Ratings & Visibility

Have the staff stopped giving problems ratings? A few of the first problems I posted received ratings, which led to them being solved (or at least attempted) by a lot more members. But I've posted seven problems over the past week, and none of them have received a rating.

It's not the rating I care about so much, I'd just like to have some idea of whether anyone is even looking at my problems or not. Some have zero, one, or two solvers, but is that because they're the only ones who saw it, and the problem is relatively easy, or lots have seen it and/or tried it, and it's relatively difficult? I have no way of knowing.

Also, my feed seems to be "drying up." The "Best of" feeds in particular have slowed to a trickle. That could be because they're limited to "problems at or near my level." Should I just be following more people? Is that the solution?

Thanks all. I only pester because I love this site and want it to stay awesome.

#FeatureRequests

Easy Math Editor

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Markdown	Appears as
`italics` or `_italics_`	italics
`bold` or `__bold__`	bold
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1. numbered 2. list	numbered list
Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly
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Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `$` ... `$` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$

Comments

Hi Matt -

Regarding ratings: right now, problems only get ratings when a staff member attaches them to a topic. This is changing in the near future (as you can imagine, the tricky part is making sure that your early problem solvers don't have their ratings affected wildly + making sure we have the right topic for the problem, since ratings are per-topic.)
Regarding the number of people solving your problems: yes, it is mostly a matter of distribution and discovery—not that many people see your problems unless they are reshared by one of the "best of" feeds. We have a number of changes coming this week (hopefully) that are designed to improve exposure for problems that we don't necessarily want to reshare to everyone via the "best of" feeds but which are still very good and should be seen by those who are interested.
Regarding the number of problems that you are seeing:
1. you should follow more people, for sure. Check out the firehose to see who is sharing or resharing interesting problems.
2. We are testing a number of different "filters" on the best of feeds see what is the optimal range of difficulty for users. This is a series of randomized tests, you might be in one of the "narrower" groups.
3. We're are also running an experiment now focused on publishing slightly fewer, but higher quality and more interesting problems. The motivations here should be self-evident—it isn't obvious at all what mixture of quality and quantity is optimal (no, max for both is not a valid answer :)).

Silas Hundt Staff - 7 years, 5 months ago

The filters idea is interesting. I think instead of deciding what the optimal range of difficulty is for the users, you could leave it up to them. I saw this on a chess website where you could search for opponents based on the ratings you specified. Similarly, I would suggest that you could gives us a bar where we would specify how much the rating of the problem should deviate from your current rating. For example if someone had a rating of 1500, he would type in 100 to view all recent problems having a rating 1400 to 1600. You could keep a limit to prevent a level 1 user from attempting a level 5 problem, if you want.

Siddharth Brahmbhatt - 7 years, 5 months ago

It would seem to me that the staff should perhaps appoint some of the most active members to be able to assign problems to the 'Best of __' feeds since I've noticed the same problem

Josh Rowley - 7 years, 5 months ago

I'm not sure that's the best solution. I think it's a combination of me finding and following those "active members," and the staff finding a better way to assign problems initial ratings.

Matt Enlow - 7 years, 5 months ago

But the problem is not only you finding other people's problems but other people finding yours, which they only will if they follow you, but to follow you they need to be aware of your problems which they won't be if the Best of _ feeds don't share them, since a large majority almost exclusively currently only follow these

Josh Rowley - 7 years, 5 months ago

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$