# Some questions as a new comer

**URL:** <https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/some-questions-as-a-new-comer/337>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [November 6, 2019, 5:56am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/some-questions-as-a-new-comer/337 "2019-11-06T05:56:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![Beanow](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sourcecred.io/beanow/32/98_2.png) [@Beanow](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/u/Beanow)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 1:41pm UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/some-questions-as-a-new-comer/337/3 "2019-11-27T13:41:58Z")

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Hey, welcome @Jessie 😃Hadn’t come around to replying as I don’t have an answer to all of these, but I would like to help get you up to speed.

First a great getting started resource is found in the CredSperiment notebooks.

**What is SourceCred**

[SourceCred](https://sourcecred.io)’s goal is to measure the value of contributions to open-source projects. The metric needs to be so robust that it can be used to pay contributors, without incentivizing distorted behavior or hurting the project. Our [PageRank-based approach](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/a-gentle-introduction-to-cred/20) is promising, but the only way to really know is to test it. That’s why we’ve launched [the CredSperiment](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/introducing-the-credsperiment/183).

To get a sense of why we need new ways to share rewards in open-source communities, and an overview of SourceCred and the CredSperiment you can check out this talk by [@decentralion](https://github.com/decentralion):

[![](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/uploads/sourcecred1/original/2X/4/4ec17c97bf22fd0ba864b10783ff6b909d2be1eb.jpeg "SourceCred at Berlin Open Source Salon") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK0vjRq-4oI)

> [@Jessie](#):
>
> 1)How do you apply this philosophy in SC community and how does it work,what was the most workable part and challenging part?

Generally speaking, SourceCred is currently focused on making SourceCred a great success within it’s own community. This is called the [CredSperiment](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/introducing-the-credsperiment/183) (dogfooding SourceCred). From there the plan is to carefully select a few more communities to work together with. And slowly expand when that is working out too.

Because of that, we’re not at a stage where we can say: this is what you do to be successful using SourceCred. More the opposite, we need to gather feedback from communities to improve it, starting with our own.

But one of the core ideas is to make it really easy for people to contribute in the way they want, and earn Cred doing so. One of the challenges then is, how much Cred should they earn? And SourceCred provides an array of tools to make sure that matches closely with the community’s values.

When Cred goes towards the people that the community values a lot. By extension that means you’re creating incentives for people who are making important contributions towards the common goal, to keep doing so. Or if there’s a gap in the communities needs, make it really attractive for people to help out there.

> [@Jessie](#):
>
> 1. Follow the question,how do people actually get from earning the credit,i understand is through Grain the token?

No, actually Grain (right now) does not give you Cred. Contributions give you Cred. Contributions can be, forum posts, pull requests, comments, etc. By making this forum topic, you’ve already earned Cred. Have a look at [the live stats](https://sourcecred.io/cred/timeline/@sourcecred/).

These contributions are added using plugins. Currently it supports GitHub and Discourse.

Then another important aspect is, flowing Cred. “Flowing” is done essentially through the PageRank algorithm. And is based on how the contributions are connected in the graph. For example, if someone with a lot of Cred gives your forum post a ❤ this creates an edge in the graph to flow some Cred from them to you. This is one of the ways in which the community can show what contributions they value and use SourceCred as a tool to match that in their Cred score.

> [@Jessie](#):
>
> 3)Who is responsible for assign weight(and change the weight) to contributors? is the owner/initiator should set the rules ahead?

Right now we trust our benevolent executive @decentralion to have a final say in values like these and take a fair amount of liberties in changing them as they see fit. The weights are publicly recorded at [GitHub - sourcecred/cred](https://github.com/sourcecred/cred)

An example of them doing so: [CredSperiment Week 3 Distribution](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/credsperiment-week-3-distribution/282)

> [@CredSperiment Week 3 Distribution](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/credsperiment-week-3-distribution/282/1):
>
> We’ve had a good first few weeks of the CredSperiment (no crazy gaming), but a consistent point of feedback has been that the $ amounts have been too low to be really meaningful. I increased the distribution amount by 6x, from 50,000¤ ($500 redeemable) to 300,000¤ ($3000 redeemable). We’ll go further still, especially as we build out systems like [initiatives](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/write-the-initiatives-plugin/269) that will give us more confidence in the cred. Consider this a step in the right direction.

