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A noder writes:
    just a question, this has a high rep (+33 -5) because it spent a long time in new writeups. how quickly do they go up? do they do better if they get C!d immediately? how often do they get voted on again? all my reps depend on how quickly they were C!d, and the speed of noding and C!ing at the time. So rep is no indication of the quality of my nodes. does this even out over time?

Just a question, eh? Noding well and noding often can’t be beat for gaining up votes. Voting ebbs and flows over time depending on many factors. One that you mentioned is the amount of time a write up stays in the new write up lists. Others that come to mind are the likelihood of another noder adding a write up to the same node. If it’s supportive of what is already there then it may gain votes, if it’s not or superceded it the voting usually heads downward. This is where maintaining your writing can really solidify your work.

Your XP grows exponentially.On many occasions and for different reasons noders will go back and update write ups. Perhaps they came across some new information they think is important to include. Some will review their write ups with the lowest rep. For example my mission drive on E2 at one time was to node definitions that weren’t in the Webster 1913 dictionary. Most of them were three to four line definitions. At this time there was no Voting/experience system. We were a bunch of dilly heads noding for numbers back in the day.

It's important for all noders to try to update two or three times a month. A recent one I worked on was a three line definition and it was at a rep of 0 (+8/-8). After it was updated it took several weeks for someone to come across it. Happily it was a user who was quite puzzled at the rep and cooled it. It will slowly gain in reputation now and the down voting has stopped. That’s the goal. The most astounding one I updated to date is dogfight. It was discovered and put on the Page of Cool within 24 hours.

And lastly on behalf of the benefits of updating. A four year old write up that began as a small definition was updated a couple of years ago when it’s rep was probably +2. Today it’s rep is well over 70.

So to answer your questions about how quickly do write ups go up in reputation I think the best answer is that the true quality of a write up is revealed over time. Hence the adage: Node for the ages.


    wow! Your case for "update your writeups" is strong! I think I'll do that some time. What is the main influence of a node being found and voted on do you think? searching, following softlinks or browsing through a noder's work?
Aren’t newbie noders just adorable? Well that’s hard to say since there is no way at the present to track that kind of data. If I were to make an educated guess it’s by browsing a noder’s work. It’s just an opinion but I think many people realize that the user list is based on a ranking by reputation and tend to read users work based on that.

Seeing a user’s name appear regularly in the new write up list may also prompt readers to browse an author’s work and seeing their work in the Cool Archive on a regular basis helps too. These are only a few reasons where noding well and noding often probably pays off.

Topical noding has some advantages as well. If it’s a popular subject it may get read more often too and that’s okay. The best write-ups that are timely are also brimming with factual information giving it a strong foothold in the database. I hope this helps!


Minutes of the meetings from the dark dank caverns of Content_Salvage

Thirteen write-ups were submitted to the Content Salvage Team this month. A big thumbs up to Eidolos for the explication of e.e.cummings' i sing of Olaf glad and big!
Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts! Thanks for the campfire song flashbacks icicle, flamingweasel, and Tem42 and their node Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms.
Worms are full of protein! Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy, wuzzy worms--yum yum :)

Oh man the Buffalo Chicken Pizza just got here and I gotta go... cya!