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Consumating’s Ill-Fated Point System: Nice Blog Essay

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mouser:
This is an essay relevant to DC and other similar internet communities.  It speaks to the danger of setting up a points-based reward and punishment system, in terms of using such a thing to improve community content.

One of the things that I tell people who want to build an audience for their website is that they have to figure out a way to continually reward the people they recruit. The short story is, it is not very important what your reward is - it could be points, stickers or a nice warm feeling in your belly - as long as it feels rewarding to the members to do something that you want them to do.

I will below provide the story of Consumating’s ill-fated point system as a sort of counter-example to how you should design your own. We built a point system into Consumating because we thought giving direct feedback to people about their conduct on the site would encourage them to be nice to one another - you get a thumbs up when you are nice (treat!), and a thumbs down when you are a douche (electric shock!). It worked dramatically well in that aspect, and gave our members everything they needed to police themselves, punish trolls, and create a vibrant and unique culture. In virtually all other aspects, however, it caused serious problems.
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The primary problem with Consumating points was that they did not actually give incentive to the members to do anything valuable.
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http://benbrown.com/says/2007/10/29/i-love-my-chicken-wire-mommy/





from http://waxy.org

Darwin:
Now that was a seriously interesting read. Their experiment turned out a bit Lord of the Flies, didn't it?

Thanks for pointing it out to us, mouser  :Thmbsup: (note the thumbsup?!).

J-Mac:
Now that was a seriously interesting read. Their experiment turned out a bit Lord of the Flies, didn't it?

Thanks for pointing it out to us, mouser  :Thmbsup: (note the thumbsup?!).
-Darwin (November 04, 2007, 03:23 PM)
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You get two thumbs down for "sucking up" Mike...   :P

Jim

cranioscopical:

You get two thumbs down for "sucking up" Mike...   :P
-J-Mac (November 04, 2007, 11:46 PM)
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Darwin:
You get two thumbs down for "sucking up" Mike...   

Jim
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I won't dignify that with a response  ;D

EDIT: Dang, I edited out my smiley (was going for clever wordplay, gave up and posted the above, but managed to edit out the smiley  :o Corrected now, but damage done  :(

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