How does the lurve for only 5 GAs per answer thing work, exactly?

The first 5 will not count towards increasing lurve (though they will be marked as GAs), the next 5 will count towards increasing lurve provided the next 5 people haven’t maxed out on you.

Only the first five GA’s have the potential to count, and if they don’t (because of maximums), you get zero.

In the case you describe, you’d get no lurve for that answer. You’d see the number of GA’s increment, and you’d see the +5’s in your lurve record, but your total wouldn’t change.

As an example, I’ve been around here for quite a while, and there are some days (when I’ve posted a lot) when, if I added up all my +5’s, I’d gain a hundred or more points. But in fact my score goes up very little, maybe by 15, maybe by nothing.

I take that as a compliment.

I grazed some links for you where a lot of explaining on the subject has been done.

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The woman above me was an important contributor to those threads.

this isn’t fair

@sophiesword, it is an excellent system, in my opinion. It means that scores increase rapidly when you’re new and then level off. The higher you go, the harder it is to gain. This helps keep the emphasis off the points (which have no meaning or value except what people attach to them) and also prevents gaming the system while still giving people a sense of progress and peer recognition.

I’ve seen a lot of newcomers complain about if before they have much experience with it. Why don’t you wait a bit and see how you feel?

@Jeruba Well, but it does seem like there are some mixed messages about lurve from the creators. It’s important enough for them to create it, important enough for them to spend lots of time creating a complex system, and important enough that they go out of their way to prevent and ban gaming the system. And lurve parties for each 10K milestone definitely send the message that lurve counts. On the other hand, any time anyone appears to care about lurve, they’re told how it doesn’t matter and people shouldn’t concern themselves with it. You can’t have a system of points and awards for certain numbers of points and then have the emphasis not be on the points.

@Aethelflaed, I see the contradiction you’re talking about, but here’s the thing: it’s not the creators who say don’t be concerned with it. That’s the message of most (though not all) users who respond to questions about lurve. The creators just created the system and let it be what it is, without telling us what to think about it. All the rest, including the parties, has come from the users.

When the first user reached 10,000 (it was @marinelife, in 2008), the first party was spontaneous. A custom evolved out of that.

@Jeruba I thought you said the creators created a system of lurve, but made it so that you couldn’t earn very much easily so as to keep the focus off the points. And maybe it is the users doing much of the mixed messaging, but it’s still a mixed message, and not hard to see why newer folks don’t get it or care for it. Plus, I’m not so sure that many older members do like it; I’d imagine many have simply stopped bitching and accepted it, but that’s not the same as liking it.

@Aethelflaed, my exact words are right there: This helps keep the emphasis off the points

That’s a description of the effect but not a statement of purpose. I can’t tell you about the creators’ purpose because the creators don’t confide in me. I can just see that it has that result.

As for preventing gaming the system, I do remember reading that the creators had that intention.

Over time there have been tons of threads about lurve and lots of comments from older members. Perhaps I’ve misremembered or made wrong assumptions about the prevailing opinion. No harm in posting another question if you want to ask. Personally, I think it’s a brilliant system, and I thought so even when I thought it was going to take me forever to get to 1000 points. (It used to be a much slower process.)

@sophiesword Life isn’t fair. I also gave you 5 more points.