topic Effort vs Efficiency in Operating System - HP-UX

Effort vs Efficiency

Steven Sim Kok Leong — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:11:05 GMT

Hi,

What now? Another of Steven Sim Kok Leong's nonsense? :P

I have been observing Bill Hassell's scores for quite some time. It definitely does not go unnoticed that the number of bunnies he has is a lot more than many forumers (including me) that have accumulated more points than him (likely because many of us spent more time posting on the forums than him). With the number of pages of responses he has accumulated, it is without doubt that he is a very efficient contributor.

It is of little doubt both effort and efficiency ultimately achieves the same goal of effectiveness in the forums. The current ranking is based on the cumulative effects of both effort and efficiency.

I am wondering if a ranking based on just efficiency alone would be nice to have. I would define efficiency as the ability to answer a user's query to the best of the user's satisfaction (bunny!).

1) A close estimate would be the quotient of:

the number of bunnies / the number of responses

2) A rough estimate would be:

the number of pages of bunnies / the number of pages of responses

There are some deviating factors I can notice to this quotient:
1) not all users give points
2) not all users follow the scale to give points
3) a forumer might look for easy questions to answer just to gain points
4) there must be a lower bound of postings to gauge accurage. Someone who posts a single solution and gets a 10/10 doesn't mean he is the most efficient forumer.

However, by counting a large number of postings or pages, such biased factors might possibly be diminished to a considerable extent.

Just my 2 cents of very humble opinion. I am simply curious to hear your opinion of:

1) Whether this would be a good metric to have?

My opinion is that this doesn't add obvious immediate advantages to the forums. But in the long run, with both existing rankings and perhaps efficiency rankings, forumers may come up actively with both more answers (current state) as well as increasing more accurate ones (improving current accuracy).

2) Whether this be a fair-enough metric to measure efficiency?

This would be considering the deviating factors and perhaps others that I have missed.

I am also curious to know whether Bill Hassell or someone else is the most efficient contributor in the forums.

Disclaimer: I don't mean to create unnecessary work and I don't mean to displease anyone *sincerely*.

Just seeking some opinions I (and perhaps others) might just be curious to find out.

Just simply my humble 2 cents of opinion. Please feel free to comment. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Gnananandhan — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:27:31 GMT

Hi Steve,
I think,The user who posts the question will be the best judge than other methods. Because he is the one who is experimenting it.
If someone give more points for a simple question - It means he is so innocent in that particular environment or denotes his criticalness or importance to the problem.
People who answers only for simple questions - We should welcome them also, They are sharing their level of knowledge.

Regards,
Gnana A.

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Paula J Frazer-Campbell — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:30:06 GMT

Steven

I see your point but to "put the cat among the pigeons" (stir things up).

Are you saying that for example a Wizard with 1000 points gained with 200 x 5 point answers should not be ranked the same as another Wizard with 1000 points gained with 125 x 8 point answers.

;^)

Paula

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Carlos Fernandez Riera — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:31:32 GMT

He Stenven:

Bill is a master... that's all.

The art of writing is not easy, even if you are writing in your native tongue. If you write a doc and try to read it again you will feel that it was not exatly what you want to say. People whit this skill take advantage. James is a clear example; Minimum effort max. efficiency.

I think the color of your hat ( if any) is another factor for newcomers ( but it is still discused).

In the other hand, when you read lots of replys you realize that everyone write on his/her way, just aiming the cause or resolution or showing a full solution.

No comments on rankings... :-)).

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:36:47 GMT

This is possibly true for the hpux forums, however, other forums such as the storage/ workstations and servers have a very low points assignment rate.
Note also that replies to questions that you authored are also included.. Bill Hassell unsuprisingly only posted a few questions.
Added to this multiple replies to the same question also show up.

I think the best criteria to efficiency is points per day of membership to the forums.

Later,
Bill

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Justo Exposito — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:45:16 GMT

Hi Steven,

Perhaps a "Forumer of the month hat" is posible and this mark a person that is most efficient in this month.

??what about this?

I'm with Paula, Points are Points.

Regards,

Justo.

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Nick Wickens — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:53:42 GMT

Oooh I don't like Bills idea (Nick Wickens 316 points & forum member since may 06 1997 !!).

Remember that most members join the forum as I did in the early stages of learning HP-UX and it takes a while to be confident enough in your abilities to contribute.

I would question whether any additional changes to the system would be of any great benefit. After all the aim of the forums is self help for HP users and while the points system is fun, does it really need to be taken too seriously.

If anyone wants to know who gets the most bunny to points ratio then they can simply look at the stats produced occasionally by procura.

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 11:18:04 GMT

I agree with you Nick!

Later,
Bill

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Pete Randall — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 11:23:40 GMT

Steven,

It's an interesting idea but frankly, it's just another statistic. One of the problems on the forums is our obsession with ranking ourselves, the race for points, etc. I don't think creating another metric is really going to accomplish much other than give us point mongers another way to compare each other.

For What It's Worth,
Pete

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Devbinder Singh Marway — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 11:33:57 GMT

I believe efficiency comes with experience. The longer and more exposed you become in your area of expertise the more efficent you will be. I believe this can be a bit dangerous , because users who post a question may request for a particular user to answer their question , simply because they have more rabbits than anyone else .

