kudo: (koo-doh) a statement of praise or approval; accolade; compliment.
Kudos are a public way for you to show your appreciation or respect for an open source contributor.
You can give Kudos to other Ohloh members, or to project contributors listed on the Ohloh website. You can send Kudos to as many people as you want, and you can take your Kudos back if you change your mind.
KudoRank
Based on all of the Kudos in the system, Ohloh periodically calculates a KudoRank number from 1 to 10 for every Ohloh member and open source contributor.
KudoRank numbers are assigned on a relative basis. Contributors who have received the most Kudos will receive the highest KudoRank of 10. Contributors who have not received any Kudos at all will receive the lowest KudoRank of 1.
Everyone else will receive a KudoRank between these two extremes according to the number and quality of their Kudos. A roughly equal number of people will be assigned to each of the KudoRanks from 2 to 7. KudoRank 8 is relatively uncommon, with about 6% of the population receiving this rank. KudoRank 9 is rare, and is given to only 2% of the population. KudoRank 10 is the most rare — only the top 64 people will receive this rank.
You can view the complete list of current KudoRanks here.
How KudoRank is Calculated
The following factors will influence your KudoRank:
1. The more Kudos you receive, the higher your KudoRank becomes.
All other things being equal, the person who receives the most Kudos will have the best KudoRank.
2. Your influence increases as your KudoRank improves.
As your KudoRank improves, your opinion is given more weight in subsequent KudoRank calculations. The Kudos you give out will become increasingly important to the KudoRank of your recipients.
In this way, a high KudoRank comes not just from receiving a lot of Kudos, but also from receiving Kudos from highly ranked people.
3. Giving away more Kudos dilutes your opinion.
You can give Kudos to as many people as you like. However, you have only a fixed amount of influence to share among all of the people to whom you have given Kudos. Each time you give Kudos to an additional person, you dilute the amount of KudoRank influence you have on all of your recipients.
If you give Kudos to only a single person, all of your KudoRank influence will be used to strongly improve the KudoRank of that person. If you give Kudos to everyone, your KudoRank influence on those people will be nearly zero.
All Kudos that you give away are equal. You can’t give one person “big Kudos” and another person “small Kudos”.
4. Stacks improve KudoRank.
When you add a project to your stack, this adds a small amount to the KudoRanks of the contributors to that project.
Not all contributors to the project will receive the same KudoRank boost from your stack. The KudoRank points are divided among the contributors in proportion to the number of commits they have made to the project source code. The busiest contributors will receive most of the points.
Stacks have much less influence on KudoRank than Kudos given directly.
