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  • Idontmindturtle
    +19

    Not really, because then you would have a comment which would be lengthy, but take forever to get to the point... Or just state it over and over again. It would most likely be longer than was necessary. They may even just copy and paste the same sentence but change something every so slightly, to get more xp. They may reiterate the same point over and over again in order to get a longer post and get more XP. I think at the end of the day, this would make comments needlessly lengthy, and nobody needs that. You can't curb the way people behave, and if it's the length of the post, not the quality of the post, it will just drag on and on and on and on. They may even just copy and paste the same sentence but change it a bit so a bot doesn't pick it up to get more xp.

    Obvious jokes aside, I am a new user and I don't think my content should be judged as lesser than anyone elses, but I do think that that someones tenure should be taken into account when looking at XP, e.g. You can only rise one level a day, or obtain so much XP a day. I am assuming the audience you are chasing in your membership does not include karma whores so there is no real loss if those people leave because they aren't climbing the ranks fast enough.

    One thing I have notices about your readership is that you aren't the slightest bit concerned with obtaining new users. You are happy if they create a more enriching discussion. If you have ten thousand members today, and ten thousand members tomorrow, and ten thousand and one in a years time... That's fine... Because unlike other sites, you don't exist as a protest and you aren't trying to fix a broken website, you are just trying, and succeeding, in doing your own thing.

    I think new users need to learn the place before trying to settle down and claim ownership or make drastic changes. Then again, I am two days old giving you suggestions... so I guess there is a bit of hypocrisy in my own statement

    • mhunt
      +4

      The way I see it, post quality could never be determined by some sort of comment-length count, bot, or anything that doesn't involve the community. The reason the upvote / downvote buttons exist is to use the people of the site to determine post-quality.
      I'm also new here, so I feel pretty lame posting my opinion, and my idea of this site is probably completely opposite of what the veterans use the site for, but I started lurking on the 3rd and I really haven't seen any low-quality posts. Maybe the discussion can wait until things start actually going downhill? It seems drastic to change the way the site works just because a bunch of us are coming from Reddit. I can't blame anybody for being concerned, but I think that most of us that are coming from Reddit were probably Reddit users for 4-6 years.
      I don't know what the post-quality looked like before the 3rd, so maybe it's already going downhill, but I honestly haven't seen any problems.

    • Arbituz (edited 8 years ago)
      +3

      Good point. What if down votes had the potential to subtract experience but can only take a way a max of what was earned for a comment?

      Example:

      Short comment = 75 exp

      Medium comment = 150 exp

      Long comment = 250 exp

      Each down vote on a comment subtracts 5 exp. The most a user could lose on a comment is determined by how much they earned. If you earned 150 exp, then the worst that could happen is that you lost 150 experience which basically equates to having never earned the exp to begin with.

      I probably didn't use very good numbers for my example but it gets the point across I think.