At the moment, having someone with authority is a quick way to get started. In the future we certainly plan to move this power back into community hands.

> [@Jessie](#):
>
> 4)How does SC apply the PageRank algorithm to the social contributing graph ,can you give an visualized example to brief the process if possible?

Good question, the currently used algorithm is called “timeline cred”. A lot can be learned from the code comments. Such as here [https://github.com/sourcecred/sourcecred/blob/a9e89b9f327fae58ef6a0459c862bdfdecfc9edd/src/analysis/timeline/timelinePagerank.js#L46-L100](https://github.com/sourcecred/sourcecred/blob/a9e89b9f327fae58ef6a0459c862bdfdecfc9edd/src/analysis/timeline/timelinePagerank.js#L46-L100)

And the link from the introduction I copied.

> [@A Gentle Introduction to Cred](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/a-gentle-introduction-to-cred/20):
>
> SourceCred, as the name might suggest, is all about attributing cred. Cred is a metric that describes every contribution and contributor in a project, giving a sense of how important they were. For example, forum posts (like this one) can earn cred. If this post earns 5 cred, and another post earns 10 cred, then that other post is considered twice as important as this one. (Note: SourceCred doesn’t load posts from this forum yet.) The contributions are arranged in a [graph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(discrete_mathematics)), where contributions …

Have to check with @decentralion, @wchargin, @mzargham or @s_ben about other resources that would explain this well.

> [@Jessie](#):
>
> 1. Now under what circumstances can people contribute and be credited- Contributing code and posting in discource,or ELSE?

It’s very open, you already earned Cred by posting. Here’s an interesting recent post on this openness.

> [@Purposeful Communities, Closed Hierarchies, and Decentralization](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/purposeful-communities-closed-hierarchies-and-decentralization/341):
>
> Defining “Purposeful Communities” Let’s define a “purposeful community” as a community that is organized around fulfilling some specific function. Corporations, government bodies, and nonprofits are all examples of purposeful communities. In contrast, I wouldn’t consider a town or country a purposeful community, since they aren’t trying to accomplish a specific well-defined goal. Closed Hierarchies: An Industrial Model Today, purposeful communities scale beyond Dunbar’s number by adopting a hie…

> [@Jessie](#):
>
> 6)How to plug sourcecred into some DAOs? Do you have the plan OR already have the case (into Aragon DAOs)?

DAOs are definitely interesting, but generally speaking we prefer to have humans in the loop right now. To make sure we can manually tweak values, prevent gaming, etc. So we haven’t prioritized fitting it into DAOs yet.

@decentralion and @s_ben may be able to comment more on this.

> [@Jessie](#):
>
> 7)I saw from one post (if I m not wrong)saying that one of the major difference betwwen colony and sourcecred is sourcecred can better help value the complex work contribution(i guess like the UI/UX work is complex enough lol) ,can you go more further into that?

I haven’t looked into Colony, so I can’t make a comparison. Right now we’re a little limited to concrete contributions by only supporting GitHub and Discourse. But one of the next things we’re working on is to expand that into more complex and currently undervalued contributions.

By supporting things such as:

- [Initiatives](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/write-the-initiatives-plugin/269)
- [Artifacts](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/about-the-artifacts-category/253)
- [Spotlights](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/about-the-spotlights-category/25)

And adding them to the graph, to earn Cred with it. Good post on this here:

> [@Supernodes: Moving past raw activity](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/supernodes-moving-past-raw-activity/340):
>
> So far, SourceCred has tracked contributions at the level of raw activity. Here are some examples of activities we track: GitHub pull requests GitHub comments GitHub Reactions Discourse posts Discourse likes The activity data has been a great starting point. Activity data is easy to collect automatically, so we can get a reasonable baseline for cred scores. However, using activity data alone has serious issues. Valuing any individual piece of activity can be quite hard, and the activity data…

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