If you look at user pages you’ll see highest rank (the highest rank the user ever achieved).
Let’s look at it from a new user’s perspective. You visit TinyCLR contributing here and there and before you know it you’ve reached Master with a $50 coupon. GHI Insider suddenly seems affordable at $49. So they kind of cancel eachother out, except being an insider practically pays for itself with coupons and other deals. Now if I contribute I decay a little everyday but not enough to stop my progression. One post alone is worth 5 days of decay. Now I’ve reached Hero with a $100 coupon an a hour with an engineer ($150 value) and all I did was remain active. At this point to earn more “status” and rewards slightly more effort is involved. Yet if I was inactive it would take 2.73 years before I dropped to Master, that would be one long vacation. The rewards beyond Hero are worth while and require effort which shouldn’t be seen as “bad”.
New question… Do the engineer sessions carry over from one rank to the next? So, if I get to Hero and get a 1 hour reward but don’t use it before I get to King could I then use a 3 hr session if needed?
You’re getting close mate ! Go remove some images or videos from code uploads or something, or go on the latest fad, the “Internet diet” where you disconnect all cables and wifi devices in your home for a weekend.
Frankly, I think the decay is a good solution. Last year I was very active. It took a while, but I finally got a master rank. It just happened. I didn’t do it for the rank, but it happened. But for the past year, I have been busy on another project - essentially no posts for the past year as I worked on 3d printer design. I don’t get as many special offers and gifts as I used to - makes sense to me. I haven’t been contributing. When I was, I got stuff.
Now, hopefully I am back. I need to get me some gadgeteer hardware. I need to be active here again. I need to post some code. It all makes sense. Even in my job, the question is, “What have you done for us lately?” My reputation does decay.
Every time GHI has brought out a new reward system, in the several years I have been here, there is a lot of talk about how someone will work a way to “cheat the system” and “that won’t be fair”. But, Gus and the guys are generous. If a few things that were not fully deserved get through, that doesn’t hurt me. None of what I have received from GHI over the years has been fully deserved - these guys are just generous. They keep pointing out that the Insider fee will pay for itself and I have NO doubt that it will be one of the biggest bargains I have ever taken advantage of.
So, reputation decay is a fact of life in the job market. A point system for perks like this needs a decay system to be equitable. GHI is my favorite bunch of guys to do business with. I mean, I buy stuff from Sparkfun too - but Nate doesn’t know my name the way Gus does. Thanks guys. This is going to be great!
@ Blue Hair Bob - must say your story makes sense and gives an other view on the system. I hope I will have more time in future to contribute, but for now it doesn’t like it.
I still dont get it why its more importent to have people in “inside” board that help other people with support rater then people/company that buy alot from GHI and realy use it in a proffesional way and sees the problems or lacks in features?
For me it feels like GHI mostly aim for hobbiest and not the proffesional market, but thats my thoughts.
Big companies already get deals by being able to order in quantities of 10+, afford consultations with GHI etc. personally I think this is great for hobbies as well as small businesses just starting out.
If people are worried about the decay … perhaps GHI could give enough points to offset the decay when you log in the first time a each day. This would hopefully encourage people to just bring up the forum. Once there, they may see something that would pique their interest enough to post.
The downside is that this process could be automated. They wouldn’t gain anything this way, they would just not lose any decay points. Maybe there’s a way to prevent that on the server side.
The hope for them, I would imagine, is that a hobbyist turns into a commercial contract.
Our company has been purely a software house. A little while ago I showed my boss the CANextra board I got and told him that GHI makes it easier to get into hardware. He and I kicked around some ideas. About 3 weeks later I brought in a proof of concept (minus a working GPS ).
He’s excited about the possibilities - I showed him the catalog page and he’s thinking about how to use the various modules. I explained that if we wanted custom stuff, GHI could provide consulting, and perhaps even manufacturing/assembling of the circuit boards.
Who knows if he wants to turn it into an actual product or not, but because things are FEZ for a hobbyist, it may turn into one!
It took me two years to get to Hero, and I guess GHI is targeting people like me…
But I try to help where I feel I might be able to do so and I don’t post much, or any, code, as i’m redoing stuff that others have done, or I never wrap it up well enough to be presentable, so I gain points slowly. Without the decay i’ll reach Legend in another two years, maybe less, maybe one year… :). Withe decay? 5 years?
Looks like most of you have viewed decay as a negative thing. While it is defiantly not in the large picture, we will not be going forward and will be taking this reward system down till we think of something more clears and not seen negative. We are doing this to say thank you so it is important that we bring this message across clearly.
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