37

Prompted by the recent questions about negative voted questions and inspired by the actual most negative question on meta.

Because it's obvious that unless Jon, God forbid, would lose interest or capacity to participate in StackOverflow, none of us will ever have a chance to make it to #1, I propose a contest. Each person, other than Jon Skeet, who answers a question and receives an upvote in the month of May, 2010 on StackOverflow will be entered into the contest, one entry per upvote. At the end of the month one name will be drawn from the pool of entries at random and their reputation will be set to Jon Skeet's repuation + the difference between Jon's reputation gained during the month and that earned by the user (but no less than 1). At the end of June 2010, their reputation will be reset by subtracting the amount added as a result of winning the contest.

The contest has a four-fold result: the winner gets to be the #1 user on SO for some indeterminate amount of time until Jon catches up, Jon gets a little competition to spice up his participation, people who whine about how much reputation others have can be told "you've had your chance, now bugger off" and the rest of us get to watch Jon's race back to number one unfold -- will the lucky winner be able to keep the title for an entire month of June?

Caveats:

  • I don't think privileges are revoked once granted. In this case, the user's privileges would be reset to their original state.
  • The user's actual reputation would appear on their SO careers CV, if they have one.

Alternatives

If you're not comfortable handing out unearned privileges, the contest could be restricted to those who have reached one of the significant milestones -- say the ability to edit at 2000 or close other questions at 3000.

11
  • Nice idea with great potential entertainment value :) So the person doesn't get to keep the gigantic difference in reputation, only what they gain during the month, right? I don't understand that part yet.
    – Pekka
    Apr 21, 2010 at 19:57
  • 9
    I sense Evan losing more rep since you've brought that question back into the light.
    – squillman
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:18
  • 3
    @squillman - yeah, I wince every time I see a "what's the highest/lowest voted anything?" because it forms a nice feedback loop. But then I think, "But... they deserve it..." and all is right with the world again. The HTML parsing with Regex is a great example of that.
    – Pollyanna
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:43
  • 2
    @Pekka -- yep, your rep would reset to what it would have been had it not been artificially bumped. So, for example, if I got 70K added to push me ahead of @Jon, I'd lose that 70K at the end of June. Perhaps, though, you could get awarded a gold Skeet badge if you remained ahead of him for the whole month, silver if you do it for 2 weeks, and bronze if you keep ahead for at least a week.
    – tvanfosson
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:47
  • Vote for the 'edit at 2000' one. I almost have that on SO. Apr 21, 2010 at 20:49
  • 1
    +1 for the i-d-forget-it-by-friday tag.
    – Pops
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:49
  • Boy, this is getting a lot of votes. Seems like it's a good idea... I'm all for it. Apr 21, 2010 at 20:50
  • @squillman - here's another interesting contest -- guess the date when @Jon meets or exceeds the example amount of rep @Evan quotes in his question.
    – tvanfosson
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:51
  • @tva: 133 days from now, which is Sept 1. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/46997/…
    – Jon Seigel
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:57
  • Everyone note, I've added a new tag for whenever we talk about worst question ever( meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35506/… )
    – Earlz
    Apr 21, 2010 at 23:16
  • I suggested a Last 30 Days Top Users ladder (meta.stackexchange.com/questions/46997/…). I think it's possible to wrestle #1 spot from Jon Skeet in this ladder, with bounties etc. Apr 22, 2010 at 12:17

4 Answers 4

14

Sounds like good times. I'm in.

It's been awhile since I calculated how many of me makes one Jon Skeet...

5
  • 5
    I thought you're the one who want to get rid of rep?
    – user138231
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:25
  • 1
    Well, this is only step 1. Step 2: [feature-request] - allow any amount of rep as bounty. Step 3: Offer a rep - 10k bounty. Step 4: ? Step 5: Profit!
    – Pops
    Apr 21, 2010 at 20:48
  • Hey, it would be nice if we could do bounties of any amount! Apr 21, 2010 at 20:49
  • 7
    @George - especially if we could use some else's rep for them!
    – Pollyanna
    Apr 21, 2010 at 21:45
  • I would like for this feature-request to have a bounty of 90K as a sacrifice of Jon Skeet.
    – Earlz
    Apr 21, 2010 at 23:07
4

I think we need to make this more interesting. Whoever 'wins' doesn't risk anything, while Jon, of course, risks being behind for more than a few milliseconds, thus ruining his cred.

We need to provide a motivating incentive beyond just staying ahead to the competitor.

I therefore propose that if you stay ahead of Jon for two weeks, you get to keep the rep you earned. If you fall behind earlier, then he gets some of your rep. If you stay ahead longer, then you get some of his rep. How much and what methods are used to calculate the rep earned/lost is up for discussion, but it really should be a cage match where there's a solid winner and loser at the end of it.

Plus that'll give people pause before entering if they don't think they can keep up with him.

5
  • 5
    You'd have to make it somehow fair and only count points from questions answered after June 1. He has an enormous advantage in the number of possible existing answers that can be used to gain rep. I spend way too much time on this (according to my wife) and he's still got nearly twice as many answers as I do.
    – tvanfosson
    Apr 21, 2010 at 22:07
  • @tvanfosson - Yes, I believe you are right. One of the reasons he does so well is that he's close to the point where he'd hit the cap daily with no new work. That would have to be discounted on both sides.
    – Pollyanna
    Apr 21, 2010 at 22:23
  • Also wouldn't you need Jon's consent for this? :-) Apr 22, 2010 at 13:32
  • @Josh - Pretty sure we'd need the site developer's consent for it as well. Note the question tags, though.
    – Pollyanna
    Apr 22, 2010 at 13:38
  • Yes, of course :-) Apr 22, 2010 at 23:21
1

It's entirely possible the additional rep may incite others to upvote them more. Thus it's an interesting evaluation of how the community thinks, as well!

1

I like the idea, it sounds like great early summer fun. I would favour widening the focus to SO's top three, five, or ten, though. Focusing on Jon alone would put considerable pressure on him It could be that Eyjafjallajökull's angry big sister Katla awakens, causing Jon to get posted there to stop the ash cloud and reducing his presence on SO because of connectivity issues.

Maybe upping the winner's reputation to Jon Skeet's level but calculating the end results against the average gain of the top {n} SO members would produce comparable results without depending on a single person? Although that would take away part of the glamour and charm of the idea: "Beat Jon Skeet on his turf".

If Jon wants the challenge, though, there's of course nothing speaking against a man-against-man (or -woman) match :)

3
  • 3
    +1 for normalization suggestion. -1 for suggesting that there are women on the internets.
    – Aarobot
    Apr 21, 2010 at 21:39
  • 7
    I'd have to check my Jon Skeet Facts, meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts, but I believe he is immune to pressure, though pressure has been known to wilt before him.
    – tvanfosson
    Apr 21, 2010 at 21:45
  • @tvan of course. My fault entirely. I have righted my post to reflect the facts instead of speculation.
    – Pekka
    Apr 22, 2010 at 9:07

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