Points change

[Alpinist]

I seem to have lost a lot of points overnight. Did the formula change for power point calculations?

[Scott]

Did the formula change for power point calculations?

No, but almost everyone lost a bunch. A few members PM'ed the elves and we checked it on the wayback machine and everyone lost a bunch since October 26. We're checking into it.

[Josh Lewis]

If members find any clues to this, it would be very much appreciated with this investigation. Any climber logs, pages, photos missing? The more info we get, the better it will help the investigation. Gear reviews went from 2 points to 0.01 due to it's ease of abusing the system. Plus pages should be worth way more anyways. Also if members could log how many points they lose it would be helpful. I lost almost 20 over night. No biggie on my end, the main concern is making sure that content is fully intact. That is my #1 priority in this investigation.

[Scott]

Also, wayback machine is a useful tool:

http://archive.org/web/

If you happen to be on the front page, it's easy to use.

Thus far, we've noticed that some summit logs (and possibly votes?) have disappeared, but thus far all pages seem to be intact.

It may be useful to do a file > save as on your profile.

[Matt Lemke]

I actually GAINED more since two days ago!

[Marcsoltan]

I lost 2, then 46, then 6 more the past few days.
I wasn't keeping track of my contents, so I'm not sure what I may have lost.

[Alpinist]

None of my content is missing as far as I can tell. I submitted a bunch of gear reviews which may explain the drop in pts. I actually find those to be very useful. Reviews are way more credible here on SP than most online reviews that you read. Many of them are seemingly either written by an employee if the manufacturer or a competitor.

A decrease of 200 fold seems pretty severe considering the amount of time I spent on the gear reviews. It takes time to write up a good page. Is it the same point award for a gear page as it is for a gear review?? If so, then you're undervaluing gear pages.

[Scott]

Although I do have some gear reviews, my own thoughts are that for gear reviews it is probably better to go to other websites that sell product. The good thing about those websites is that they only show reviews on items they are currently selling. The SP reviews aren't really that useful since many of the products that have reviews aren't even available anymore. Many of the reviews are almost nine years old now. If we keep the gear reviews section, in another nine years, we're going to have a bunch of reviews on gear that hasn't been sold for many years.

Reviews are more useful on the websites that sell the current product.

Also, gear reviews shouldn't be worth as much as a mountain page. I have a few gear reviews, but the products I reviewed aren't even sold any more and even most good gear reviews take much less work than a mountain page.

Also, since they aren't voted, gear reviews can be one word and are worth the same. For those that didn't figure it out, that's how Power Lord racked up his power points to become the #1 member. It was through a few thousand one word gear reviews:

http://www.summitpost.org/users/power-lord/123402

As far as the points loss goes, personally I'm not concerned about the points loss, but am about the summit logs loss. If anyone noticing anything at all missing, let us know.

[Alpinist]

If gear reviews have no value then why have them at all? I agree that mountain/route pages are worth a lot more but awarding .01 points for a review is a disincentive.

If someone is submitting 1 word gear reviews they should be disciplined same as if they were submitting 1 word mountain pages. They should be warned and/or have their account deleted.

Edit: The point is, don't punish those that are submitting quality reviews because of the few that are abusing it. The better way to attack the problem is to confront the abusers.

[rgg]

None of my content is missing as far as I can tell. I submitted a bunch of gear reviews which may explain the drop in pts. I actually find those to be very useful. Reviews are way more credible here on SP than most online reviews that you read. Many of them are seemingly either written by an employee if the manufacturer or a competitor.

A decrease of 200 fold seems pretty severe considering the amount of time I spent on the gear reviews. It takes time to write up a good page. Is it the same point award for a gear page as it is for a gear review?? If so, then you're undervaluing gear pages.

Gear pages used to be worth 3 points and they still are. Whether that will be decreased or not, well, I suppose that remains to be seen. In my opinion, gear pages are much less valuable to SP than, say, decent mountain or route pages. But how much less? That's not an easy question.

As for gear reviews, I've written a few myself, though not all that many. Takes much less time than a lot of other submissions. In fact, I've regularly spent more time to come up with the caption of an image, e.g. to look up the names of the peaks that can be seen, or, when it's mountain flora, to try and determine what plant exactly it is. Basically, submitting content for me isn't about how many power points I may or may not get from it. For pictures for example, I post what I think is useful for SP as well as series of pictures from my trips that I want to share with my friends. As far as power points go, pictures, with the exception of very highly rated ones, are hardly worth anything. Fine by me. But in comparison, why should a gear review that, in most cases, takes a matter of minutes to write, be worth 2?

[Alpinist]

My pts went from 688 to 514. I have 52 gear pages and I'm not sure how many gear reviews. Is there any reason to look further for the points decline? I think the change in point calculation explains it well enough.

[Scott]

Is there any reason to look further for the points decline?

As mentioned above, almost everyone's points went way down and we are looking into it.

October 8:

pts.JPG (113.89 KiB) Viewed 7913 times

November 10:

pts 2.JPG (117.09 KiB) Viewed 7907 times

If gear reviews have no value then why have them at all?

Lots of SP submissions have low point value, i.e., comments, summit logs, and votes. The average gear review really is the same length as many summit logs, additions and corrections, and comments. They should have never been worth as much as they were. Many of the products aren't even for sale anymore.

Choosing some completely random gear reviews, you can see that they really aren't very long (scroll down to reviews):

http://www.summitpost.org/outdoor-gear/backpacker/5201

http://www.summitpost.org/outdoor-gear/ ... inley/2967

[rgg]

I lost 2, then 46, then 6 more the past few days.
I wasn't keeping track of my contents, so I'm not sure what I may have lost.

The 2 and the 46 are symptoms of the real problem of the OP, but the 6 is because you've got 3 reviews. The decrease from 2 to 0.01 per review means you've lost 5.97 points that way. Only those that have no reviews haven't lost any points because of this; others have lost something, and a few have actually lost a big chunk of their points.

One useful aspect of your profile is that you've only signed one Climber's Log. Checking it on the Way Back machine shows that you only had one before the big points drop as well, so you haven't lost any log entries, and, much more importantly, it proves that the points drop isn't related to the log entries in the first place. As for any other content, the Way Back machine shows exactly the same numbers for everything that you own.

Now, an important thing to remember is that your profile page doesn't show everything, and the Way Back machine simply stores a copy of it from time to time. For example, what isn't visible (not without clicking on something first, that is) is how many comments you posted. Consequently the Way Back machine is of no help in checking if they are still all there.

On a different note, I don't know of any way to verify if all the votes that have been cast are still there. But then again, I don't know how much casting a vote is worth in the first place, assuming it's (still) worth something at all.

[Alpinist]

Is there any reason to look further for the points decline?

As mentioned above, almost everyone's points went way down and we are looking into it.

The point calculation changed for gear reviews and people lost points. Why do you think there is any more to it than that? Seems pretty straight forward.

BTW, there's a difference between a Gear Page and a Gear Review. Are they weighted the same? It takes a lot longer to submit a quality Gear Page than it does to write a gear review. You have to research product specs, pricing, get photos, etc. (If you do it right).

[Scott]

Why do you think there is any more to it than that?

Because the point drop happened before the change was made. As mentioned, we are looking into it and please report anything unusual.

BTW, there's a difference between a Gear Page and a Gear Review. Are they weighted the same?

No. Gear pages are still worth the same as a mountain or area/range page (in the future this might not be the case). Gear Reviews are the only thing that dropped. Rgg already pointed this out in a post above.