The Case of The Magic Rep

[Scout_Fox]

(Note: The images were taken at 3pm MDT on the 11th but posted later in the day. If you check now you will not see the same values. Both images were taken at the same time though so the logic holds)

 

Ok this is something that has been tickling at me for a bit now but I could never quite nail it down so this week I decided to actually pay attention to it. There's really no major significance (I think) other than an interesting observation.

These are the two images I will be using to explain the confuzzle. The numbers are color-coded based on the person so that you can follow them from picture to picture. The rep values are being added together from top to bottom for each person on the top image. The number closest to the bottom in each color is the total for that person (and is also shown on the bottom image).

So what I had been half noticing for a bit was that each days winner seemed to be underrepresented in each weeks total. This ranged from just a few reputation for some people to upwards of 65 for Experience this week. 

In the top image we have a screenshot of each days winner in the "Past Leaders" section. For 4 of the 5 people on the "Popular Contributors" board what I am explaining holds true so they were each given a color. I also included robardin with purple even though they are not included on the board of 5.

On every day that that person with a color showed up they have a number value next to their placement that represents their total so far, starting from the top. So for example Experience has 31 on the 10th and 42 on the 9th so the box there shows the sum of those at 73. The sum of each persons values is shown next to their "week" value on the bottom image.

As you notice in the bottom image everyone who was given a number has a higher total than their "week" value. Now also remember that this leaderboard only shows the top 3 placements. For every day that they weren't on the leaderboard it is likely they still got a decent amount of reputation. So, realistically, the colored values would be even higher since they are only taking into account top 3 placements (this explains why Condensations totals to 70 on the leaderboard the rest of the days of non top 3 placements make up the difference).

So the first thing I thought here was that maybe the "Popular Contributors" section includes the current day and the past 6 unlike the "Past Leaders" section that includes the last 7 days (and as a result not including the current). This seems to solve I Am A Fish's total, Ghanderflaffle's total, and Chasmgoat's total as their value for the 4th would be removed and then rep from days not on the top 3 would likely make up the difference to make it seem their full value was there.

However, this still wouldn't solve Experience's lower count as their total does not include any rep from the 4th. It would also seem to make robardin (in purple) the 5th place leader as they had a first and second finish the 5th and 6th and that combined with other days would seem to be higher than Chasmgoat if the value from the 4th was removed.

My next thought was that maybe it was totalling it incorrectly. To make it easy I chose to just look at the 7th-9th in the Activity Feed (a collection of all the posts and status' and the like that someone posts all over the Shard so that peeps can see what you are up to!) for Experience and to try to count them manually to see if the rep numbers totalled to the amount for those 3 days (145).

I noticed that the "All activity" section sometimes put things out of order so I went by individual sections only counting rep earned from Wednesday to Friday (7th-9th).

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Now I was just even more confused though. All of this summed to 76. Even adding on a highly generous miscount of 15 that is still nowhere close to the projected 145. So now I had magically appearing rep when adding manually and magically disappearing rep when going from the leaderboard to the "Popular Contributors" section. How is it that there is such a large discrepancy?

One thought I had was that rep given to a post from that day at a later point would add on. However, since I had had looked at every post, status, or image that could earn rep from these dates and still come up short that didn't seem to be the case as it would have been included in the total.

Another thought was that rep added onto previous posts would be added to that days total instead since it was technically earned in that "day" just on older content. However, it did seem unlikely that people were 1) reading stuff from previous days since conversations tend to stay reasonably current or 2) even if they were, liking that older content enough to give it 69 rep in that 3 day span. And looking at a few other leaders posts and stuff from the day they each won I also came up short.

So my other thought was that maybe it was a timezone difference. However, that wouldn't seem to be the case because however shifted my timezone was it would still show all the values on the same day. So, for example, if Experience was 14 hours ahead the "Past Leaders" and "Popular Contributors" section would both be adjusted for the shift, especially since it is past that day. And if that wasn't true were people winning the day and then losing it again because someone retroactively got more than them on that day in a different time zone? Or even retroactively got more than them from a different day? People on here come from all different places and timezones so it would seem difficult to be able to synchronize that but then wouldn't just choosing one timezone and going in 24 hours intervals for that zone (not worrying about the different dates in different places just that the 24 hour period was up) make more sense?

It also occured to me that perhaps the "Popular Contributors" went on exactly 7 days from the current moment in a minutes and seconds perspective. However, this still wouldn't account for why Experience's total was so much lower because the previous 7 days, or the current day and the past 6, or not all the values we used were well within that range. So how could it not be as high?

So at this point I was super confused. How does the rep count seem to be so much lower when you add it by hand if you are looking through each section that can earn rep? Also why do people get underrepresented in the "Popular Contributors" total by such a large amount when summing up the leaderboards? Is the "Popular Contributors" total more correct and the rest off? Whether you check by hand, check one leaderboard, or check another it should all be adding the same thing so how is it possible that they can be so incredibly different (76, 112, 176)? Where is all of this rep going (or ig even being added depending on which way you look at it)?

Again, more of a I kept noticing something wonky and finally figured out what it was than something actually crucial. I thought maybe someone might have an answer as to why all these totals are different or have noticed something similar so I figured it might be worth a post. But it's also quite possible I am completely missing something and am going to end up feeling pretty dumb soon lol.

So anyway, if you read through all that, thank you very much, here's a gold star: *gold star of awesomeness* 

Edited October 12, 2020 by Scout_Fox

[Chaos]

The Leaderboard goes off a specific timezone for its reset. The Popular Contributors does not, to my knowledge.

[Scout_Fox]

8 hours ago, Chaos said:

The Leaderboard goes off a specific timezone for its reset. The Popular Contributors does not, to my knowledge.

Yeah, that would seem to make the most sense. Just odd then that a leaders total in the Leaderboard from the past 5 days would sum to a higher value than what they had in the Popular Contributors of the week section (See the second picture. Especially when the Leaderboard only shows top 3 placements, it would likely be even higher most times).

If it was the 6th or 7th day they could reset at different times due to timezones but given the largest time difference is only 26 hours, 5 days is well within the limits of a week for Experience's total no matter what zones we happened to be in. If it's well within the week how does it manage to count different values?

Even odder still that if you manually add rep from the activity feed it doesn't even get anywhere close. It would seem to be magically added that way and magically removed the other way (although perhaps posts show different dates depending on the time zone?? I would think it would want to correct but perhaps it shows the time and date in terms of what time and date it was for your zone? Still though it seems everything would be adjusted then. Additionally, this would only solve the manual adding discrepancy and not the dual leaderboard one...)

Either way though just something odd I'd been noticing rather than the looming threat of invasion by piranha-headed, brain-melting, rainbow-colored, llama-birds (although no telling if we haven't been invaded already ) that would require a much larger panic force. Thx for the insight you were able to give

Edited October 13, 2020 by Scout_Fox

[Chaos]

I'm going to be honest, I don't really have time to dig as deeply into this as you did. The software works as it does I guess.

[Scout_Fox]

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

I'm going to be honest, I don't really have time to dig as deeply into this as you did. The software works as it does I guess.

12 hours ago, Scout_Fox said:

Either way though just something odd I'd been noticing rather than the looming threat of invasion by piranha-headed, brain-melting, rainbow-colored, llama-birds (although no telling if we haven't been invaded already ) that would require a much larger panic force. Thx for the insight you were able to give

Absolutely, completely understand. Was just putting it out there in case there was a quick answer (although... let's be realistic here lol when does that ever happen). Thx for the responses and all your work helping to keep this running for everyone. Hope you have a great rest (or start?) of your day