Tutor vs. Learner distinction on Leaderboard is unclear
Michael G
The top two tiles at the Leaderboard are Most SP (Learners) and Most SP (Tutors). While I can understand why SHW might wish to distinguish the people that have a lot of SP primarily from attending sessions from those with a lot of SP primarily from hosting sessions, I think the distinction is unclear and confusing.
I've added a view of the tiles when I select All Time. If I look at Long T, the user with 31,024 SP in the Learners category, their profile (https://schoolhouse.world/u/379578) identifies them as a Tutor, says they have hosted 177 sessions, says they have attended 0 sessions (it's conceivable age restrictions mess up this count for me, though I'd consider that a bug if so), and have 5145 Super Helpfuls. Why is this user in the Learners category? And why don't their 5145 Super Helpfuls put them at the top of the Most "Super Helpful" Ratings tile?
The next user in the Learners category, Jessica W, appears to have deleted their account (https://schoolhouse.world/u/jessicaw028 returns an error page), but given they are shown as 8th all time in Questions Answered, it sure seems like they are (or were) a Tutor.
The next user in the Learners category, Naya S (https://schoolhouse.world/u/nayaa), has been a Tutor since 2022, has hosted 378 sessions, and attended 281. At least there's a large number of attended sessions here, but it's still unclear why putting her under Learners makes more sense than Tutors when she has hosted more sessions than she has attended.
Certainly there are lots of Schoolhouse users that are exclusively Learners, and others that are exclusively Tutors, but there are lots of users that are both. E.g. a student taking Pre-Calc that also tutors Algebra 1. I don't think the Learners vs. Tutors distinction makes a whole lot of sense when the users near the top of the Most SP (Learners) category are clearly Tutors. If there's no reasonable way to distinguish the categories, I'd expect them to be grouped together.
I'm assuming Long T being considered a Learner is why his 5145 Super Helpfuls don't show up in that Most "Super Helpful" Ratings tile, but that's a guess, and there's no information in the UI that explains to a user how these judgments are made. I don't see why the Tutor vs. Learner distinction should impact the Most "Super Helpful" Ratings tile.
I think a lot of these tiles would benefit from a helptip icon with a tooltip on hover that explains how the calculations are done. As I've also noted at https://schoolhouse.world/feedback/p/certification-count-on-leaderboard-is-unclear, it's confusing in a number of areas how the calculations are done and then what filtering exists to put users in Learners vs. Tutors categories and also exclude some users from certain tiles (like Long T from Most "Super Helpful" Ratings).
I checked my settings (https://schoolhouse.world/settings) to see if there's some self-classification we make of whether we are a Learner or a Tutor but didn't find anything.
I would have submitted this as Feedback and not a Bug, but the Category options for feedback requests has changed since I last submitted something, so I'll go with Bug, as I do consider the functionality to be at least somewhat broken here.
Log In
Maia S
Hi Michael G!
Okay, to answer the first part of your question :) Schoolhouse separates the two categories because tutors earn a ton more SP than learners (there aren't many opportunities to gain SP as a learner, save for providing feedback!), which lets learners have a chance at being on a leaderboard too! As soon as someone becomes a tutor, they switch leaderboard (meaning that if someone is both, they show up on the tutor side!).
There's one exception to these, and this is suspensions! The three tutors you've mentioned have either just finished a suspension (in Long's case) and are waiting to regain tutoring privileges (making them a learner in the meantime) or are in a suspension! Usually suspensions just wipe them off the leaderboard, but in the time they're back on Schoolhouse but not a tutor yet (or if only their tutoring privileges were revoked in the first place), they come on as a learner!
The same applies to Super Helpful ratings! If, say, Long is back on Schoolhouse but doesn't have tutoring privileges, he's not considered a tutor! However, we can agree that he still exists, so we put him in the other category, Learner!
We don't currently have any helptip icon because we don't want to publicize suspensions :) that always leads to speculation about why they're gone or when they'll be back or who's fault it was or even requests to the team to bring them back :((
Michael G
Maia S Thanks for the reply. I guess I'd prefer an implementation where tutors in the "suspended and off the platform" or "suspended from being a tutor, but back on the platform" were just excluded from the leaderboard until full reinstatement, as then the only people who might wonder what's going on are those suspended rather than everyone else who wonders "how did a learner amass over 30K SP and get over 5K Super Helpfuls?" It also creates a weird path to a user ending up on top of the Learners leaderboard. As you noted, it's much harder to accrue lots of SP as a learner, so giving them their own special tile to track their points makes sense, but if the person at the top of that leaderboard is a tutor on suspension, then that partially defeats the purpose of having a learner-centric Most SP tile. I would think "users on suspension are off the leaderboard" is a lot simpler to understand than "users on suspension are recategorized as learners even if they are/were tutors, meaning they may show up on the Most SP (Learners) tile but are blocked from showing up on the Most "Super Helpful" Ratings tile, until/unless they get reinstated." That may not be easier to implement, but I think it's easier to understand. If I was a learner high up on the Most SP (Learners) tile, I would not appreciate a suspended tutor taking over my position.
Now that I know how the determination is made, I think the current implementation ends up publicizing suspensions, as there's no other way users that have hosted that many sessions and have that many SP could be in the Learners tile, so they must have been suspended. Whereas if they just weren't on the leaderboard at all, I'd just assume they left (if I even knew they existed).
Regarding the helptip comment, I agree that I wouldn't add a tooltip that specifically calls attention to how suspended users are treated on the platform (if there was a help article on the topic, it could be stated there, but I wouldn't put a tooltip discussing suspended users right on the Leaderboard page itself). I think tooltips would still be valuable in the tiles where the calculation is unclear (like it is with the Certifications tile, for example).