Archived: Voting/Experience System

This document is not current, and is kept only for archival purposes. Please refer to Everything2 Help for all up-do-date help documents.

The administration does not take the voting and experience point system all that seriously.

Woe to those who do.

XP is an imaginary number granted to you by an
anonymous stranger. Treat it as such.

Please see the table below to figure out when you first receive votes and C!'s,
then read through this for a brief explanation of how the E2 XP system works.

Votes

Level 2 users and up can vote. To vote on any given writeup, simply click on the + or - icons to the left of the timestamp. You can click + or - on each writeup of a node and vote on all them at once by then clicking the vote! button located below the last writeup and before the soft link box. The 'Reputation' number will then appear in the header of the writeup with a parenthetical breakdown of positive and negative votes.

Use these votes wisely! Editors will be performing user-searches on users regularly and checking their best and worst work, from the rep perspective. The reputation of a writeup doesn't mean it will be deleted, nor does it mean it will not be deleted. It merely acts as one more way to qualify written work and to help editors find what can often be a weak writeup. The editor will then usually delete the writeup, msg the author with a Klaproth message, and explain what the author should best do to improve the writeup and repost it. If one of your writeups is deleted, you will lose the one XP you received for creating it.

Voting and deletion are two ways we try to keep quality writeups coming in - a hastily/poorly written writeup will often cost a user XP. Conversely, if your writeups are voted up by your fellow users, you will gain experience points. Details are below.

You don't gain voting powers instantly upon reaching the new level: votes and C!s refresh at midnight server time.

C!s

The most common power is "Cooling" (also known as "C!ing" or "chinging"). Beginning at 4th level, users will get the ability to cool an individual writeup by clicking the C! located next to the voting buttons. This will give the author of the writeup ten XP, and kick the writeup to the front page and the Cool Archive for all to see. Users get a certain number of C!s per day, depending upon their level.

Use these chings wisely! Just because you have chings doesn't mean you should use them with careless abandon. Most users view a writeup's chings as an endorsement of quality regardless of the impulsive reason you may have chosen to bestow that "Attaboy". Do you really want your name to be associated with something that we might consider to be stupid ten minutes/days/months from now? Think twice before you click on that C!; chings spent in haste can be regretted in leisure.

A writeup can be C!d any number of times, but only once by any given user.

XP

The "percentage chances" are another way to encourage interaction with the Everything system: Every time you vote or get voted on there is a percentage chance that your XP will increase (or decrease, if your writeup gets voted on negatively).

Finally, you will have five XP for each writeup under your belt, and you will gain five XP for each writeup you make. If each writeup is created using the guidelines detailed in The perfect node, they will pay off many times over in XP.

The voting/level system:

(Note: You must meet both requirements to reach a level, and you lose the level if you drop below either requirement.). Once you have reached level 2, you may also qualify to level up without meeting the minimum writeup requirement by way of the Honor Roll, which factors in your writeups' reputation and rewards those users whose work performs above average. The maximum gain under the Honor Roll system is to effectively double your writeup count for leveling-up purposes.

Your user level is in bold.

Powers: (More to come, mostly level 6 and higher)

• Level 1 — Access to your deleted writeups via Node Heaven - you'll need this, most new users lose half of their first ten writeups or so. You'll have the ability to view someone's Scratch Pad with Scratch Pad Viewer, if the user permits it
• Level 2 — voting; eligible for Honor Roll advancement
• Level 3 — Can see who created a nodeshell using ANY E2 theme, create polls, and change change the writeup header display; can buy C!s at the E2 Gift Shop
• Level 4 — C! power!; may become a mentor
• Level 5 — Display an (uncopyrighted) image in your home node (Nope, no porn allowed!), ability to create rooms in the Chatterbox
• Level 6 — Can reset the chatterbox topic by buying a token at the E2 Gift Shop.
• Level 7 —
• Level 8 —
• Level 9 —
• Level 10 — Cloaking oneself in the Other Users nodelet.
• Level 11 —
• Level 12 —

You can gain or lose XP in the following ways only:

• Each writeup you turn in gives you five XP. If it's later deleted, you lose one XP.
• +10 XP each time one of your writeups is C!'d (Cooled by another user and sent to the Cool Archive)
• 33% chance of +1 XP every time you cast a vote for somone else's writeup - whether that vote be positive or negative.
• 33% chance of gaining or losing one XP if your writeup is voted up or down by another user.
• Every day after level 2 you will be granted a certain number of votes to cast. For every 10 votes that you cast, you will be awarded a bonus of five XP. Furthermore, if you use all of your votes in any given 24-hour period, you will gain an additional five XP. These bonuses are in addition to any XP you gained via the 33% rule above. The Everything2 clock is set to UTC time, votes/C!'s reset at midnight UTC. See the Epicenter Nodelet to view the current time.
• Participating in an Everything Quest within the given time frame . Everything Quests can be sponsored by any content editor or member of the gods group. There can be any number of them running at any given time. If you've a good idea for an Everything Quest, please msg an admin.
• Being blessed by a member of the gods group. (See The Power Structure of Everything2)
• Getting "egged" or similar in the chatterbox by another user (+3XP)

Note: If a writeup you've submitted has accrued a positive reputation and it is deleted, you will not "lose" any XP you'd already gained for the + votes. You will only lose 1 XP for losing 1 writeup. If your writeup has a negative rep, deleting it will not increase your XP (though it will prevent future loss from downvotes on that writeup, obviously).

Gaining and losing one XP for adding and deleting also applies to "housekeeping" write-ups like Writeup Deletion Request and Node Title Edit. It can be disconcerting to get the "Ack! You lost experience!" message from these, but that's life.

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