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The box explaining the commitment percentage on Area 51 states about the commitment score

commitment score, based on committers' activity on all other sites and how old the commitment is

This leads to the effect that users knowing about the decay of the commitment score can uncommit and recommit to increase their commitment score. I've seen a few users doing that, but the vast majority probably doesn't know about that.

I think the decay of the commitment score makes sense, if someone commits and then forgets about it, he is less likely to actually contribute to the site compared to someone who regularly checks on the proposal. But the current method leaves out commited users who regularly check on the status of a proposal, but don't recommit because they don't know about the score decay.

I propose that the commitment score is reset to the original value every time a user visits the proposal site, instead of requiring the user to recommit. This would still filter out users that never come back after committing, but it would not require users to know the more obscure facts about the commitment score to be counted at 100%.

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  • This came up in a previous feature request (which I think must be deleted, because I can't find my comments on it...), and Robert Cartaino basically said that people who are doing what you describe are invalidating the purpose of the system and increasing the commitment score artificially, so they shouldn't be helped in doing that.
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Jul 3, 2011 at 20:48
  • @Tim Are you saying uncommitting and recommitting are discouraged? When I first read about them, it seems like the score was encouraging people to do that. Or were you talking about Fabian's idea only?
    – jonsca
    Commented Jul 3, 2011 at 21:33
  • @jonsca Yeah, uncommitting and recommitting is discouraged, or at least that was what was said at the time.
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Jul 3, 2011 at 21:58
  • @Tim Okay, I wasn't aware. Thanks.
    – jonsca
    Commented Jul 3, 2011 at 22:02
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    @Tim In this answer on meta a dev (David Fullerton) explicitly mentions recommitting, and I get the impression from that post that it is intentionally allowed and encouraged.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 8:35
  • I read at one point that if too many people did that they'd consider putting in measures to prevent it, but it's possible they changed their mind on the purpose of the decay. I did remember a similar feature request though, which it seems was declined (at least for now).
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 8:41
  • 2
    I also asked for a Refresh my Commitment button, it was declined. Unfortunately, if re-commiting is discouraged (it's not clear) - then that means there is no way for original committers to regain their initial commitment. It really penalizes the high-rep early adopters...
    – John C
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 12:33
  • @John I haven't seen anything against recommiting from SE employees, so I assume that it is not discouraged. If you care enough to uncommit and recommit, it certainly makes sense that your commitment would be counted like a new user.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 13:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This has been implemented, exactly as you suggested: commitments can now be "refreshed" just by re-visiting the proposal while logged in. The commitment score is still only recalculated upon commits/uncommits (and also each night at midnight UTC).

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