node-fu (thing)

node-fu is the term coined by E2 noders to describe the quality of their contribution to E2. Often you see noders bragging in the Chatterbox, "My node-fu is better than your node-fu." But is it?

An objective method is necessary to determine a noder's node-fu based on what is a true contribution, not on ego.

At first sight it may seem that XP is a good node-fu measure. Indeed, noders are encouraged to increase their XP. However, XP is the measure of the noder's experience and is, to a large extent, influenced by the length of time the noder has been a noder. A noder with a certain node-fu will never catch up with another noder's XP if the latter has the same node-fu, contributes the same amount of the same quality of nodes during the same delta of time but has started a year (or month, etc) before the former.

To compare your node-fu to other noders' node-fu a relative measurement is necessary. It has to measure your personal contribution to E2, as well as the amount of help you have offered other noders. And it has to account for any negative/destructive influence you may have on E2.

You can calculate your node-fu in two steps:

• Determine your simple node-fu;
• Determine your compound node-fu.

Simple node-fu

Your simple node-fu is the measure of your personal contribution to E2. It can be calculated by a simple formula:

SNF = XP / NC

SNF = simple node-fu
XP = your experience points
NC = node count, i.e., the number of your write-ups.

Both your XP and your NC are published on your home node. They are publicly viewable. That means you can calculate your own SNF, and the SNF of other noders, and see how you measure up. The simple node-fu is the only objective measure you have because the variables of the compound node-fu are generally known only to each noder personally.

There are three essential ways of increasing your node-fu (both, simple and compound):

• Write high quality nodes

  This is the most obvious of the three ways. High quality nodes are voted up, and you earn a certain percentage of your node rep as XP. Additionally, when high quality nodes are chinged, you earn extra XP.

• Use up all your votes every day

  While not available to level 1 noders (easily correctable with the above point), this actually favors less experienced noders who may not have enough experience to judge the quality of their own write-ups. Every day you use up all your votes, your XP increases by half the votes you had (that is in addition to any other XP you have earned while voting). Why does it favor lower-level noders? Because, believe it or not, it is easier to cast 20 votes in a day than 60, or 100, or even more.

• Nuke your bad nodes

This is the least obvious and heavily underused method, mostly due to a confusion about the nuke process.

As you know, bad nodes are downvoted by other Everythingians. For every so many downvotes you receive (not give) you lose an XP. Further, Everything editors kill bad nodes (and the editors often are more critical than other noders, so they may kill bad nodes simply for being bad, even if their rep may not be low - that, by the way, is because editors have editor-fu). For every kill you lose the 1 XP you earned by creating the write-up.

Now, guess what every successful writer spends most of his time on?

Writing? Wrong!

Cutting the crap? You got it!

The quality that distinguishes a good writer from a wannabe is the ability of going through what he/she has written and mercilessly deleting his/her own words. The best writer is his own best critic.

E2 recognizes this. If you go through your own write-ups and find the ones likely to be killed, and post an E2 Nuke Request, your write-up will be deleted. That's different from killed. You will receive no penalty. Hence, you will increase your node-fu (and diminish the risk of having the write-up killed, which would decrease your node-fu.

Compound node-fu

Your compound node-fu is something only you can calculate. It can increase or decrease your total node-fu. It works like compound interest, at the rate of 7% daily for the last 10 days. It accounts for your contribution to E2 at large.

To start, calculate your simple node-fu as above.

Then calculate your HC and your BC.

• Your HC is your help count. It is the total number of days, within the last ten days that you helped somebody else to node better:

  • You have /msged someone about a spelling error politely, and he actually corrected the error;
  • You have /msged someone (again, politely) with a suggestion on how to improve his node, and he followed through;
  • You have helped a less experienced noder by answering his question in the Chatterbox (and, no, RTFM, does not count here).
  Things like that. Your HC is the total number of the last ten days you did that (even if you did it more than once in a day, count the day only once). Hence, your HC can be anywhere within 0 and 10. You can give yourself less than 1.0 for a day you helped a little but could have helped more. Remember, this is for your own self-evaluation. If you cheat, you're only cheating yourself.

• Your BC is your borg count for the last ten days. If you were never borged within the last ten days, your BC = 0. If you were borged a thousand time within the last ten days, your BC = 1000. It can be anything between 0 and infinity (well, actually, there is an upper limit since you can only be borged once in 10 minutes or so).

Now, count your TI, or total interest for the last ten days:

• If your SNF is greater than 0, TI = HC - BC;
• If your SNF is less than 0, TI = BC - HC;
• If your SNF equals 0, so does your compound node-fu, so you're done.

Now. count your IF (interest factor) by raising 1.07 to the power of your TI.

Finally, calculate your CNF (compound node-fu): CNF = SNF * IF

That's all, folks.