Subject: Shrewdness Factor
Hi, I'd like to suggest an adjustment to the Shrewdness Factor computation. At present it is the "average number of post recommendations that you received over the last trailing 12 months."
I suggest that this be adjusted to something like the average number of post recommendations received by your top 20 (or 10, 15?) most-recommended posts over the last trailing 3 months.
The current system rewards with a high Shrewdness Factor those posters who post relatively rarely and who make popular posts on the most highly trafficked boards. Posters who post on less popular boards, and who post more frequently, will see their Shrewdness Factor diluted down, even if the posts they are making are high quality and uniformly useful.
I.e. answering someone's question with a short but useful reply will likely only get a very limited number of recommendations, and if you are motivated by a high Shrewdness Factor, then you wouldn't bother. Likewise spending time and effort trying to build up a discussion on a new or unpopular board will lower one's Shrewdness Factor.
And I suggest reducing the time-span covered (from a year to 3 months) to encourage engagement and ongoing production of quality posts if you want to maintain a high Shrewdness Factor. This is still quite a bit longer than the Fool's measure which I think was 30 days.