Point Morons

[Shannon Petry]

Sorry for the title, but I was not sure what would fit any better.

I have been in the ITRC forums since 1998. While I dont have a job that affords me much time to be here and help, I think some people (namely Paula) know I have not only been here, but try to contribute whenever I can.

I asked a question last week, and had someone answer me this(I'll keep the name out):
Shannon,

There is a new feature in our profiles that allows us to look at all of the previous questions we have posted, which is especially helpful when trying to resove this:

This member has assigned points to 19 of 61 responses to his/her questions
-------end snip---------------

For those that have been around a long time, when the forums started out there were not alot of answers flying around. Most of the questions I asked were in the first year. Most of these had no answers, and thus were re-asked several times. If not answered how can one assign points?

Of course in the last year, I think I asked 3 questions, and yet I answered more than 100. (yes, when answers are given I do award points where relavent).

So, I have pondered this for the last couple hours cuz it really upset's me to see this type of behavior, let alone to people who have been here and given input for 4+ years!

if this is what the forums is becoming, then I think it is time for me to say good bye!

Just remember that people who abuse the system dont even have hats on their names.

I'll read the replies to this, but may not be back!

Regards,
Shannon

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Shannon,

I can certainly understand where you're coming from, the "unknown user" was only pointing out that you've not assigned points - EVEN ZERO to a certain number of replies. I also understand that you feel they don't deserve points & that's OK - then assign 0 points.
As to your questions that were never replied to, they do not count in that total. That count is solely a reply count.

We sure would hate to lose your expertise & input, but you're certainly free to do whatever you wish. Just as other users are free to do the same.

This is a professional forum & we ALL should try to keep personalities & "feelings" out of this wonderful resource we have here.

Personally, I could care less whether you assign anything to any posts - including mine. But I cannot expect everyone to have the same opinion. The sheer diversity of this place is one of it's greatest attributes.

Let's just try to get past this & I sincerely hope to see further contributions from you down the road. I read your posts & replies and I see a first-class SA mind at work. But I also see a high quality responses from the unknown user as well.

Best Regards,
Jeff

[Martin Johnson]

I am sorry that you are upset. Some people do get carried away with points. It would be a shame if you left the forums because of it. I would definately feel the loss.

Just give the point morons the points they deserve - zero.

Better yet, request an enhancement to the forums to allow the assignment of negative numbers!

HTH
Marty

[Pete Randall]

Shannon,

I think we've got a bit of a misunderstanding here. If there were old questions with no responses, then these would not show up as part of the 61. The 61 refers to responses that were actually made. For example, take a look at this question that you posted:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x8a68fd3f91d3d5118ff40090279cd0f9,00.html
None of the responses to that question had any points assigned. That's what the complaint was trying to point out.

Hope this clears things up a little - I'd hate to lose any member of the forums.

Pete

[Christopher McCray_1]

Well, it looks like you are at the end of your rope. You decided to say what may/may not be on a lot of people's minds, yet decided to keep internal to them. No problem with venting; to each their own.

To take a quote from your post:

"(yes, when answers are given I do award points where relavent)." As you are well aware, the point system is based on relevance, "10" being the most relevant, all the way down to a measly "N/A", which gives no points, but would have made you a perfect 64 of 64 ( by my last look).

In any case, once again I find myself asking the question, "Is there nothing more than points?" Sure, I would like to see all my replies assigned, but doing something like ousting the offending seems a little drastic and somewhat inhumane. After all, I get satisfaction from knowing I'm right when I am right, and from learning something when I ahven't provided the soundest solution that one of our god-like forumers provide.


In any case, we are here "at will" and I'm sure you have much to offer and would most likely be sorely missed, but you have to do what is right for you and prevents you from a diet of antacids.

Good luck with your decision

Chris

[V. V. Ravi Kumar_1]

hi,
it is unfortunate! think again? if u really felt bad, just don't ask questions or assign 0 points. it gives lot of satisfaction if ur brains are helpful for others. so pl don't go away, atleast answer other's questions.

regds

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

Hey Shannon,

I can see this from both sides, I gain more than I give to the forums, and have asked and got answers to lots of questions.
On the otherhand points, at least for the moment, can mean prizes, which is all the more reason why people can get a little stressed when someone doesn't award points.
I guess we've had discussions on the don't forget to award points theme often enough before to realise how sensitive an issue it is to some..
what's so difficult in any case about assigning the points?
If we're going to get upset like this over it, why not just scrap the points system altogether, what is the gain?.. a tee-shirt?

