The only thing I have a problem with is the absolutely microscopic number of votes. The most votes in the category ORDS has Dietmar - 134. In APEX it is 98 votes for Morten. Even Jari Lane who is very well known in the APEX community and has helped numerous people with his solutions has received all together 103 votes - obviously almost the half of it as down-voitng. To my point of view this is incredible. But if I think back and do a comparison with my own experience then this is actually normal. In the last seven years I have received more than 9.000 emails from the community asking either for access to my workspace, my Demo Application or asking for an APEX solution of some kind. As a result of that I have created almost 4.000 accounts and answered 95% of those emails. But all together, maybe 50 receivers responded saying thank you.
Conclusion:
Shame on us. We are lazy and cynic. We are constantly talking about how big the APEX community and how strong it is. Maybe, because there are a few people out there like Dietmar, Jari, Jürgen Schuster, Morten and few others. The rest seem to be there only when they need something.
Everyone is selfish to a greater or lesser degree - only with maturity does one learn that "it is better to give than to receive".
ReplyDeleteWe see the same thing on Stackoverflow all the time - people ask a question (often a "do my job for me" type question), get an answer, and MAYBE they'll come back and say thanks by marking the answer as accepted, but quite often they disappear.
Just a fact of life, I think. All we can do is get the word out as much as possible and each do the best we can.
I don't understand the downvotes. It's hard to imagine anyone having a personal grievance against any of these people to the point of actually deciding to downvote!
I agree that there just simply ought to be more votes, not just in APEX category but in general. In APEX category there is just more of a difference between number of votes and how active the community is otherwise. I know it has been a surprise to many that APEX is not in the lead in number of votes.
ReplyDeleteAs Jeff said, it's probably a fact of life that many seem to think they are so busy that they can't spare time to say thanks. I think it is everywhere, not just on the net, that we see less "politeness", though the net may be worse than "real life." We don't have to like it and we don't have to accept it, but we may have to live with it and just be content to fight "impoliteness" wherever we can ;-)
The downvotes I also find it hard to imagine anyone downvoting out of personal grievances. I think it more likely that downvotes occur for one of two reasons:
1) Change of mind. The voting system unfortunately is such that once you have upvoted someone, you cannot remove the vote if you change your mind, you can only change it from upvote to downvote.
2) Misunderstood "help". Fans upvoting their own favorite and downvoting the competition in order to "help" their own.
I am daily calculating voting results, including what the ranking would have been if only positive votes are counted:
http://www.kibeha.dk/2015/10/oracle-database-developer-choice-awards.html
Until very recently the APEX community has actually been very polite with very few downvotes. Now Jari Laine has dropped to 4th place according to score, but still 2nd place according to only positive votes.
My vote would be to pointedly ignore all downvotes and award the prize according to positive votes only :)
ReplyDeleteI like the way you vote (and think), Jeff. We will not let down-voting affect outcomes.
ReplyDeleteyes, this is true that many of us are using APEX on occasions when it is needed for our line of work. This is about the same as driving: we are driving only when we have to and there is no other way. Would this be shameful?
ReplyDeleteRegards,
vr