Legacy Voting and experience system
or 'things were different when I was young'
or 'how things used to be 'round here'
or 'a slice of Everything 2 history which I think would be a shame to lose...'
E2 has always been a beast in constant flux, but all in all, the Voting and Experience System has proved remarkably consistent. It hasn't been completely static, however, and I find it interesting how E2's history can be seen as a number of iterations around the theme of . The most recent change, on October 29, 2008, we saw a series of changes: Now, you either have votes (50 of 'em, from level 1 onwards), or you don't - and you either have the power of Ching (but only one of 'em, from level 4 onwards) or you don't.
... But I'm getting ahead of myself; back when I was a young baby-noder, things were very different indeed. For one thing, you'd have to write 150 write-ups to cast your first C!...
The original experience / level system (1999 - 2000)
Originally, your level was determined only by the number of XP you had, and the first C! you received would give you 400xp. The experience and level system was a novel idea, designed to get people hooked on this writing site thing, by turning it into a game of sorts.
Pretty awesome stuff, but the system soon started showing cracks when people started vote-dumping (voting randomly on stuff just to get rid of all their votes so they could reap the sweet, sweet XP reward). It soon became clear that XP alone wasn't a very useful way to do things, and pretty quickly afterwards, write-up requirements were added to the mix.
Experience and levels 2.0 (2000-2002)
Under the second incarnation voting and experience system, your level was determined by how many write-ups you had, and how many experience points (XP) you had amassed.
You could gain XP in a whole raft of different ways: Posting a new write-up (10 xp), receiving a C! (3 xp), spending your votes (a 1/5 or so chance of 1xp per vote), spending all your votes (0.5xp per vote spent), and getting golden trinkets from e2gods for Services to E2, participating in quests, etc.
The 'spending all your votes' xp bonus was replaced later, as it encouraged people to continue vote dumping. The system was replaced with a 1/3 chance of 1xp per vote, so casting 100 votes per day over 100 days would net you an average of 3K xp.
The problem became that noders who'd been around the block a few times rapidly started amassing more XP than they knew what to do with, and that more often than not, the write-up requirement would be the bottleneck to leveling up to the next level.
Having said that, you may have noted that there aren't that many write-ups around on the site from 1999-2000; that's not because nobody posted anything back then, but a writeup could be anything from a single sentence to a couple of paragraphs, so a lot of the older write-ups have been superseded by more elaborate and complete write-ups.
# Title XP req WU req Votes C!
1 Initiate 0 0 0 0
2 Novice 50 25 10 0
3 Acolyte 200 70 20 0
4 Scribe 400 150 30 1
5 Monk 800 250 45 1
6 Crafter 1,350 380 60 2
7 Artisan 2,100 515 75 2
8 Seer 2,900 700 90 3
9 Archivist 4,000 900 105 3
10 Avatar 7,500 1,215 125 4
11 Godhead 13,000 1,800 150 4
12 Pseudo_God 21,000 2,700 200 5
13 Pedant 38,000 4,500 300 5
The Honor Roll (2002 - 2008)
What people came to realise was that the above system was, frankly, insane. 700 write-ups in order to get 3 Chings to hand out is a bit mad - if you write a node every 3 days, it'd take you 6 years to reach the rank of 'seer'.
More seriously, though, there were noders who were contributing incredibly high quality content, but who obviously were being actively punished by the high number of write-ups required: A consensus started brewing that if you deliver 30 well-researched, well-received, 3,000-word masterpieces, that's of more value to Everything2 than if you node, say, 30 descriptions of Magic: The Gathering collectible cards.
As a solution, the Honour Roll came into place in March of 2002 - a project where Professor Pi was heavily involved. The Honor Roll was a system which calculated the interquartile mean of your writeups' reputation. The mathematics of it all go well above my head (words like probability density function normally have me running for the hills), but the upshot of it was that if your average write-ups rank well compared to the average across all of E2, you could get a better Level Up Factor.
In other words, if you're not eligible for the honor roll, you need the number of write-ups in the list above - but if you have a higher merit (which is, in fact, the interquartile mean of your write-up reputations), the requirements drop gradually. With a reasonably high merit, you could have a level-up factor of 0.75, which means that instead of 515 write-ups to reach level 7, you'd only need 387 of 'em. If your merit is freakishly high, you could achieve a level-up factor of up to 0.5, which means that you'd only need half the original number of write-ups: 258 or so.
