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Cleanup in aisle 4.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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It seemed like I stopped getting the points for the downloads - the downloads number increases but not the points.
Nick Polyak
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I'm seeing a bunch for you:
12 May 2011 1:34 PM Source code or demo file downloaded
12 May 2011 2:22 PM Source code or demo file downloaded
10 May 2011 1:20 PM Source code or demo file downloaded
12 May 2011 6:31 AM Source code or demo file downloaded
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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then they are not in the chronological order for some reason within "reputation history". At least I do not see the one from 1:34 today?
Also based on what I see the increase in total points was, I got some points for bookmarks and upvoting, but not for the downloads.
Something seems to have gotten wrong after the update.
Thanks
Nick Polyak
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We're looking into it.
[Edit: We have made changes so that you only get rewarded for the first download by each user, and also so you don't get rewarded for downloading your own files. Does that help solve part of the mystery? Still working on the ordering.]
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
modified on Thursday, May 12, 2011 3:59 PM
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Preventing the duplicates is good, but I suspect that at least some of the downloads were perfectly new downloads - by people who upvoted or bookmarked my articles.
For your information I downloaded my own articles only a couple of times since downloading started bringing extra points and that was only to test the feature. Yesterday I downloaded it once. My downloads count increased at least by 10 since the day before yesterday, but I have not got a single point for it.
Also if they are all duplicates why would they be reported in the "Reputation History" as something that gives me points?
Thanks
Nick Polyak
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Chris Maunder wrote: We have made changes so that you only get rewarded for the first download by each user
That does not honors a valuable update.
[Edit]Only one download per version should be counted.[/Edit]
Chris Maunder wrote: and also so you don't get rewarded for downloading your own files
Good.
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If you upload a new file, or rename your current file to have a new name based on the version then you will get new points for that, but we need to draw a line somewhere and try as much as possible to prevent abuse or spurious points. It's not perfect, we agree, but with the multiple ways in which the community can reward authors - voting, bookmarking, downloading - plus the points for the article itself, we think the system is fair and rewarding.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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If you gave points / version / download, then DanG would overtake CG...
Panic, Chaos, Destruction.
My work here is done.
or "Drink. Get drunk. Fall over." - P O'H
OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre
Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb -- they're often *students*, for heaven's sake. -- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)
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you and Chris may well be in a different timezone, the rep history page uses local times (but not the user's datetime formatting preferences!).
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
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The time zone difference cannot expain why the items from 2 days ago appear between today's items. (Max difference can be 1 day)
Thanks
Nick Polyak
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Hi Nick Polyak,
You were right, there was a bug in ordering. It is fixed now.
Thanks for pointing it to us.
Sincerely,
Elina
Life is great!!!
Enjoy every moment of it! 
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I observed that, my technical blog feeds were not fetched for last two days though I have added the rel tag. The blog feed[^] also shows those 2 posts but in the CP home page they are not present for edit/moderation. I noticed that it takes a huge time sometimes. Is it something because of CP servers are too busy?
CP admins and moderators, please look into the issue and take some action to fetch them on time. Appreciate your quick help.
Regards - Kunal Chowdhury | Microsoft MVP (Silverlight) | CodeProject MVP | Software Engineer
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I've just moved the service that handles this to a new server so it should kick in soon.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Yes, it's now available. 
Regards - Kunal Chowdhury | Microsoft MVP (Silverlight) | CodeProject MVP | Software Engineer
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My opinion:
I was observing the rep points given for the attachment download and it looks to me that 5 points are just a little too many. I found, few instances when all my articles attachment were downloaded around same time (really hard to accept normal!). Further, based on the comparison on other rep points being awarded, 5 is high.
I would suggest it to be around 2 points to Author (instead of 5) & 1 points to member downloading it (instead of 2).
Thoughts?
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Yes, 5 is way too many and will be changed.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I don't really agree with others saying 5 points for a download is too much. IMO downloading something is more of a commitment or appreciation than bookmarking something; it indicates I'm willing to spend time, disk space (at least temporarily), and probably am going to look into the code (more extensively than possible through the nice "Browse Code" facilities) and maybe also run it. Compared to bookmarking, 5 for a download isn't enough (actually it is bookmarking that is way too high).
