Are your best questions or answers all from point parties?

None of mine. However, many of my high-rated answers are more joke responses – more than I’d like.

Well, funny you should ask. Right now, my top three answers are from “point parties.” How pathetic is that? I’ve never seen this before—but then, I don’t check in on my profile very much.

Well! That took care of that!

eek! I’m hiding mine.

Nope, I actually have a story game question as my greatest question.

My top three answers are from congratulatory responses, though.

Yeah, mine are from “point parties.” Sad to say. Fluther should make the parties a separate something or another (I don’t know what). But then again, this site is not about the awards or points its about the camaraderie…right?
@erichw1504 and what a fun game that was:D

Yes. It’s disappointing that my actual answers suck

No. I rarely post in those. I send my congratulations privately.

The answers to the congratulatory parties are. It makes me a bit sad, as I’d rather receive more Lurve for a real GA then for congratulating someone. They rarely move the total Lurve score up, but when it does, it sort of feels like cheating. I also hide the ones that crop up in the 3 GA on the profile page. I prefer to see the ones that are real answers.

What to do about it?
1.) Continue as is
2.) Continue, but have a general rule that GAs aren’t given out
3.) Only send PMs
4.) Stop it altogether

I’m all for recognition and think that a milestone is worthy of it. I may go for option #3 for everyone I appreciate. I do that now for the 5K announcements.

@Pied_Pfeffer I will go for #1. I like the milestone parties and think a big wave of lurve is always a great feeling. Helps give that extra boost to keep going and help others out.

@Pied_Pfeffer GA Personally, I would go with #2 that way you get your lurve and others don’t have to max out on giving lurve to others (save that lurve for a really great answer). You would just see a page on congratulatory messages. Maybe Fluther owners will take that into consideration.

I had to go look, but, one of them is. I don’t mind. I agree with @erichw1504, I like the milestone parties. I know it isn’t the premise or base concept here.. but it adds to the community connection factor that I really love about Fluther. I’m okay with that.

@AmWiser Good point on maxing out lurve.

All of the GA’s are point parties, only ⅓ of the GQ’s. I like the parties so I’m not going to worry about it and hope fluther doesn’t change it.

Although I get lots of GAs at point parties, since they are mostly visited by people who’ve maxed out on me, it doesn’t accrue to my total lurve. I certainly consider my “best work” to be elsewhere. Maybe there would be a way to design the feature which finds your greatest answers to have it eliminate those. None of this is sucha big deal to me at this point that I lose sleep over it.

@AmWiser Good point on option #2. I like reading some of the more personal posts on one thread, and I’m not going to find them if by going back to a Jelly’s profile to find them.

If it becomes an internal rule not to give GAs, they don’t show up on the Top 3 GA list. If someone feels compelled to tic off a GA, that’s fine. Considering the amount of time the threads pop up, it doesn’t seem worth requesting any additional development time be devoted to modifying the existing structure of the system.

Yes, the party led the pack with 11, but had one answer that got 9! Also, had one question with 7!

@downtide that is cool stuff my friend! A high five!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No neither, well I don’t ask “party questions” anyway so hardly likely to be. My top answer was on an Obama question.

AFAICT, what is in your profile is not necessarily the exact representation of your best of the best answers and questions. This was addressed here by the Jelly Tim T who designed this new feature and here is his explanation…

“Here’s how the algorithm works: It tries to find questions/answers from the last 90 days that have at least a few GQ/GAs. If it can’t get all three from that time period it supplements those with the greatest ones from all of time. The reasoning for this is if it was just against all of time they’d never change and you wouldn’t learn new things about people by visiting their profile from time to time.”

“Here’s a tweak I’ve (personally) been thinking about (which may or may not happen): Allow you to choose your favorite questions/answers and we’ll pick from those (supplementing with our algorithm if you choose less than three).”

Hopefully this doesn’t make me sound like an asshole towards other jellies

Even before the ‘greatest hits’ feature was added to profiles, I always tried to put some extra thought into my 10/20/30k quips. I know that a lot of lurve gets thrown around during those parties (which I think is a good thing. It’s a nice pitstop where we all gather & appreciate one another). For me, I didn’t feel comfortable writing a few words & getting 10 GA’s for it. So I put a little more work into mine, so when I do get a GA, I feel like I earned it. I know that a lot of you people have lives & don’t have the time to write up a 1,000 word ‘congrats’ quip. I don’t blame you. I am in no way saying that those jellies who write a couple words & get lurve for it, don’t deserve it. They do. This is just how I feel about my own quips & lurve during parties.

Even if lurve wasn’t given during parties (or at all), I would still write my lengthy quips. I like writing them.

As of now, yes – my top greatest answer is a quip I wrote for hawaii_jake’s 10k celebration. I worked hard on writing it & I am proud that it is in my greatest hits. I wouldn’t care one bit, if all my top answers were the quips I wrote for point parties. I put a lot of effort into each one & they are a pretty good representation of the type of quips I like to write on the site.

None of mine are from point parties. I congratulate people in private as well as in the questions for them.

yes

at least one isn’t

Nope.

Believe it or not, the most GAs I have ever received have been for answering this question right here.

none

@liminal I really hope this question doesn’t lead anyone to actually hide theirs. I mean it’s just points, which are really pointless anyway. How many does it take to get a free coffee—even at McDonald’s?

@AmWiser & @Pied_Pfeffer As pointless as points are, I’d just leave it at 1.

@Cruiser Now that is truly a GA! I did not know that, and now that you post it, it makes perfect sense.

@rpmpseudonym Excellent answer. I completely agree, including that your quip for Hawaii Jake’s celebration was truly a worthy Great Answer.