At the time of writing, the Honor Roll level-up factors were:
merit LF merit LF
13 1.0000 26 0.5730
14 0.9930 27 0.5570
15 0.9708 28 0.5439
16 0.9364 29 0.5335
17 0.8938 30 0.5252
18 0.8472 31 0.5187
19 0.8000 32 0.5137
20 0.7548 33 0.5099
21 0.7132 34 0.5071
22 0.6761 35 0.5049
23 0.6437 36 0.5034
24 0.6159 37 0.5023
25 0.5925 38 0.5016
Which, again, at the time of writing, the honor roll calculator is showing that, for me, "Your merit is: 34.8151
Your Level-Up Factor is: 0.5053 (leveling-up 1.9791x faster than without the Honor Roll)"
The honor roll reflected some fantastic mathematical geekery and a lot of statistical masturbation which some of us really enjoyed, but it had a few unintended side-effects: Despite tools to calculate your score for you, it became quite tricky to understand exactly what your level would be at any given point, and of course posting a new write-up would be a nail-biting-worthy affair, as it per definition started at a reputation of zero, which in some cases might take your merit down enough to nudge you into a lower level-up factor, which might lead you to lose a level (albeit temporary) when you post a write-up... Not a great place to be, and actually quite a disheartening experience overall.
One of the other unintended side-effects was that some people (myself included) started culling off their badly performing write-ups, in the battle to get ever-closer to that perfect 0.5 level-up factor. Some noders believed that the Honor Roll posed a genuine challenge and pushed towards raising the bar here on E2, but others felt that it took some of the irreverence and fun out of E2 - Poetry, for example, is received with a lot of mixed emotions, always attracting a lot of downvotes (or perhaps it's just me and my lack at writing the stuff...), whereas long factual pieces would almost be guaranteed multiple Chings and a significantly positive reputation.
XP/GP system (2008 - )
Then, late in 2008, the experience and levels system was simplified significantly. The mathematics went out the window, and you now only had to worry about 2 numbers: your XP and your number of write-ups. Of course, seeing how easy it was to receive XP under the old systems - often for things that had nothing to do with your actual quality as a writer - The Powers that Be decided to take a long, hard look at the experience points system, and devised a much fairer system indeed.
Under the 10/2008 system, you could gain XP by posting a new write-up (+5xp per w/u), by receiving a C! on a write-up (+20xp per C!), and by receiving upvotes on write-ups (+1xp per vote). The only way of losing XP is if a write-up you wrote gets deleted - in which case you lose the 5xp gained from posting it in the first place.
In addition to XP - which were now tightly tied to your prowess as a writer, E2 introduced GP (it has never been officially stated what the 'G' in GP stands for, but seeing as how you only really benefit from GP's by spending them in the E2 Gift Shop, I think it's probably fair to assume the G stands for Gift, so GP are Gift Points). If you're level 2, you can invest your GPs into buying votes, C!s, or giving them (or GP) away to other noders (depending on levels and availability, etc)
Finally, the new batch of updates increased the number of levels attainable from just over a dozen to infinity - all levels beyond 91 are named 'Transcendant', and there are quite a few levels where you level-up without changing your title (levels 19-21, for example, you're a Poobah).
New October 2008 level-up requirements:
Level Level Title XP Req WU Req Votes C!