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Tim D Fulford — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 11:49:11 GMT

Remember that the forum points system is also used as a guide for searches. Whilst initially a thread may answere one users specific question, in the future it may help 10 people with similar problems and no postings. In fact some of my collegues only use this forum as a search & make no submissions.

I have not figured a way, but it might be useful if there were some way to attribute points (this may just be internal points & not "bunny" points), say, on the number of times a specific query was looked up & did the search successfully help the user.

Just an Idea, my 0.02??? worth

Tim

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

H.Merijn Brand (procura — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 11:49:45 GMT

Chasing this ...

Might be in the next statistics (only for members that have more points than the previous fetch)

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

John Bolene — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 12:13:22 GMT

I do like the procura rating listing (which HP should adopt, since it is hard to tell past the top 25).

I don't see any reason or need for an efficiency award.

It is hard enough just to get people to assign points.

And we really are not in this forum to care much about the points, it is more about the answers. The points are just gravy and eye candy to make the experience more rewarding.

My 2 cents.

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Stefan Farrelly — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 12:37:27 GMT

Bill should be given a +50,000 point advantage over the rest of us just for experience, in my humble opinion.

This point thing is far too subjective. You answer well lots of questions some days, get no points, answer easy questions some days and get lots. In my opinion the only way to make this more accurate if the most experienced HP person around (namely Bill) reviewed answers by others and sort of 'marked' them to put them in order - just like a test.

Ive seen a creeping habbit lately of people with huge points totals but cleary are not experienced as their answers are very poor advice most of the time. I hate to think how they are accumulating points.

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Stefan Farrelly — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 12:41:52 GMT

Oh, I forgot to add. All of us NOT in the USA region are at a severe disadvantage over accumulating points anyway as by far the largest number of questions comes up during the US daytime, which is end of day/night in the UK, so those outside the US should get a point adjustment anyway in the region of 100% because while we're awake we have so much fewer possible questions to answer!

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Martin Johnson — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:10:13 GMT

I like Bill's suggestion. I joined the forums on May 8th, 2002. I currently have 346 points. Not bad considering that 2 weeks of that time I was on vacation and didn't go near a computer.

Marty

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Mark Greene_1 — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:15:48 GMT

Steven,

As a stats freak, I can appreciate where you are coming from. As a realist, I think that this is too complex to be implemented, and then would only have limited utility.

The biggest showstopper that I see is trying to do any statistical smoothing based on the complexity of the questions asked and the answers provided. This is because some very simply phrased questions may have very complex, or even complicated answers; and, some of the more complex questions that go into great lengths and detail to describe the given situation may have a completely simple answer (e.g. kill HUP the named pid).

You are quite correct in your observation that not everyone scores the same. My biggest frustration with the scoring is not the people who don't give points, but rather those who award 5 or less to the correct answers because it's not what they want to hear. For all the bunnies that Bill and Clay and the rest of the olympians and pharoahs have, I've seen them given a 5 or less for what was indeed the correct solution on too many occasions to count.

This condition is inherant to the human species. If you find a way to effectively deal with that, by all means publish it and then wait to hear from the Nobel Prize committee!

Seriously, I think the best option is for Procura to incorporate some of these into his monthly stats effort. Of course, given the issues he as with gather some of the information in order to produce the stats, this may not be really doable at all.

HTH
mark

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Nick Wickens — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:17:44 GMT

.. To add to Stephans point - thanks to BT most of us in the UK also have connect with 56k modems or ISDN if we are lucky so I think we should get more points simply for patience :@).

P.S If I have given any bad advice then just blame my first HP-UX teacher - The guy with the blue and yellow head gear just above :@).

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

Stefan Farrelly — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:20:49 GMT

Hey Nick, that couldnt have been me could it ? surely you'd been on an HP course before we met ?? At least you havent miraculously accumulated several thousand points already:-)

Drop me a line; stefan_farrelly@ipcmedia.com

Re: Effort vs Efficiency

H.Merijn Brand (procura — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:36:24 GMT

Mark, it can be done, I've done it :)

But it needs more than avarage bandwidth to make the story complete, as with the bunny detection which needs the same hoopjumps.

I rather have the 'm'/'j' problem solved than these futile wishes, so I can find you in the list too. And I want the country back.

I agree with all that the value of a grade like this is arguable, but for the statistic freaks is is just another interesting number, and for me it is just another temptation to try if it is doable.

Once again, in my statistics there are errors, and there is not a single personal preference in why the current ordering is done. Paula posted the first statistics, and there were a few foloow-ups. I just could not resist the temptation of finding out how it could be done without mirroring the complete ITRC

Once the j and m members are in again, I want you all to do some checks and give feedback of how the statistics could be improved. Not that they are useful, but they seem to satisfy some questions, and who am I to not give information that is rather easy to put together (once you know how to let perl do what it's good at)

Now for a personal opinion: I agree with Stefan, that we in Europe have a big disadvantage over US members foir exactly the reasons he states