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
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As the person who stands to gain the most, I personally feel that downloads provide too many points. Besides, a download is just a very easy click that doesn't take much thinking about. If possible I would prefer to award 5 points for downloading, opening and then viewing the source code.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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You've lost me completely here.
Chris Maunder wrote: a download is just a very easy click that doesn't take much thinking about
and bookmarking takes a huge effort and a long time? 
Chris Maunder wrote: If possible I would prefer to award 5 points for downloading, opening and then viewing the source code.
do you expect people to start a download, wait, spend the bandwidth and monthly ISP volume, and then typically not open and view what they got?
According to the current FAQ I can bookmark one of your articles and download its code, giving me 2+2 Org points and you 5+5 Author points.
Which action is the bigger and more significant one, downloading or bookmarking? For me the answer clearly is: downloading.
Also, in one minute I could browse to 10 articles (not read them!), just bookmark them; I wouldn't be able to download their ZIP files in that short a period.
IMO downloading should be worth a multiple of bookmarking, say three times more, and that to both parties involved.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
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The download links are front and centre and are clicked far more often, and I would also say clicked just to see what it is. The bookmark link is not as obvious as the links glaring at you from the top of the article, and I would argue are only clicked when someone feels the article is worth more than just a casual "what's this". I never said "huge" effort. I do maintain that bookmarking an article is a more conscious effort and less of a "why not - I'm here, I may as well" effort.
There are 5.2 times as many downloads as bookmarks in case you're wondering about the relative frequency.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Your logic clearly isn't mine.
So you want to compensate the imbalance in the observed frequency of bookmarking versus downloading (which may be due to an imbalance of the visual attraction of the related tools, or to the fact that bookmarking not really yields much to the bookmarker), by introducing an imbalance in rep point rewards, which goes completely against the idea of "proportional to effort and added value".
Two things to ponder:
1. If you had to scrap one feature about articles, which would it be: downloading, voting, or bookmarking?
2. which of these four is least relevant to you:
2a. someone gets Auth points for his article being bookmarked
2b. someone gets Org points for bookmarking an article
2c. someone gets Auth points for his code being downloaded
2d. someone gets Org points for downloading some code
My view is clear:
1. bookmarking is the lesser value as downloading yields usable code, and voting yields an aggregate score; bookmarking in my view yields almost nothing (it may mean: I want to be able to refer to this later as it is great; or I may want to maybe refer to it as I did not read it and maybe I should; or I can get easy points here). Me bookmarking something is for my organization (my bookmarks aren't public, hence they are of no value to the community), me voting something up is telling the community I liked it, that adds value for the community.
2: d is completely superfluous, and c is worth much more than a. I suggest b<a (and b=0 would be OK too, but I don't mind too much as long as it is less than a), c=3*a, and d=0.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
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I think you once mentioned that rep points should not only be for the users, but should also be used to ensure users behave in a way that improves the site. This is exactly what bookmarking does, because from my experience an article bookmarked typically means an article valued, and this in turn gives us another method to sort the wheat from the chaff. As you say, bookmarking provides no actual (immediate) value to a member, but it does provide an indication that the member will return to the article, that the member valued it enough to not just blow it away. Downloading, on the other hand, is an action easily done in the moment (hence the 5:1 ratio). You ask a real estate agent or a car salesman what's more valuable: someone coming into the house or taking a car for a drive, or someone coming back a second time.
An alternative is to give 1 points for a bookmark, 1 point for a download, and then award, say, 10 points if the bookmark occurs after the download. We can reasonably infer that there's a decent change the reader had read the article more fully than just glancing at it. However, this idea totally fails for articles with no downloads.
Or we could award extra points for each visit, with a sliding or log scale based on the number of visits within a certain number of weeks, ensuring that after a set number of months the points reset to their base value if the member starts visiting the article again after a hiatus. But that would just be getting ridiculous.
Or, we could have a point decay system whereby anything over 5 years gets dropped.
Or we could embed a ReadMe.html file in each download with an image bug. When the reader opens this readme, and the image is requested from the server, then we know they've downloaded, opened and read at least one file. I'm sure no one would mind the invasion of privacy.
My overarching desire is to keep points reasonable (and simple). If we have 5 points per download then I crack the 1 million point mark which, frankly, seems excessive.
