What are kudos?

What are kudos?

Seriously, what are they? The "About" link does not mention kudos, the "FAQ" link only mentions that they are temporarily reset upon joining, the "Blog" link is silent, same for "News".

The only way to get even a vague notion what they are is to search the forums, but they don't yield any full explanation either.

When I first found Ohloh a few months ago, I tried to find out about kudos for half an hour, didn't find anything about kudos and thought: "Kudos are an interesting thing, everybody wants them, but nobody has an idea what they actually are. Maybe Ohloh is just a neglected hobbyist website with nobody in charge to actually write up what they're all about." I didn't sign up nor did I come back for months. Now I actually signed up because the source code analysis you do is interesting. Please don't keep people in the dark about kudos, they seem to be an important part of Ohloh.

(Probably someone will come forward and say that Ohloh is a secret cult and nobody has a business knowing what kudos are... ;-) )

Definitely a cult :P I can only speculate as to where from kudos derive, but it has something to do with project popularity + commits + kudos received.

In the end, the science may not be very exact, but to be sure...grow your project, contribute often, make friends and watch your Kudo ranking rise.

Wikipedia has a responsible definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudos

Thanks for the explanation, gwoo. Your text should hopefully end up in the FAQ (including cult coolness).

Sorry, Stuart, your link to Wikipedia misses my point. If someone asks about "Google PageRank", telling him what "rank" means is rather unhelpful. Gettting an answer about the generic meaning of "kudos" for a question about "Ohloh kudos" is mostly similar. For all I know, the Wikipedia page you pointed to could be understood as "Ohloh kudos mean being renowed for friendliness".

Anyway, I now have a definition of kudos in Ohloh context.

Hmm, I think searching the forums leads to a fairly good explanation. The KudoRank gives an indication about your reputation in the Open Source community, or, at least in the subset of the Open Source community that is on Ohloh. :)

But I still have a question about it: Before I joined here, my KudoRank for a given project was 7 (with only a few commits). Then I registered an account and I had initially 1 Kudo. Using my account I browsed to my other identity and said "I am this person" and while eating that 7-Kudo identity, my account has not gained any Kudos. I mean: I still have 1 Kudo while the other identity (who I "am" now) had 7 Kudos. Is that correct? Are the Kudos lost now? ;-) It's not that I care that much, but I am just curious.

Regards.

It's not an automatic Kudo update. Rankings are calculated once a day as far as I'm aware, not continuously. Give it a bit of time ;)