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According to a question asked here on meta, the commitment percentage of an Area 51 proposal is based on the "score" each committer has:

We give each user a "score" based on how likely we think they are to contribute to the site

Here's the formula we have right now. It's almost certainly wrong and we'll be tweaking it as we go:

UserScore = SUM(Reputation >= 200 ? 0.233 * ln(Reputation-101) - 0.75 : 0) + 1

Since the formula is really complicated, it's probably calculated asynchronously every day and stored somewhere. Why not show that value somewhere, so each user knows how much they'll contribute to a proposal when they commit to it?

I don't care if it's publicly displayed of if only the user himself can know it (on the user page, for example), that's not the matter here. What do you think?

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    You are not understandable. What is a project? Are your talking about meta???
    – M'vy
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 17:15
  • "Project" had to be understood as "proposal". Which of course makes my question impossible to understand...
    – Alexis Dufrenoy
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 20:11

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What purpose do you think this would serve? I hesitate to support the idea because once you show someone a number, they start obsessing over it. We've seen this happen already with the flag weight.

It seems to me that showing the commitment score would just invite people to complain about how the system doesn't think they're valuable contributors or something.

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    Show a number in profiles? What could possibly go wrong?
    – mmyers
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 18:16
  • @mmyers I knew someone would show up with links. Thanks!
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 18:25
  • @mmyers: People asking questions? Really terrible consequences... I understand your concern, now...
    – Alexis Dufrenoy
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 19:57
  • What purpose? Understanding why some proposal are going nowhere, for example.
    – Alexis Dufrenoy
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 20:00
  • @Traroth You can already infer much of that information from the commitment score of the entire proposal. How would looking at individual commitment scores help you understand why a proposal isn't going anywhere?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 20:03
  • @Anna Lear: At least, it will help you to understand why the commitment score is not moving much, and why you should try to improve it. Which means getting more involved in the community, answering questions on site. Very positive, too me. Your turn, now: What's the matter with displaying this data, exactly, beside, you know, the needed development work to do it?
    – Alexis Dufrenoy
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 20:10
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    I have to confess I'm really stunned by the general argument against this idea, which is, and don't hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong: When you give people too much infos, they ask annoying questions, so let's keep them in the dark, at least they will shut up. Can anyone approve such a point of view once it's clearly expressed?
    – Alexis Dufrenoy
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 20:18
  • @Traroth I'm not opposed to showing more information in a profile when that information is useful. I'm not seeing a use for it, hence I'm opposed to it. I think the users who need to see it most (and improve their participation) wouldn't look at it in the first place. Then you get into things like, if someone gets attached to their score and the formula changes, there will be backlash against that change. Right now, it's an internal mechanic and I personally don't see a compelling reason to change that.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented May 24, 2011 at 22:41

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