Giving reputation points for starting a discussion

Hi Randall,

The reason for the points is to encourage participation. The points really don't count for anything to anyone except ourselves. I get a lot out of this site because the really good participants are willing to take their time and share ideas, education, and answers with us. There are several people who have joined in the last couple days, with very few points, who obviously (to me) know a lot more about Electronics Engineering than I do. I can learn from them and if they stick around they will get a lot of points. However, the real measure of a participant on the site isn't how many points they have but rather the respect they have earned from their fellow members by posting relevant Blogs, starting engaging Discussions, and answering Questions in a clear and accurate manner.

John

In response to mnona144

concur with your points about the intent of the reputation points. However, a faulty system will result in false reputation scores and that defeats the intent. Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror on twitter) notes some very interesting lessons learned about creating and managing online community in his blog. He and his co-conspirators have implemented and evolved the rules for computing a reputation score on stackoverflow and in discourse, two arenas where communities are the determining factor for the success or failure of web sites. One rule that makes sense is to prevent newbies such as myself from starting discussions until some measurement is attained that shows that a new member understands and respects the conventions within that community.  Food for thought.

Neither here nor there: if I knew a way to do it, I would move this discussion to a "meta" area instead of raspberry pi. Sorry about that.

Hi Randall,

From my perspective it is better to allow the new people to talk even if they are not yet in tune to the site environment. This is actually part of what is good about E-14. Whether the new person is an excellent communicator or a young person with a simple, barely understandable, question, we should try to respond. Many of the questions come from members who are not native English speakers. I am always impressed by the effort that they put into expressing themselves so that their questions and contributions can be understood. While we have specific Groups for different areas of interest the new person sometimes has difficulty determining where his or her question belongs. I have seen where the impulse to keep these Groups clean of questions, that are not on topic, have resulted in rebuffs to the new member instead of friendly acceptance. With people constantly joining the site education and acclimatization is a continuing process. I like your idea for a Meta Group though it should probably be called Miscellaneous Questions so it is clear to the new members that they can put questions of undetermined topic there.

John

Hi Randall,

From my perspective it is better to allow the new people to talk even if they are not yet in tune to the site environment. This is actually part of what is good about E-14. Whether the new person is an excellent communicator or a young person with a simple, barely understandable, question, we should try to respond. Many of the questions come from members who are not native English speakers. I am always impressed by the effort that they put into expressing themselves so that their questions and contributions can be understood. While we have specific Groups for different areas of interest the new person sometimes has difficulty determining where his or her question belongs. I have seen where the impulse to keep these Groups clean of questions, that are not on topic, have resulted in rebuffs to the new member instead of friendly acceptance. With people constantly joining the site education and acclimatization is a continuing process. I like your idea for a Meta Group though it should probably be called Miscellaneous Questions so it is clear to the new members that they can put questions of undetermined topic there.

John