Later,
Bill

[erics_1]

Shannon,

Allow me to pose yet another perspective on this. There are times when I search previous forums threads on an issue I am researching. I find it helpful to look at posts with higher point values. This indicates to me what responses were more valuable in resolving an issue than others. Yes, some participants in these forums get satisfaction from receiving points for their replies. Others participate here and are gratified just by helping others. There is no right or wrong to it. I would hope that your decision to not participate in the future would not be based on one post or opinion. It is now possible to go back to previous questions you have posted and assign points, even if it is zero (this did not help resolve the issue).

Take Care,
Eric

[Patrick Wallek]

So why don't you go back to your older threads and assign points to the responses that haven't had points assigned? That is the easy solution to the problem. You can see all of the questions you have posted easily now by clicking on the "his/her questions" link in your profile.

In my opinion there is no excuse for not assigning points. If the response didn't help, then assign 0, 1, 2 or 3 points.

Here are the suggestions for how to assign points that HP publishes.

N/A (Now 0): The answer was simply a point of clarification to my original question
1- 3: The answer didn't really help answer my question but thanks for your assistance!
4- 7: The answer helped with a portion of my question, but I still need some additional help.
8-10: The answer has solved my problem completely! Now I'm a happy camper!

If you think of me as another "points moron" that's fine. But my opinion is still that if you have time to post, you have time to assign points to ALL responses to your question.

[Cheryl Griffin]

Shannon,
This is a good lesson in Forums etiquette. No one has been appointed Forums Point Police. We are all here on a volunteer basis.

If someone takes the time to go check out a person's profile to determine whether or not they should help, then maybe for the sake of maintaining community spirit, they should consider not posting anything, rather than making remarks like those above.

Please do not let their post discourage you away from the Forums. You have to look past the point problems here and remember that the true purpose of the Forums is to learn from and share with others.

Best Wishes,
Cheryl Griffin

[someone_4]

Hi Shannon
I sense your anger. And I can tell that you feel that you got disrespected at some level. You should just brush it off and move on. You did the right thing by coming on here and venting. That???s good now we know how you feel. That???s better then holding it up inside and letting it eat at you for the rest of the day. But I don???t think leaving is the answer. Me personally I have not seen you post that much in the last 6 months. It seems that you were gone for a while and I was wondering where you were but I now you are back. And I am glad that you are back. You were one of the many people who helped me the most. I don't think you realize how much of a difference you for me when I started posting back in October of 2000. That???s almost 2 years ago. I remember you being really patient and so helpful when it came to sendmail =). What fun we had back in the day. That was when I was at a make it or break it point with HPUX. With your help and the help of others I was able to work though the issues I had from being thrown into this HPUX thing and just told to ???learn it???. But I would so hate for you to leave over something like this. I hope you change your mind and decide not to leave the forum. I for one would miss you.

~ Richard

[Shannon Petry]

The point to me is this: The forums are a place to help and be helped. I have always been against people who complained about not getting points! Find a post where people were complaining and I replied that I DID NOT say stop whining, this is a pier forum, and that points are secondary to helping people.

I have never refused to answer questions or email from this site based on a user assigning points.

Some of you will remember that there were lots of point awarding bugs in the web site, there was not always a way to assign 0 points(only 1-10 ), not always an auto-email on reply, and until recently there was no way of finding your questions (so if you didnt see the answer within a week or so good luck finding it!)

Lastly, I think I contribute lots more than I take from the forums. It is for this reason that the postee made me so mad. If I can afford to spend 2-3 hours a week in ITRC answering questions, then I do(as a consultant Im on the road alot, and lucky to get a day in an office a week). I think it's far more valuable use of my time here than go back and assign points to questions that are no longer active. (which again you could not even do until recently).

Thanks Cheryl and Richard. People likd you are why I stick around, and probably will.

