Subject: Re: New Posts Indicator
Thanks! Looks great!

I have in any case made an extremely subtle yellow 'new' ticker appear when there is at least one new note. Given that people are not forced to visit the Favourites page, they won't be unnecessary distracted if they don't like such notifications, but it is there on the Favourites page in any case. It was so small, that I found it fine, and it is the same yellow subtle ticker that appears for 24 hours when a new Post of the Day has been released to the public.

The Post of the Day is a concept that I believe (1) will motivate authors to write longer and more thoughtful posts, or conduct deeper research, and (2) shows genuine respect towards them as broadcast to the broader public. The two work together also. It probably changes the perception of the site a little for the public as having exceptional talent within the community.

I'm thinking of writing a post about some thoughts regarding the 'Shrewdness' mechanism, but doing so would further reduce my 'Shrewdness'. :) In short, and just an idea: perhaps using for example a top percentile could strike a balance between encouraging 'real' writing and not discouraging e.g. helpful comments or interesting discussions? A post like this one for example arguably doesn't belong in a list of 'best of', even if it's thought out and took some time to write. Yet, I think or would like to think, that it adds value.

I thought a long time about this, and the fact that you are raising it in this way is impressive. There is an international piano competition based upon my music and I had similar problems to solve regarding how a low score can irrationally effect the average, and excessively blunten the effect of a high score. In short, excellence becomes less important than a good average - which is not how the world should work.

For this board technology, though, to cut to the chase: The problem is largely solved with the passage of time. When the author has only left a few posts, each next post has a dramatic effect on their Shrewdness-Star rating. But this is temporary. After a few weeks of posting, the Shrewdness-Star will become extremely stable and gravitate around some area. Authors won't think that much about trying to suddenly raise it but will just generally try to lift the standard of their writing. IF, and this is IF, some authors are really sensitive about the rating and it makes the write less, then on the whole this is not bad at all - most authors won't care about it that much, and the ones who do will anyway just write with a higher quality/quantity ratio which is great anyway for their board, even if they are involved less in the more capricious/briefer posts. The systemic effect of the Shrewdness-Star, using a long 12 month trailing average for average recommendation calculation, I think is about right. It could be more or less, but 12 months is simply to remember and understand also.

To make high recommendations remain effective, and averaged down far less when the author posts a few low-res posts, there is a good solution. It uses squares each recommendation, so that high scores would not be marked down so much by a few research/question posts with no recommendations.

Simple average, where r(p) denotes number of recommendation on post p:

Average = (r(1) + r(2) + r(3)) / 3
Square-average = [ ((r(1)^2 + r(2)^3 + r(3)^3)) / 3 ] ^ (1/2)

Eg, if recommendations are 15, 1 and 2, we have:

Average = (15 + 1 + 2) / 3 = 6 <- pretty damaged from the 2nd and 3rd post
Square-average = ((15^2 + 1^2 + 3^3) / 3) ^ (1/2) = 9 <- More weight on first post

I may change from the simple average to the square-average, however the community are not (as a whole!) mathematicians, and it is far better that they understand what is going on, so I'd rather keep it simple even if it very good, but imperfect, incentive-wise. Sometimes good enough is great, if it is emotionally more coherent also.

- Manlobbi