I didn't notice any number changes in the forum I visit most frequently for the last few days - does the Top Answerers correctly represent statistics or it had been frozen?

Thanks, I dropped about 14 answers, so I guess it started to move :)

is it frozen again?

frozen may be the wrong state description.  assuming I am not hallucinating.

http://forums.asp.net/1146.aspx seems only to be moving down (if my 62 year old memory is correct)

some should go up will others go down, at least that is normal

Regards ~~ Gerry

gerrylowry:

http://forums.asp.net/1146.aspx seems only to be moving down (if my 62 year old memory is correct)

some should go up will others go down, at least that is normal

???? one day later, both Microsoft and non-Microsoft either unmoved or fewer was the only direction.

(it's like new solutions are not getting marked as answer or

 new solutions are getting marked but not added to the table

 that generates the Microsoft and non-Microsoft lists).

g.

I don't see the fact that the individual numbers are unchanging or moving down to be indicative of any sort of problem, since it's a floating 30-day window.  The fact that they are changing at all indicates that the job to compile the stats is running.  But we will try to look at this next week.

Hi Terri, you are probably right.

I have reported it because of its apparently anomalous behaviour.

Because of the floating 30-day window, it normally takes a shape that is more akin to a sine wave while now its statistical shape is more like pebbles rollling very slow downhill.

Perhaps it is simply a wierd period ... I think it's more than the ASP.NET MVC forum but I could be wrong.

Thank you for investigating.

Gerry

update:  apparent weirdness still there one day later.

At http://forums.asp.net/1146.aspx everyone is either same as yesterday or lower; no one has moved up.

Probably just a coincidence.

Nevertheless, it is strange especially when you look at names like paul.vencill (20), Augi (11), ricka6 (40), KeFang Chen - MSFT (33), bradwils (12), et al.

g.

Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is often best.

Since the numbers are moving at all, this suggests that the job to calculate those numbers is running as Terri noted.

So the simplest explanation for this phenomenon is probably that those members that you see either stalled or decreasing in answer points are simply not posting and/or being awarded answer marks for their recent posts.

If i look at recent posts from those members, i don't see any new posts from some of them in the past couple/few weeks.  So some of them have been somewhat inactive in the past 30 days.  For the others that have still been somewhat active, i see very few posts of theirs that have been marked as an answer over at least the past week (i didn't look further back than that).

Since the job that updates the answer marks runs daily (and looks back at a 30 day window) , any period of inactivity even if brief (just a couple/few days even) is often sufficient for the numbers to start to decline.

So based on what I'm seeing for recent activity, i would actually expect that their numbers would not be rising and would more likely be falling.

Hello Mike,

you are almost certainly correct ... if forced to bet, I would bet on your theory.

I am just trying to be helpful by reporting something that looks weird ...

sometimes my reports are valid ... e.g.:

     http://forums.asp.net/t/1487490.aspx
     "my posts" is "everybody's posts"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

"When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects,
 the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis
 that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates
 the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question".

While Wikipedia is by no means authoritive,
it appears that your interpretation of Ockham's razor
does not completely explain Ockham's point.

Regards,
Gerry

It looks like Mike is correct.

The some going up, some going down behaviour has returned.

A minor change might make this more interesting for nerds like me:  the ability to drill down to the underlying details.

Thus if for example Brad Wilson has 12 today and 12 tomorrow, one could see that one fell of the back and an another was tacked on to the newest end.

It is amazing those things about which nerds like me can get obsessed.

Our attention to detail is probably what makes us good developers (caution:  my opinion may be biased).

Regards,
Gerry (Lowry)