyclarke wrote:

Claudio,

I'm feeling like a freedom fighter with a cause, but no understanding of what I'm fighting for. It's as simple as this... if the OP is the only one that can award points where is this explained???

Patty

Patty, as for the answer to this particular question, I remember having read it somewhere, maybe in the FAQs or in posts by other people. In any case, I think it doesn't really matter too much as the OP is the only one who sees the buttons for awarding points.

Coming back to my vanished message, I was mainly elaborating on what I have posted on this subject in this thread and others. My main arguments are:

1. More often than not, the OP is the least qualified person to judge the quality of any answer. Specially in the case of newcomers who come looking for urgent help to what are for them vital issues at the time. Any workaround that works for the OP will be a "correct" answer for him/her, even if it is of the type "hit the Esc key 3 times in rapid succession, then knock 3 times on the table, and then hit Esc 3 more times". And if s/he happens to notice the buttons, s/he will mark the question as answered and give the points to the poster of the magic recipe. Sadly, it may well happen that none of the people who know one or more of the correct answers to the problem bothers to even open the thread when they see that it is marked as answered. And therefore further newcomers with the same problem, for whom the magic recipe doesn't happen to work, may be led to think that these forums are useless.

2. What if a blatantly wrong answer is marked as right? This has alrady been taken by others, and there is already a new thread on the subject.

3. Some participants give always excellent answers, very often to newcomers who never come back, very often to users who do come back but do not notice/care about the point scheme and therefore don't use it, very often to... And therefore they receive very little or no points. There are also very valuable participants who happen to answer the same short and easy questions time after time, and also happen to be given full points every time they do. There are also participants who... But as you should have got the idea by now, I guess it's safer for me to stop here.

[Michael Borbor]

I've tried to read as much posts as I could from this very long thread. I get it most of you don't like the points system, ok but if you like to share your knowledge and help others so keep answering posts.

Someone over here even criticized the ACE status, what's wrong with acknowledge the accomplishments of a person?

In this new forums by default when you ask a question, or post an answer you automatically get email notifications when someone else posts in that thread, so if you want to share a bit more of info in that subject surely the person that posted it will get the new post.

Just my 2 cents.

[pattyclarke]

Thanks to all who took the time to explain the points system to me and I did read the references given. I can empathize with the people who didn't get proper information credited to them etc., but the point I feel I haven't gotten across is that the OP has no way to understand this point system nor would they care. I learned from Kath that I can hover over someone's avatar to see their point count (who cares). Then I read where she answered a question in Go-Live and the poster marked the question as answered but didn't award points.(Yikes is there another button you're supposed to push to do that???)

The really unfortunate part about this point thing is that it has no POINT. No visitor to town would have put the effort into trying to understand it that I have, but my motivation was that I was so grateful for the help that I received that I mistakenly perceived as diminished by coming across a post to one of my threads. The sad thing is I have another question I would like to ask of the InDesign experts, but I'm uncomfortable doing it because I still don't get how to handle the helpful and correct answer buttons. Do you wait until the end of the thread to do that so you don't minimize the conversation? Doesn't that really send a message when someone is intimidated to ask for help?

Patty