

shlomif_tech

[ shlomif ]

Note: I discovered that the Planet Iron Man/Woman people are already planning some changes to the Planet, and will deal with my complaints here as part of this. So I'm not going to quit blogging on the Planet eventually, at least not yet. I'm still posting it as a general insight for people who wish to set up successful online communities. I decided to quit Planet Perl Iron Man and I'd like to tell you why and how I think it should be improved. The reason I quit is because of the fact that if one doesn't blog frequently enough, their status gets demoted (possibly back to Paper Man always). Now, while if I blog frequently enough I will increase my status which is motivating, demoting or even resetting the karma is demotivating. This is the Carrot and stick method. Now, I don't want to feel obliged to blog in order to prevent my karma from being gone. I used to blog about Perl and other topics because it was fun, not because I felt I had to. As a result, the "stick" in this place is out-of-place. I request that assuming the current system remains, my status be either kept as "unknown" or even that my blog be currently taken out of the Iron Man/Iron Woman aggregator. Everyone should feel free to aggregate my Perl feed ( or any of my other feeds as you see fit), without asking me, but I don't wish to play the carrot and stick status game. So how to improve it? Simple - avoid the stick. Make the Planet Iron Man be a game of infinite karma, similar to Stack Overflow or Perl Monks. On Stack Overflow for example, your karma never decreases. If 2 people upvoted your comment or post and 6 people downvoted it (for a total score of -4), you'll still get 2 points. Furthermore, your karma can grow indefinitely, and you also get other motivations like badges etc. Perl Monks has a similar system with its Experience Points. (I should note that I'm not fanatically trying to improve my karma on either site, and my current status on both is very low, because I'm not into being competitive in them, though I found both useful at times when I was seeking help.) Perhaps we can make a similar program for a competitive planet, where people get points for every posts, every link from someone else's post on the planet, every upvote on Reddit, Stumble Upon and other social bookmarking sites, get extra points for making, say, 3 posts in 7 days, earn badges etc. without ever needing to fear their karma being reduced. I should note that I've noticed other social sites being undermined (at least temporarily) by such "sticks". For example Advogato used to allow people to rate other people's blogs' quality from 0 to 10. Naturally, some people gave bad marks for some blogs which was demotivating. Luckily, it was removed during an update. On use.perl.org you could specify people you dislike as "foes" in your user page, which ended up showing in them as "freaks" (= haters). Again, that's demotivating. There's probably still a lot to be learnt about designing successful web communities, but I think that if you want people to do things because they enjoy it (and/or you don't intend to pay them), you should not demotivate them by threatening the use of "sticks".