Quality of KudoRank calculations

Hi,

I'd like to point out to two accounts, "dpavlin" and "kost". While I fully respect "dpavlin", deducting from what his account page says about his work (Svaka čast, Pavlin!), and I don't want anyone to take this personally, but their example makes me question the quality of Ohloh's KudoRank calculations.

As you can see, "kost" has not reported work on any projects. He has zero activity on Ohloh. Yet, he gets KudoRank of 8. From Ohloh documentation: "KudoRank 8 is relatively uncommon, with about 6% of the population receiving this rank."

So, a person with (as far as the system is concerned) zero activity whatsoever gets KudoRank of 8? I understand that he inherited it from dpavlin, however I don't understand how can dpavlin have so much influence on kost. I have over a year activity opensource reported to Ohloh, and I have a KudoRank of 1.

What is wrong here?

Thank you for quick information.

I believe I understand the kudo system better. And perhaps the reduction of "strength" of vote should be in order -- I do not mean significant, but at least something reasonable (definitely not more than 5 or 6).

However, I'd like to point out that team of "opentibia" does not have any kudos, and opentibia itself doesn't have stacks (I've began a promotional campaign in the community so people are beginning to register and stack it) yet the kudo rank of the long-term developers over there around 5 or 6, and has been for very long (when the stack count of opentibia was around 1).

It would be more useful if new users' initial Kudos weren't assumed to be more heavily weighted, because they haven't had a chance to spread Kudos around. There's no sense assuming they're prudent when they haven't yet proven themselves one way or another.

One easy way to do it would be to only increase the weight of someone's opinion for each day they go without giving away any Kudos. That way, you still reward people who are indeed careful with praise, while still being skeptical of users who haven't established themselves.

See my blog post on the topic, and please tell me if I'm wrong.

Wouldn't that mean weighing people most heavily who are there for the long term?

And creating the danger that only longterm active ones can have a high Kudos rank?

It should be weighted to also avoid concentrating all "kodu might" on established people. But it should as well take the activity into account, which is done through stacks, though. If you're active and people value your project, then you'll have high impact. And the chance of people stacking your project is higher when you've been active for a long time.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post and respond so thoroughly. I do understand where you're coming from, but I'd like to correct just a couple things.

First, I hardly think that Ohloh would wait to act on the information. I simply think it shouldn't act quite so enthusiastically that quickly. But that's largely irrelevant anyway. I do realize, like you said, that KudoRank is a crude approximation of how the world really works, and we can never really expect it to be accurate. I just figure that if we try, we should really try. :)

Second, I guess I'm of the mind that I don't deserve a KudoRank of 7. Not yet, anyway. It's not supopsed to be based on my skills, but my reputation. Just like the real world, you have to prove yourself any time you go into a new environment, regardless of how good you are. Sure, more highly skilled people can usually do that more quickly, but it still needs to be done.

Maybe I should just be glad that Ohloh's more friendly than the real world.

Also, as a side note, are there really so few Kudos being awarded that simply being added to the graph puts me ahead of almost 90% of Ohloh users? Maybe Ohloh's just too new, I suppose. Maybe just having more people with Kudos would solve the problem.

Actually, as a side-side note, the 74619 uses mentioned in the KudoRank thing: are those actual Ohloh users, or are unclaimed usernames from version control included in that number? If it's all the names, that alone would explain a lot, really.

Well, I very very quickly grew to rank of 9 but, not that I complain, but I don't think I deserve it. However I fully understand the difficulty in accurately ranking people, and thank you again for developing Ohloh as good as it is (it's great!)

I think a Kudos rank doesn't try to simulate you proving yourself in your new environment, but to deduce your already existing reputation from kudos and stacks.

You don't begin a completely new project in Ohloh, so why should your reputation start at 0?