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What I already told Esten on twitter: He outlines some aspects of a method to keep the 'good contributors' engaged, even if the community grows, by highlightin

by werg 14y ago

What I already told Esten on twitter: He outlines some aspects of a method to keep the 'good contributors' engaged, even if the community grows, by highlighting their contributions. What interests me is how to scale these good comments without excessive moderation. And also, even on sites that have moderation available over time there's again and again this boom-bust cycle, where comments start out being really insightful when the community is small, which attracts more people which brings down the quality of comments, making people less interested in high quality commentary (and also the general audience less interested in the comments at all). I think limiting the number of contributors is interesting, but I wouldn't limit the ability to reach a big audience per se. Precisely the possibility to reach an audience entices high-quality comments. Possibly part of the real challenge is actually to keep the non-commenting audience interested in the comments. So maybe it's about limiting the number of contributor-slots available in any given situation, and then of course think of a non karma-whoric way of assigning those slots... hmm :) Maybe even make it random, so anybody can get one of those slots, so create a sense of urgency not to blow that chance. Might work in some situations.

kijin 14y ago
> contributor-slots That sounds similar to an idea that I've had for several years now, but which I haven't had a chance to implement anywhere. What if you had to spend karma in order to submit stuff, and recoup it with other users' upvotes? What if voting actually transferred a small amount of karma from the voter to the submitter? What if every other method of feedback similarly behaved like an economic transaction? At first, this might seem to discourage participation because people won't want to spend their all-so-precious karma. But we don't want karma whores to comment all that much anyway. Given that people get so obsessed with those meaningless numbers anyway, could we harness that obsession for some good? If people had to spend karma in order to submit stuff, every submission would be an investment. If they want to be able to keep investing, they would need to turn a decent ROI. If voting cost karma, that would deter circlejerks. Forcing people to think of karma as a virtual currency might just be enough to make them think seriously about the quality of their comments. There would also be a mechanism to create more karma, so that the karma economy expands at a controlled rate and not everything is a zero-sum game. Daily allotments and various bonuses might work there. You might also allow karma to be destroyed, e.g. when you vote something down, the submitter loses karma but so do you. Whatever algorithm you use, the point is to produce an artificial scarcity of karma that can only be overcome with a concerted effort by the majority of users to produce quality content.
DanBC 14y ago
Moderation is just a target for trolls. Meta-moderation-threads can generate huge angry threads of hate. Meta is death, but meta-moderation is evil slow death. Highlighting comments from established contributors is a problem if some of them are dicks, or some of them occasionally make awful comments. You also have a problem with "vested contributors" - 'I broke the rules, but I've been here so long and do so much good that it's okay because you know that really I'm alright' whereas the newbie just gets banned.

by werg 14y ago

kijin 14y ago

> contributor-slots That sounds similar to an idea that I've had for several years now, but which I haven't had a chance to implement anywhere. What if you had to spend karma in order to submit stuff, and recoup it with other users' upvotes? What if voting actually transferred a small amount of karma from the voter to the submitter? What if every other method of feedback similarly behaved like an economic transaction? At first, this might seem to discourage participation because people won't want to spend their all-so-precious karma. But we don't want karma whores to comment all that much anyway. Given that people get so obsessed with those meaningless numbers anyway, could we harness that obsession for some good? If people had to spend karma in order to submit stuff, every submission would be an investment. If they want to be able to keep investing, they would need to turn a decent ROI. If voting cost karma, that would deter circlejerks. Forcing people to think of karma as a virtual currency might just be enough to make them think seriously about the quality of their comments. There would also be a mechanism to create more karma, so that the karma economy expands at a controlled rate and not everything is a zero-sum game. Daily allotments and various bonuses might work there. You might also allow karma to be destroyed, e.g. when you vote something down, the submitter loses karma but so do you. Whatever algorithm you use, the point is to produce an artificial scarcity of karma that can only be overcome with a concerted effort by the majority of users to produce quality content.

DanBC 14y ago

Moderation is just a target for trolls. Meta-moderation-threads can generate huge angry threads of hate. Meta is death, but meta-moderation is evil slow death. Highlighting comments from established contributors is a problem if some of them are dicks, or some of them occasionally make awful comments. You also have a problem with "vested contributors" - 'I broke the rules, but I've been here so long and do so much good that it's okay because you know that really I'm alright' whereas the newbie just gets banned.