No. of Recommendations: 2
These are excellent ideas. I thought about both of those options in the past - (i) having a shorter look-back period, and (ii) only averaging over the top 25% of posts, thus encouraging authors to be comfortable writing useful posts that they, however, know they won't get any recommendations for. But when doing the calculations, the results were different to what I first thought.
The average post over one year turned out to be surprisingly reliable. Each time I thought of alternatives, they gave some advantage for certain authors, but then introduced new problems for other authors - so came with (sometimes unobvious) cons and well as pros. For example, whilst not counting the lowest rating posts as part of the calculation, whilst this would encourage some to write short helpful posts, it would also encourage others to write more careless posts. One of the primary goals is to keep the average post quality high so that the overall unwanted-noise level is low.
Right now the noise level at Shrewd'm is incredible low. To my surprise, and also pleasingly, the ignore feature has almost remained unused.
You are in the Shrewdness range of having a medal, yet your own posts are exemplary, so one would think you should have an even higher Shrewdness Factor rating. However, most of those with a really high Shrewdness Factor have either (1) made one or two posts that are extremely highly rated, but also not actually representing quality and depth also, such as expressing gratitude (this effect would be more amplified by ignoring their low rated posts), (2) a ludicrous history of past interesting posts, so they continue to get an outsized number of recommendations even if a post is of mediocre quality, or (3) post infrequently but with information that the community really wants, such as Elann's stock screening posts. I don't think either of those 3 phenomena need to be mitigated.
If you look back on your posts by clicking your name, you might be surprised that other than one thanking post, your highest rated posts are actually on boards that have the lowest volume of posting - the Alibaba and Upstart boards. So whilst lower volume, you will find that posting on such boards also results in your post remaining visible for far longer, so the number of recommendations can be advantaged more than one would first think from the lower readership.
One advantage of simply averaging the rec/number ratio (Shrewdness Factor) over one year is that it is easy for people to understand and hold in one's mind; but the main advantage is that it encourages longer and more thoughtful posts. True, some people who really pay attention to their Shrewdness Factor may post short (but still helpful) responses less than they otherwise would, but (1) they also may reply but by also expanding in more detail, (2) others will be discouraged from making thoughtless probe/response/probe/response posts resulting in less noise, and (3) most people don't care, and post short posts anyway.
- Manlobbi