[S.K. Chan]

I've been here regularly (since Oct 2001 I think) and I do notice a wide variety of different behavior, "perceived personlities", etc, etc. As far as I'm concern this is still a great forum, full of information and frankly I'd rather be here whenever I can find my own free time. I do notice too your contributions (whenever you're around) are excellent and believe me you're among the few that I would spend my time reading what you have something to say, "technically", not "personally". I'll make an exception this time because I tend to ignore threads that talks about points, thread that complains about points, etc, etc. I just don't see what is making you upset about ! Do not take it personally, come on there're a lot of other things to worry about! People like Patrick and a few others have put in a lot of his time to maintain the quality of this place by preparing guidelines and getting feedback from participants. The least you can do is try to follow that guidelines. Even if you don't that does not change the fundamentals of this forum ... "knowledge sharing" and "helping others". So my comment is personally I would like to see you stay for shear professionalism but even if you don't life goes on.

[John Bolene]

Shannon, with the new feature of being able to see ALL of your past questions and assign points to them, there is no reason not to do this.

Assigning points helps the folks answering to know whether they helped or not. This can also be used in the overall knowledge base by searching for answers.

So, YES it is a good thing to assign points, even for those way in the past questions.

My 2 cents.

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

why not just hands and forget about it already!

The 2 of you are great community members that we'd all hate to see embarrassed over this!.

(or else perhaps Dan could arrange for a pub fight in Hawaii! for all of)

Later,
Bill "Doesn't time fly" McNAMARA

[Rita C Workman]

Shannon, your knowledge and expertise would be felt.

But you are not the first to receive off-handed comments, you won't be the last. You even once made a reference that bothered me. But I chose to take it as a 'suggestion'. The other day someone else made some reference to "teach granny to suck eggs". I prefer mine over easy.

If you let everyone's 2 cents get to you....than you're only alternative is to cash-it-in. Frankly, I refuse to fold my tent and go silently into the night...

Chin up, ignore it !...And as my dear friend Patrick said "..just go back and assign points if you missed a couple".

The Forums are a great place...why let others control what you do or where you go.

Rgrds,
Rita

[Nick Wickens]

Hi Shannon

I must tend to agree with you on this - I have noticed a few threads where the questioner was effectively being held to ransom and the only response was essentially "you have not assigned points so you are not going to get any help" because no points had been assigned to previous questions.

My view is that if we can help with an answer we should, we are all after all "sys admins" together.

I don't believe that anyone makes a concious decision not to assign points - they either don't know the process or don't fully understand it. There may even be some people on the forums who are having to put questions and answers through translators because English is not native to them.

I do think its reasonable to ask someone to assign points and give them some guidence on how to do so but it should also be good "form" to assist if you can irrespective of the points system.

I woul'dnt consider leaving the forums over this - Its a great resourse and it can be fun but the points system can detract from this if taken too seriously - perhaps the current competition has some bearing on the current thirst for points ?

[Martin Johnson]

Hi Shannon,

I see you are now assigning points.

:-)
Marty

[Helen French]

Hi Shannon and friends =))

We are not here to argue about point system or force anybody to assign points. We all are here to help others and learn new things. I hope we all will continue doing this as far as we can and enjoy our forum-friendship. "Assigning points is a good thing" as Dan says and I personally enjoy getting points, it's fun =)). But I hate missing a friend because of this same issue.

Shannon, I hope you (and all) will continue our friendship and contributing here ...

my 2 cents ..
Shiju

[John Poff]

Shannon,

I'm breaking my self imposed silence on the points issue and I'll post just one more response about points, as I can understand your frustration.

Don't give up on the forum. I agree with you. The gentleman who posted that message to your question has apparently appointed himself the Points Assignment Policeman of the forum and goes around popping that message into questions asked by people that he feels haven't assigned enough points. If he has enough time to do that, why doesn't he help someone and answer their question???!!!

I don't care about the points any more. I thought it was a cool feature when I joined the forum last year, but now I see that it is pretty worthless. I understand that the idea is to be able to have a rating system for answers so that good answers will have more points assigned to them, but I've seen many bad answers assigned ten points and some excellent answers ignored, so the points don't really help. The problem is not helped by this little "contest" that HP is running which encourages people to load up on points. I understand the frustration of people when they give a good answer and don't get any points for it, but that is just how it works sometimes. When it happens to me, I just laugh it off and move on. There's nothing else you can do.

