I hope everyone noticed this Javascript question:
Cheating will not be allowed
Cheating will not be allowed, nor do we see any need to spell out what cheating is. You all have the common sense to know what amounts to cheating.
One of our experts had the power to vote. They created a new account. The new account answered questions, and with the other account the user voted money to themselves. We noticed that 2 accounts were withdrawing money to the same PayPal account. When confronted, the expert tried a number of arguments:
1.) Where did you write that I could not have 2 accounts?
2.) The second account really belongs to my brother, who shares a house with me. He uses the same computer, has the same IP address, and uses the same PayPal address.
We shut down the second account. We temporarily suspended the main account. The expert apologized and promised to be careful in the future. We turned the main account back on.
However:
1.) if we catch you cheating, we reserve the right to shut down your account completely.
2.) if you cheat, do not ask us where we wrote down the fact that you should not be cheating.
Do not be fools. Use common sense.
Expect vast changes
The last few months I've been working a contract at Shermans Travel. We have been rebuilding the site, and changing the design. The old site was done with CakePHP, the new site is done with Ruby On Rails. My contract took me away from TMA, but the contract ends on December 22nd. I will be able to re-focus on sites like WP Questions, working on TMA full time for 6 weeks. You can expect vast changes.
The experts now take responsibility for the community
I am pleased to see so many people voting. I am also pleased when experts take the time to explain their votes. I think the whole community is healthier when the experts take responsibility for the outcomes. I plan to put more of the operations of the site under the control of expert voting.
Experts now vote a lot
Two months ago it was difficult to get anyone to vote. Sometimes only 3 or 4 experts would vote all month. They would only vote 5 or 6 times a month. I think the highest number I ever saw was 12 votes in one month. Then we started offering a small incentive for voting: triple weightings in the payouts from the Community Pot. And now, suddenly, experts are voting a lot:
and when you look at the payouts, you can sort of tell which experts are getting the triple weightings:
Best answers of the month
We are now giving out an award for any one of the experts who gets one of the 5 top voted answers on the site, during the last 30 days. The icon appears on an experts profile page. For instance, here is Gabriel Reguly's profile page (he has won all 4 of the awards that we currently offer):
The icon links to our Best Answers Of The Month page:
