Question

The waiting time to bump a question should never go beyond fifteen minutes.

Answer 1

In my last "bump", it wanted me to wait 160:00

Outrageous!

Answer 2

agreed

Answer 3

i avoid the wait by simply not asking questions :)

Answer 4

@amistre64 , you're such a bragger :P

Answer 5

its a gift :D

Answer 6

Only a bragger would call bragging a "gift" :P

Answer 7

but i had noticed that when it first came out, i bumped a question a few times and was like hours?

Answer 8

Oh so you do have the experience of actually asking a question...WoW. I thought it was beneath you.

Answer 9

Technicially, I didn't ask a question. I made a comment. They try to force you to ask a question.

Answer 10

oh, not real questions mind you; just practice questions for when I actually have to ponder about things

Answer 11

All the questions I've posted were practice ones :P

Answer 12

Hey, I just earned an extra point. I'm going to start asking more questions, lol

Answer 13

i see satellite moving up and down; but ive never moved ... i still aint got no clue what this smartiescore does

Answer 14

It's a mysterious algorithm

Answer 15

prolly uses addition :)

Answer 16

I don't understand how you can possibly move down though.

Answer 17

theres a midget in the back room yelling out numbers, im sure of it

Answer 18

Do you know anything about group theory? I have this proof I haven't started yet.

Answer 19

not too much with the abstract algebra yet, that might be a few semesters away

Answer 20

So you have proven my point.

Answer 21

if its proven, then ive accomplished my job :)

Answer 22

Negative! lol

Answer 23

is that you in the pic @amistre64 ? haha

Answer 24

i won that picture on Ebay, paid like 103 for it in the end :)

Answer 25

ahh can i buy it from you for 103.1? /:)

Answer 26

I Support !

Answer 27

I think the "bump wait time" should increase every time, so that questions don't live forever at the top of the list

Answer 28

Every time you bump, that is

Answer 29

It already does increase every time.

Answer 30

I know...

Answer 31

@Goodman, support me

Answer 32

Yea, I mean, i agree as well, but its just, some people can tend to get crazy and keep reposting their questions, which i find rather annoying. Making them wait probably gives them more time to do something else, rather than focus on their question.

Answer 33

i agree with areens:) us sisters think alike

Answer 34

Duh, cuz we super sisters XD

Answer 35

:D

Answer 36

Decreasing the waiting time to at most 15 minutes would actually help deter the crazy posters. It would be a good thing rather than a bad thing. If a poster has to wait 160 minutes or more to bump a question, I believe that is would lead crazy posting. @goodman @karatechopper

Answer 37

SmartScore can go down since it is a percentile measure among all users.

Answer 38

@GT this is a concept-defeating attribute. There could be users who come here and excel graciously for many months and then disappear permanently for whatever reason... That means that combining their score with that of users who are here permanently and participate only slightly, in whatever percentile figuring metric, would create a statistical anomaly. I wonder if there are measures in place to factor this in.

Answer 39

@Dyiliq point is absolutely correct. Its difficult to compare the smart score of people who participate a lot , but disappear suddenly , and people who are moderate users. So hopefully mods have or would have a solution to this.

Answer 40

We do factor in outliers, yes. We're also considering adding a point decrease as a person stays away for longer.

I doubt we'll be changing the way bumping works. The point is precisely to discourage you from repeatedly bumping your question more than a certain amount. We may, however, consider revising the rate at which the bump time goes up (right now it goes up by a factor of two every time you bump). It may be worth making it grow a bit slower at the beginning.

Answer 41

So much for test trials. What ever happened to "let's try it and see how it goes" approaches? Right now, the policy seems to be, "let's implement an idea and keep it that way for a really long time without considering other alternatives".

@shadowfiend

Answer 42

That is exactly our approach. We don't jump because you say we should change something. We wait and see how a change performs. Your policy idea seems to be that as soon as a user suggests a change, we should try it. That is not the way it is, that is not the way it has been, and that is not likely to be the way it will ever be.

So far, bumping has had a notable effect precisely in the area it was meant to, and so we feel no pressing need to modify its mechanics. As things evolve, that might change. In the meantime, we will take this idea, as with so many others, under advisement.

Answer 43

I just don't understand the bias towards only ideas that have not been thought of yet that gets considered when an idea to improve an existing idea gets axed just because it is an "improvement" idea. I'm not asking you to jump, I'm asking you to at least consider it. Maybe have beta testers test it out on the development site so see if it is a good idea. Anything but a complete total disregard of the idea would be acceptable I think. In my opinion, the bump idea works fine, but it is not "optimal" yet and I am simply pointing it out because I thought it was worth mentioning.

Answer 44

@shadowfiend

Answer 45

shadow did say he was gonna take it in as an advisement...

Answer 46

Sometimes when things appear to be working fine or even great, the improvement of such implementation can easily be overlooked.

Answer 47

So I think you both have points.
@Hero Definitely taking it under consideration. Logically, I think there's merit towards an upper bound of bumping a question. e.g. if a learner really wants to wait 15 or 30 minutes to bump again, their prerogative.

However, as @shadowfiend was saying, we're very metrics driven. For example since we changed things to one question at a time + bump, the number of people that get help while still online has *doubled* - that's pretty insane and a good thing. Could it be improved? Probably, but there are other things we're considering....

Such as! We're considering allowing users (or at least, users past a certain score), to ask another question after say 5 or 10 minutes if their current question hasn't been answered yet. At that point, we'd have to decide whether it's a choice between bumping the current question or asking another, or if both actions are on separate timer. In either event, we'll probably want to handle the timer and exponential back off issues at the same time.

So good suggestion, and will definitely take feedback (and data) into account when we make our next move in this domain.

Answer 48

Thank you Chris. I think shadowfiend's repsonse could have been something similar to yours initially.