Sneaky ways to improve your KudoZ statistics

philgoddard wrote:
Anyway, I recently discovered the statistics feature, which I think is only available to members. It tells you all kinds of fascinating things, like which languages and subject areas you get the largest proportion of agrees in, and how many people have had the effrontery to disagree with you.
I do several European languages into English, and I was surprised by the differences in scores between languages. My hit rate (ie the proportion of times my answer was selected by the asker) was significantly lower in Spanish. I hope this wasn't because of any difference in linguistic ability - I think it was just that so much Spanish gets translated, and so many translators do it, that there are likely to be more answers per question so you have less chance of being chosen.

ildiko wrote:

I just saw yet another sneaky way to improve your KudoZ statistics. A fairly easy term was posted and marked 'NON-PRO' by the asker himself. He was right; it was a 'questions that can be answered by any bilingual person without the aid of a dictionary'. One answer was submitted within 7 minutes, at max. confidence level. At the same time, the very user who submitted the answer voted for reclassification as PRO. Now all she needs is 2 more votes and most likely her reward will be 4 PRO points for her efforts. I, for one, find this method neither professional nor fair, and hope that staff might consider adjusting the system so that no one can abuse it this way.

Rob Grayson wrote:

As a corollary to this, I would say that the number of KudoZ points a user has racked up is not necessarily a good indicator of expertise. Some of the highest point scorers in my pair persistently post answers that are 100% wrong. I can only assume that they manage to garner such large numbers of points through (a) answering so many questions that they get some right, and (b) managing to fool quite a few askers into believing that their answers are right.

ildiko wrote:

I just saw yet another sneaky way to improve your KudoZ statistics. A fairly easy term was posted and marked 'NON-PRO' by the asker himself. He was right; it was a 'questions that can be answered by any bilingual person without the aid of a dictionary'. One answer was submitted within 7 minutes, at max. confidence level. At the same time, the very user who submitted the answer voted for reclassification as PRO. Now all she needs is 2 more votes and most likely her reward will be 4 PRO points for her efforts. I, for one, find this method neither professional nor fair, and hope that staff might consider adjusting the system so that no one can abuse it this way.

ildiko wrote:

I just saw yet another sneaky way to improve your KudoZ statistics. A fairly easy term was posted and marked 'NON-PRO' by the asker himself. He was right; it was a 'questions that can be answered by any bilingual person without the aid of a dictionary'. One answer was submitted within 7 minutes, at max. confidence level. At the same time, the very user who submitted the answer voted for reclassification as PRO. Now all she needs is 2 more votes and most likely her reward will be 4 PRO points for her efforts. I, for one, find this method neither professional nor fair, and hope that staff might consider adjusting the system so that no one can abuse it this way.