Regardless, I will now have this same conversation all over again with John Simmons, but in the opposite direction (0.1 or 0.01 points per download). As a strong author himself I have to take his views seriously too.
I'm not going to make anyone happy here except possibly the authors who are now, at least, getting recognition not just for posting, not just for getting votes and bookmarks, but also for downloads.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Just to add on to the discussion, most of the times, downloading is something one just do it for the sake of seeing if it is going to help (maximum downloads would be following this thrend) - download 5 similar controls and chose one. But bookmarking is making sure that I do re-visit the article and want to keep an eye on the same as it looks good.
Further, I (and I believe lot others) use bookmarking as a feature to track the article and use it as and when required.
Lets say. Your Luc's CP Vanity article, I have bookmarked it and kept. Since it is bookmarked, it has helped me quickly to move on to it. I have downloaded it some 15+ times till now. Whenever I need, I download it, use it. (It's hard to maintain the download binaries always and on all the pc's I work on!)
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Chris Maunder wrote: I think you once mentioned that rep points should not only be for the users, but should also be used to ensure users behave in a way that improves the site
I said something like that, in different words, much simpler IMO: you will get what you reward )whether you like it or not, so think carefully).
The reason is:
- either people don't care, and then there is nothing you can do; these people should not dominate your decisions!
- or they do care and will adapt their behavior to your reward system.
So you decide what you want, then make sure your reward system is in line with it and does not stimulate behavior you do not want.
---------------------------------
For rep points I suggest one always awards something proportional to "effort and added value", which means whatever is harder to do (effort) or adds more value for the community (such as voting, as it builds scores), should be rewarded more, hence proportional to effort+added value.
And nothing should be rewarded too high or too low. If you give 1000 points for bookmarking, I will stop posting messages, I'll just click three bookmark icons a day and be done. If in my view you give insufficient points for posting an article, I will no longer post articles. That is what a reward system is supposed to do, and believe me, it works, except for those people who don't care.
---------------------------------
[EDIT]
Sorry, what followed has been completely wrong; I now have replaced it.
There was a bug in the votes, downloads and bookmarks as handled by CP Vanity (all version up to and including V2.2 failed to properly handle numbers with thousand separator, I'm puzzled nobody ever noticed). Here is the adjusted table and my new comment.
FYI (assuming the Who'sWho numbers are reliable, article counts include T&T) here are some VIP figures:
member total total total articles
votes downloads bookmarks count
Sacha 9,023 37K 17.0K 175
Marc 4,144 64K 11.2K 137
Nish 6,472 156K 7.8K 133
JSOP 1,944 10K 2.5K 84
#1 5,540 210K 7.0K 104
.dan.g 2,666 168K 4.0K 16
CG 1,632 24K 2.9K 37
From these numbers, I see total download counts are huge, and I now understand you have a problem with the rep points.
Using the same letters as before:
(a) Getting bookmarked is not a problem; the only comment that I would give is: if it resembles anything it would be: getting views, which aren't rewarded. I would give no more than 1 point for getting bookmarked.
(b) Earning points by actively bookmarking is not documented by the table; it is probably very distributed over the community, I don't see much value for the community as the meaning of a bookmark is uncertain, and I would lower its reward, to one or zero.
(c) Getting downloaded is like getting up-voted. I'll present some ideas below.
(d) Actively downloading is not documented by the table; it is probably not a problem as I guess it is distributed very much over the community; however IMO it does not deserve any reward. There is no value in it, all the community sees is the download count and the author's rep going up.
Author points for getting your code downloaded, four ideas:
1. CAPPED: give 5 points each, and simply cap it to the first N downloads per article; N could be 1000, or it could equal the number of votes for that article.
2. COLORED: give 5 points for each download by a colored author (colored as in bronze/silver/gold/platinum), i.e. ignore blank author downloads.
3. PSEUDO-LOGARITHMIC: works in theory, it would not look nice in the rep history table, as individual downloads would fall below 1 point each at some point, what do you show in the history table then?
4. HYBRID: give 5 points for each download by a colored author, i.e. ignore blank author downloads; add 1 point for each download by a non-colored author, but this limited to N (e.g. N=1000).
My preference would be #4, then #2.
[/EDIT]
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
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