0 Initiate 0 0 0 0
1 Novice 500 10 50 0
2 Acolyte 900 20 50 0
3 Scribe 1500 30 50 0
4 Wordsmith 2300 40 50 1
5 Crafter 3300 50 50 1
6 Artificer 4500 60 50 1
7 Chronicler 5900 70 50 1
8 Encyclopedist 7500 80 50 1
9 Archivist 9300 90 50 1
10 Polymath 11300 100 50 1
11 Literatus 13500 110 50 1
12 Laureate 16000 120 50 1
13 Guardian of the Word 18500 130 50 1
14 Protector of the Art 21000 140 50 1
15 Keeper of the Seal 23500 150 50 1
16 Panjandrum 26000 160 50 1
17 Panjandrum 28500 170 50 1
18 Panjandrum 31000 180 50 1
19 Poobah 33500 190 50 1
20 Poobah 36000 200 50 1
21 Poobah 38500 210 50 1
22 Grand Poobah 41000 220 50 1
23 Grand Poobah 43500 230 50 1
24 Grand Poobah 46000 240 50 1
25 Vizier 48500 250 50 1
26 Vizier 51000 260 50 1
27 Vizier 53500 270 50 1
28 Grand Vizier 56000 280 50 1
29 Grand Vizier 58500 290 50 1
30 Grand Vizier 61000 300 50 1
31 Optimate 63500 310 50 1
32 Optimate 66000 320 50 1
33 Optimate 68500 330 50 1
34 Princeps 71000 340 50 1
35 Princeps 73500 350 50 1
36 Princeps 76000 360 50 1
37 Hegemon 78500 370 50 1
38 Hegemon 81000 380 50 1
39 Hegemon 83500 390 50 1
40 Monarch 86000 400 50 1
41 Monarch 88500 410 50 1
42 Monarch 91000 420 50 1
43 Divine Monarch 93500 430 50 1
44 Divine Monarch 96000 440 50 1
45 Divine Monarch 98500 450 50 1
46 Renunciant 101000 460 50 1
47 Renunciant 103500 470 50 1
48 Renunciant 106000 480 50 1
49 Mystic 108500 490 50 1
50 Mystic 111000 500 50 1
51 Mystic 113500 510 50 1
52 Soothsayer 116000 520 50 1
53 Soothsayer 118500 530 50 1
54 Soothsayer 121000 540 50 1
55 Visionary 123500 550 50 1
56 Visionary 126000 560 50 1
57 Visionary 128500 570 50 1
58 Seer 131000 580 50 1
59 Seer 133500 590 50 1
60 Seer 136000 600 50 1
61 Prophet 138500 610 50 1
62 Prophet 141000 620 50 1
63 Prophet 143500 630 50 1
64 Sage 146000 640 50 1
65 Sage 148500 650 50 1
66 Sage 151000 660 50 1
67 Enlightened One 153500 670 50 1
68 Enlightened One 156000 680 50 1
69 Enlightened One 158500 690 50 1
70 Ageless Master 161000 700 50 1
71 Ageless Master 163500 710 50 1
72 Ageless Master 166000 720 50 1
73 Immortal 168500 730 50 1
74 Immortal 171000 740 50 1
75 Immortal 173500 750 50 1
76 Bodhisattva 176000 760 50 1
77 Bodhisattva 178500 770 50 1
78 Bodhisattva 181000 780 50 1
79 Divinity 183500 790 50 1
80 Divinity 186000 800 50 1
81 Divinity 188500 810 50 1
82 Demigodhead 191000 820 50 1
83 Demigodhead 193500 830 50 1
84 Demigodhead 196000 840 50 1
85 Godling 198500 850 50 1
86 Godling 201000 860 50 1
87 Godling 203500 870 50 1
88 Avatar 206000 880 50 1
89 Avatar 208500 890 50 1
90 Avatar 211000 900 50 1
91 Transcendent 213500 910 50 1
At the time of writing this, there are 1278 Initiates, 247 Novices, 85 Acolytes, 71 Scribes, 54 Wordsmiths, 61 Crafters, 31 Artificers, 36 Chroniclers, 20 Encyclopedists, 31 Archivists, 22 Polymaths, 14 Literatuses, 14 Laureates, 16 Guardians of the Word, 14 Protectors of the Art, 11 Keepers of the Seal, 19 Panjandrums, nine Poobahs, 15 Grand Poobahs, two Viziers, three Grand Viziers, three Optimates, two Hegemons, one Monarch, one Renunciant, one Seer, one Prophet, one Sage and one Godhead.
But what about the editors?
Now, if they give you the keys to the janitor's office, you've got enough crazy things on your plate, but of course, it comes with perks, too... Or at least, it used to... I was an editor for a while, and back then; as an editor, you'd get access to the Voting Pit Stop, where you can top up your votes with another 500 at the click of a button, and your well of Ching never runs dry - I had 3, a number which'd decrease to 1, but then stay on 1. Ah, those were the days.
Of course, those days have changed, too, and I have on good authority from a current editor that they get the same 50 votes and 1 C! like the rest of us. Aw...
A note on this write-up
There's a strong feeling within E2 that you're not supposed to node about noding, but I thought it was a bit sad that this bit of history seemed to be about to get lost in the mists of time. Also, parts of this write-up are based on my (somewhat hazy) memory, so if you have a better recollection of dates etc, please do let me know!
Of course, all you really need to know about all of this is that The voting system doesn't work because I'm drunk and that fucks it up...
Note... I've got a load of messages about this w/u sitting in my inbox, and I'm slowly working my way through them to further correct this piece. Thanks everybody!