Can we add an "Average Score" to each user's info? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Add a rep “batting average”? (similar to the questioner’s accept rate)

I think it would be intersting to see an alternate way to order users on the users page.

In the same manner that you can order answers and questions on a tab-like interface with

[ Oldest | Newest | Votes ]

We could have a simlar tab on the users page [ Reputation | Avg Score ]

Just as an example, looking at the top two users, Jon Skeet and Mark Gravell:

Skeet: (21 Questions + 9020 Answers) / 197,990 Rep = 21.89 Avg score

Gravell: (21 Questions + 5682 Answers / 155,513 = 27.26 Avg Score

And already we have the list changing order based on the new metric.

I think this would help showcase some of the users who may be newer and/or don't rack up rep by sheer volume (not saying that Skeet's posts aren't of high quality, but the dude has a serious mass of posts on SO)

Instead of "Average Score" we could call it "Rep per post", "Quality Rating" or some other suitable name.

This could have the added benifit of discouraging me-too or junk posts.

Answer 1

I don't think average score is relevant to a user's reputation. Reputation is a measure of your contribution to the site. It's a strange animal. It's not a measure of quality or of quantity.

The biggest problem I see with average score is that broadly appealing questions tend to get more views and higher scores. Some users take the time to post high-quality answers to obscure questions. These users would be penalized by an average score ranking.

Answer 2

This was fairly well covered on this question

My answer was as follows:

Rep-per-answer is not a useful metric

• There are people with many answers in niche tags who would have low rep-per-answer.
• There are people who have many answers in very popular tags who aren't fast enough to get huge upvotes.
• There are people who answer very few questions, but answer them very very thoroughly and get huge upvotes.
• There are people who only answer joke-type questions and get huge (undeserved) upvotes.
• There are people who put off-the-cuff answers on a lot of questions and get a few upvotes.

The point being that the rep-per-answer averages will vary wildly, but will not add any extra information about the user who is giving you the answer. Because rep is given out arbitrarily, there is not (and never has been) a way to firmly link rep-gain to usefulness.

Basically, reputation is based on a huge number of factors and only one of them is skill.

EDIT

In response to comment:

"Basically, reputation is based on a huge number of factors and only one of them is skill." True, and so could the average. If you want to take into account downvotes given, bounties given, etc, then why not? The rep itself has lots of factors, why not the "avg"

In order for me to control (increase) my reputation, I need to invest more time in StackOverflow. This is very beneficial to the community.

In order for me to control (increase) my average-rep-per-post, I need to do one or more of the following things. (only a partial list)

• Delete my lower voted posts (even if they are still valid, or even checkmarked)
• Ignore any low-view tags or questions
• Create a sock-puppet user to upvote all my posts
• Downvote other users to make my posts look more attractive

You'll note that "write higher quality posts" is not on the list. There's a reason for that. Even a high quality post has a chance of not getting upvoted, which means it would lower my rep-average, and then I'd have to delete it. Also, "answer questions very quickly" is not on the list for the same reason.

Every item on that list is not a desirable behaviour.