One of my questions is, and one of my answers (from my own 30k party), too. At least we can now hide any answers or questions we’d rather not show up on our profile, so if it bothered me, that’s what I’d do.

@augustlan Great point. One of my answers is, and that’s a recent improvement from 3. It is what it is, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not hiding mine. :-)

No.

This is my highest-rated answer. I was surprised it got so many GA’s, but hey, I guess people like the funny shit I say.

This is my highest-rated question. I guess people are egotistical and really like to talk about themselves XD

@ETpro wrote: “But some of us may be disappointed to find that our top-rated questions and answers were things like “Congratulations on making 10K Lurve.”

Which is precisely why I think the lurve system is silly. You ask a great question and don’t get a lot of points because (in your case) it’s a complicated intellectual question that many of the 14 year olds on the site aren’t mature enough to answer. Or you ask a question like, “Shall we congratulate such-and-such for 10K” and get a gazillion points. Lurve is often not a question of merit (as it’s no doubt intended to be), but a popularity contest.

To me Fluther is about the discussions and debate, not about the points. In my mind, the only utility of seeing whether someone gave me a GA is to go back and see if there’s a good discussion after my post after I’ve hit “stop following” the question. Often if someone tags an answer of mine, they’ll reference it in their own response.

GQ by the way. :-)

@bob_ Yep, I have noticed that questions about people’s likes, etc. tend to get lots of answers and points. I guess one reason is they are questions we all know how to answer. :-)

@Rarebear I just Lurve that answer. :-)

@ETpro Did you see the little ironic bit I put in at the end? Gave you points and everything.

@Rarebear That’s exactly what I was getting at. I hoped it would coax a smile out of you.

You could always hide a GA or GQ on your profile.

I’m not really sure. I don’t find the new “greatest answers” to be a useful feature, especially since we then can’t see their most current answers right away.

@papayalily I agree. It makes stalking staying up to date more difficult.

@bob_ Indeed. Plus, it’s part of the whole Facebook “why you should care about THIS person” thing, which I sorta got my fill of in junior high.

I will not be involved in milestone “parties”. I would pm someone with a congratulations however if I am familiar with them to some degree. I’m on here for serious discussions on serious topics not a popularity contest.

Am I the only one that doesn’t view it as a popularity contest?
I give GQ and GA to people I’ve never even seen post before… it has nothing to do with popularity.
I feel like I am missing something. The whole thing seems like a simple way to share a nice gesture of appreciation or agreement with someone else in the community. Whether it is a truly good answer, a clever comment, or a congratulations. I’m not sure I see the negativity in that…

Mine are not. Two are about homosexuality (I’m shocked) and the other is about atheism. :P

I don’t see it as a popularity contest either. Sometimes I get a conflicting message from people: “I don’t care about lurve, but it’s a popularity contest”. Okay, so you do care. Well, guess what? I don’t care. I don’t care enough to even think of it is a popularity contest. I barely even notice lurve. Maybe I’m just weird.

@DominicX One can not care about something but still have an opinion on it. For instance, I don’t care if you eat black licorice, but I think it’s icky. (EDIT: The black licorice is icky, not you eating it).

Let’s make this one yours, @ETpro – everybody click on GQ!

:-)

@TheOnlyNeffie I don’t see it as a popularity contest, either. I give lurve (even to people I’m not fond of) when I think a question or answer deserves it. Sometimes just because they make me laugh. :)

@TheOnlyNeffie I don’t see it as a popularity contest either. In all honesty, it seems like the same people participate in those questions anyway, so more than likely, we are all maxed out on each other. So we probably aren’t actually giving each other any more points anyway. It’s just a way to have a lighthearted good time.

Most of the time when I give lurve, I’m not even looking at who wrote the question or answer.

My quip with the most GA’s is at a points party.

My question with the most GQ’s isn’t, although I think if I ever post a congratulatory question it will probably get more GQ’s, because my presently highest scoring question only has 7.

I found the listing of recent answers much more useful. I could see whether a Jelly had recently been active and what questions they had answered. If it was a question I was interested in, but had missed, I would often then go to it and add to the discussion. Now I don’t look at these at all.

Okay, here’s a first: janbb with a typo. I’m jotting this in my calendar. Yes, I live on the edge. :)

@Adirondackwannabe Haha! Wasn’t past the editing time! Thanks for pointing it out so I could correct it.

@janbb Hoisted on my own petard. You’re awesome. :)

The irony is that this question, in the meta section, may now be one of @ETpro‘s “best” questions, and is about whether party questions are your best.

How very meta-meta, and I wonder if it was the intent to begin with.

@ETpro – you ODB. ;-)

@janbb If you look at a person’s profile, just click on the Responses tab, and it will list all of their answers by most recent. The Top 3 is just another way of looking at the same information, just culled down to a specific subset.

@Pied_Pfeffer Thanks – I didn’t know that!

PS – as of this comment, this is now @ETpro‘s top-rated question. ;-)

@seazen I’m hoisted on my own petard here. Touche! @iamthemob Ironic indeed.

@janbb If I had my way, the list of recent questions & answers would be the opening page of the profile and you would be able to click to wither go to a page in point/date order or just click to rearange from date order to point order.

Only one of the top 3 listed questions on my page is from a lurve party.

What I find interesting is that the top answers only seem to be showing the highest ones from the first page of recent answers. One of the top three shows 7 lurve even though I have answers on my list that were in the 20s.

@fireside

From timtrueman, one of the Fluther staff members:
Here’s how the algorithm works: It tries to find questions/answers from the last 90 days that have at least a few GQ/GAs. If it can’t get all three from that time period it supplements those with the greatest ones from all of time. The reasoning for this is if it was just against all of time they’d never change and you wouldn’t learn new things about people by visiting their profile from time to time. Source