Dear Editors:
Bitter people exist. Loud people exist. They have ideas about quality, efficiency, information, art. There are meek people too. There are also pleased and satisfied people, but they're a lot less likely to do much shouting because if they don't feel embittered, wronged, or put-upon then they're less likely to speak.
But the way I see it, no person in this community-oriented website is better than any other person, and no person's idea is better than any other person's idea. That statement falls under the presumption that this is, indeed, a community-oriented website and not a heartless encyclopedia of sporadic, inconsistent, and incomplete information made basically obsolete by other incredibly obvious resources. I understand that there are people who disagree with this presumption, because they see E2 differently. That's okay. We all see E2 differently.
The leveling system on E2 is directly shaped by the voting system. Each time anyone casts a vote or throws a C! they're making a decision, and the design of the voting system is to bring incentive with that decision. Not power, ability, rank, or anything else. Incentive, and encouragement. If there is any power whatsoever within the voting system, it's the power held by the voter to make a choice, to build a writeup, to build a user's level so as to grant them more privileges, to build a user's confidence, to build a community, build build build.
Editors, you made a decision in your changes to the XP/voting system. I'm sure it was a calculated, well-intended, well-thought decision by the person or people responsible for the decision. And I wanted to let you know that it doesn't matter much - E2 is a mob, and it will grow as a mob, regardless of the mathematics, the proportions, and the cynics. But more importantly I wanted to let you know that whatever the hell we're building, I support it. And that not everyone is complaining about it.
Highest regards, just another (good) day,
- gail