Is there a link to social status?
Are there other pages like this that are ‘hidden’?
http://www.java-gaming.org/?action=social
It’s not really hidden. The link shows up if you click on “You have received ## medals.” If you haven’t received any medals yet, well help someone out already!
Yes.
Unhide them! Want to see!
[quote]Not won any medals yet? Change your personality. Everybody wins!
[/quote]
Lol.
Well, okay, one of them you can find next to the ‘social rankings’ link, so it isn’t really hidden.
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?action=dialog
You can browse through it, wasting a few minutes of your time.
It will be the foundation of the JGO dating service. 
I have help some people already. They have even said thank you. I made it into the top 32 most awesome members (whatever that means). I can’t help it if that don’t give me medals.
Nothing like hearing about something interesting and not being able to access it. 
Dating?? Great… now my fiance is going ban me from this site.
I don’t think she will approve of who I’m getting matched with either.
[quote]top 32 most awesome members (whatever that means)
[/quote]
thats actually the only one I wondered about
I was curious how I got in there, too. ???
It’s actually a beast of a query. It calculates everybodies ‘weight’ on how important the medals are they awarded others.
Now that everybody has this weight-value, we can, for every member, sum up the weighted-value of all received medals.
Taking post-count and online-time into account, you can make an assumption on what their score should (roughly) have been.
Subtracting that from the actual score, and you get a value that goes negative if you did worse, and positive if you did better.
From that list, I pick the best 32, multiply the value by 13.37 and raise it to the power of 1.8, which doesn’t change a thing, really.
I’ve always wondered how you were computing that. But how do you decide “how important the medals are they awarded others”?
That’s actually quite simple. When you award them in bursts, the cumulative score of those bursts becomes less (!) than when a single medal awarded in a longer period.
In short: when you hand out lots of medals to others, the value your medals have for their scores drops, rapidly.
So if I were to not award a medal to anyone in 10 years, I would be able to completely medal nuke someone? xD
Nope 
You should know.
I never actually started counting
I rarely give out any, the most I’ve given to was Mickelukas for making such an awesome game and that was probably 3-4 medals :S
[quote]When you award them in bursts, the cumulative score of those bursts becomes less (!) than when a single medal awarded in a longer period.
[/quote]
The weighting is interesting. I can see that one’s “Awesome” status could change even if the number of Appreciates per posts remains stable. That was the ratio I had assumed underlay the calculation. Thus, I’ve been trying to make individual posts as helpful as possible, and to avoid being “chatty”.
My only quibble with the quoted part of your algorithm is that if an OP posts a question, and gets several useful answers, all of which are genuinely appreciated, then, if the OP registers that appreciation in a single session (most likely how they will be read), it will depreciate the appreciation value. Is this desired?
Have there been any ill effects from overuse of appreciations? The only instance I can think of that might qualify is when someone only appreciates praise, such as “That’s great!”, and passes over appreciating more truly helpful answers. While this is probably just meant as a nice way of saying “thank you” for a compliment, it could also lead to the generation of insincere praise posting.
I’ve gotten a couple Appreciations for getting off a good one-liner or joke. (Thank you ra4king!) Is that a desired outcome? More humor is a good thing, generally.
Maybe a “Useful Post” medal would should be considered? I try to use the “Appreciation” as a Usefulness indicator, to highlight something others might also value reading. But that wouldn’t necessarily lead to a “Most Awesome” ranking, but rather a “Most Helpful” ranking, (which is what I aspire to–to help and be helped.)
Hard to go very far with this without some sort of semantic evaluation of the posts themselves which in turn implies shared social values and, if abused, big brother.
The algorithm is based on the assumption that the gathered statistics are flawed in many ways, yet reveal a hard to measure concept: contribution.
The word ‘appreciation’ can hold many meanings for the giver, which might even be interpreted otherwise by the receiver: useful, helpful, insightful, thankful, hilarious, cunning, being impressed, etc. Regardless the intention or the interpretation of the appreciation, it is likely to be a positive signal for both parties. People feel generous in publically stating their gratitude and take pride in the medals they received.
There is a mismatch between the concepts of being appreciated and being awarded a medal. There is a rather low emotional boundary for anybody to show their appreciation towards somebody else, while knowingly awarding somebody a medal would be quickly considered over-the-top. This mismatch is intentional, to send an even stronger positive signal to the person that put some effort in contributing in the topic, even if it was ‘just’ a joke.
In the end, it all boils down to positive feedback. Stimulating people to help others, encouraging a friendly community.