Another problem here that I haven't seen addressed yet is what I call "piling on" for points. Let's say you post a question and get five answers. You like the answers, assign points, and move on. The next day, a couple of point hounds see your question, see that you have assigned points, and post their replies. If you think you have assigned points to all the responses and moved on, well, guess what? You haven't. There should be a way to close a question and say, "I've gotten a good answer and I've assigned points to everyone that replied up to this point. If you reply after this post, no more points are being assigned but thanks for your contribution." I have seen quite a few samples of this lately, and the poor people who thought they had covered the bases by assigning points are now on the "bad" list. I understand Patrick's comment about going back and assigning points to old questions, but is that really your responsibility if you think you have finished with a question? What about somebody like Richard who has posted bunches of questions? I could go back and post a "Me too" response to all his questions and keep him busy assigning points for the rest of his life. That wouldn't be very nice. (Don't worry Richard!) ;)

Shannon, you have handled the problem with a lot more class than I would have, especially if I lost my temper! Don't give up. Keep answering questions. I take great delight in posting after the "gentleman" in question and helping those poor souls who don't assign points but still want some help. Those are usually the best questions and the ones where I learn something, which is worth more than any stupid points to me.

JP

[Rodney Hills]

John,

Regarding piling of points. I have recommended to Dan (forum leader) under "Forums Issues" that maybe the initiator has the option to close a thread and not have to worry about assigning points there-after.

-- Rod Hills

[Justo Exposito]

Hi Shannon,

Don't worry be happy.

In this forum there are some laws, but all the people can follow or not, all people can interpret as they want.

I think that the forum's etiquette thread is good as a example of how to use it, but this is only my opinion. In all the activities in the life must be some guidelines in order to know how to use, and how to live.

I think like you that the most important thing in this forum is to help, but this is a reflexion made using it, at the first time I like so much when people give me points, because this is a reference about my knowledge. Today for me the fundamental part of the forum is to help and to obtain help from good people over the world.

Please, don't live the forum only because points, if you do it you can't help to others.

Cheers,

Justo.

[Milan Antunovic]

You said "I have never refused to answer questions or email from this site based on a user assigning points." Well, many people do the same, before checking his/her question. What about the case when you are offering some help to the people. They replay to this post, so, am I in moral obligation to assign some points. But, I am going to do this right now. Just a thought from freshman.
Have a nice day

[Frank Slootweg]

I'll stick my neck out and throw in my EUR 0.02! :-)

From where I'm sitting, you *both* mean well:

You, Shannon, are a valued contributor.

However, I also think that 'un-named' means well:
If someone, i.e. you in this case, has a 'low' "XX out of YY responses" 'score', then that *may* give the *impression* that that Question Author is too_lazy/not_interested/etc. to assign points. That impression may be, and probably even is, incorrect, but it is nevertheless a possible interpretation, i.e. "perception is reality".

This 'bad impression' is a possible disadvantage for the *Question Author*, because people might be inclined not to answer people with such a 'low score'. I.e. 'un-named' specifically *says so*, but what about the people who keep silent and do not help because they have this impression? I think *that* is what 'un-named' is trying to say. At least I have been trying to say the same thing on occasion.

In short: (I think) It is in the *Question Author's* interest to always assign points to all responses, even if it is only 0 (or one or a few) points.

[Shannon Petry]

Frank,

You bring up some more food for thought.

I probably should not have taken the note personally, but after after answering to 1.7K points worth (estimated 5K-6K) of threads, and only asking 19 (including this one) I feel there is some level of respect missing in the forums.

Sadly, the majority of people who replied to this thread have made no comment about spewing the "point moan and groan" into peoples questions instead of answers. And most of the veterans seem to be silent (meaning concurrance).

So a new thought comes to my mind. One person is putting ransom notes into every question he sees where THEY make a judgement that the person is not worthy of an answer.
How many more are just not answering questions because of new feature of viewing peoples point totals?

Looking at a couple of my questions I found 1 immediately with 3x10pt awards and additional answers after this, 1 was on the inability to assign points and comments in it.

Of course the un-named person only looks at the surface though, and has no idea anything else going on. This goes for anyone looking at xx assigned to yy answers.

So sadly, it appears that the name of the forums should be changed to the "we give loose criteria to allow members to judge whether or not your worthy of an answer" forums.

How sad!