Experts Exchange rankings

angelIII,

As far as I'm concerned it would be OK to do this just once. I'm not too concerned how it changes over time as I would just like an idea of what the position is now.

I guess ameba is an obvious candidate for this sort of thing but I'm sure there are other's who have the skill and knowledge to do it.

One of the points of interest is the number people in the top 100 scorers who have not even achieved 1,000,000 in any individual zone. Perhaps they are jacks-of-all trades but masters of none - but of course that may not be the case. Anyhow the stats would be interesting.

Patrick

Patrick,

I love the idea of "Member trivia", and I too would be interested in seeing, say, the 10 highest-ranked
Experts site wide who do not have any Genius certs.

Regards,

Patrick

I presume I would open the "hof" rankings, check for all the member links, and for each of those links, check if you find any of these:
<div class="cert certLeft certSavant">
<div class="cert certRight certGenius">

resp the others to see what the highest rank is...

Patrick,

I was trawling through a few in the top 100 list and was surprised to see so many people who contributed to many zones and had achieved only a low level in any one zone. That came as a surprise to me as I expected every single one of the top 100 to be of 1st 'Genius' level at the very least. What's odd is that they are listed as of Genius status in the top 100 rankings despite not having achieved that level in any one zone. Somewhat misleading to say the least. It was that mis-ranking that got me wondering as to what was the broader picture.

If one looks at many zones there is not a single person who has accumulated 1,000,000 points. That suggests the number of Geniuses may far fewer than expected. It's be interesting to find out.

Patrick

angelIII,

No doubt something like that, but it's way outside my capabilities - thus the question.

Patrick

Patrick,

Well, the titles are being applied site wide now as well as in the zones.  So, if ExpertN has a total of 10 MM
points site wide but no zones in which she has 1 MM, the profile page will show a Savant title.

Patrick

Patrick,

I'd imagine the easiest way would be to loop through a list of the top experts member ID's, and use a web query, similar to the below code, which grabs the top 10 zones for the specified account.

You could add the data for each expert on a separate sheet, or tabular, or however you like.

Wayne

    With ActiveSheet.QueryTables.Add(Connection:= _
        "URL;http://www.experts-exchange.com/experts.jsp?etIndex=3&mid=3470508", _
        Destination:=Range("A1"))
        .Name = "experts.jsp?etIndex=3&mid=3470508"
        .BackgroundQuery = True
        .SaveData = True
        .WebSelectionType = xlSpecifiedTables
        .WebFormatting = xlWebFormattingNone
        .WebTables = "11"
        .Refresh BackgroundQuery:=False
    End With

                                              

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Actually, even easier would be to use each experts name, not the MID, because the names you can simply copy to excel.

So the query URL would be this....

    http://www.experts-exchange.com/experts.jsp?etIndex=3&expertName=webtubbs

Wayne

Wayne,

That looks like a good start with the latest link. How could that be automated and the results captured for the top 100 in EE?

Patrick

Same way as i mentioned in my previous comment.

Give me a few minutes and I'll put it together for you.

Patrick,

>Well, the titles are being applied site wide now as well as in the zones.  So, if ExpertN has a total of 10 MM points site wide but no zones in which s/he has 1MM, the profile page will show a Savant title.

All very flattering for those involved, but I reckon somewhat misleading to the rest of us. Perhaps a reality check, as per my question, makes the results more interesting.

Patrick

Wayne,

>Give me a few minutes and I'll put it together for you.

Excellent stuff. Can't wait to see the results.

Patrick

Just realised there's a problem with some experts who have long names that were truncated in the list I grabbed from EE. These will have to be edited manually.

Wayne,

That's excellent and exactly what I was looking for. I will play around with the analysis and see what comes out of it. For the first task I've got to complete some of the names as the web-query doesn't pick up their data when only partial names are provided - that won't take long. I'll probably post a results' workbook when I've messed around with the numbers. Meantime the points are yours. Thanks for your efforts and very prompt responses.

Patrick

Many thanks Wayne

For those that are interested here's an alternative list of the top 100 experts on the basis of the number of Savant or Genius awards and then the total points. The results show that a number of people in the top 100 of the HOF don't have a Genius award in any zone. It also shows that by award level a number of people change position significantly - Patrick Matthews perhaps being the most obvious. It's in the attached file.

Patrick

Very nice and if you sort the spreadsheet highest-to-lowest savants, then highest-to-lowest geniuses, then highest-to-lowest points you will see some more shifting.  Currently sorted by name ascending third which paints a different picture.

On the basis that a Savant Award requires 10 times more points than a Genius, then angelIII rates 1.9 and capricorn 1.3 and so on. Savant and Genius awards are a recognition of level of excellence within a zone. To just look at total points is of course relevant to the number of questions that get answered so they are important to the owners of EE, but they are not in my view necessarily the only measures of excellence in their own right that we should take notice of. Excellence within a zone is most probably more important to a potential questioner in terms of getting a good answer - assuming the 'awarded' expert even looks at the question!

Patrick