Reputation Algorithm Change

Happy New Year!

To celebrate we just changed the way we calculate reputation.  This will result in a reputation increase for 41 users immediately and will be much nicer going forward.

You used to gain one point for a successful build and lose four points for a failed build.

Sadly there were quite a few users in the negative.  The negative numbers appeared to occur due to high concentrations of failed builds occurring infrequently.  In other words because someone was configuring the CI server.

So rather than adjust number of points for failure we opted to disallow going negative.  Thus if you're doing configuration you can at least have a lower bound.

We recalculated everyone's reputation from the beginning of time.  For example if your reputation was -3 because:

1. You failed a build and lost 4 points = Reputation -4
2. Then you passed a build and gained 1 = Reputation -3

Then effective immediately your reputation will change to 1.  In other words the with the new algorithm it should have been:

1. You failed a build and stayed at zero because you can't go negative = Reputation 0
2. Then you passed a build and gained 1 = Reputaiton 1

Hopefully this will produce a slightly less shameful 2013.  Happy New Year!