12
votes
Tildes Monocle (aka sticker AKA gold)
Make it possible to donate in exchange for placing a monocle, sticker or gold star cough on a comment. It's karma and it's an instant way to donate to keep the site afloat.
Also donating could give the donater a special sticker on their username like "supporter" or something.
I'm actually someone who has given Reddit Gold quite a fair bit, so I was surprised to find my own initial reaction to be one of hesitation.
I think maybe part of it that makes me feel uncertain, is that it provides a form of voting that can only be achieved by paying money, and puts users with money in a caste different than those without.
I do like the concept of providing a way to distinguish comments that is only available in some limited currency, but I think I'd feel better if it was something more like... you got one gold star a week to give out, to distinguish a comment, but you could only 'hold' a maximum of one gold star at a time. I'm not sure exactly how it'd work but I do appreciate the desire to call out a comment above and beyond what a vote can do.
I do appreciate that this would be a way to help keep the site self-sufficient.
Not just that, but a distinguished vote. It catches the eye and brings attention.
I think there's actually two separate questions here:
The first question I would say "yes, definitely - as long as it's not a detriment to the site in some other way."
For the second, I think it's also "yes", but only in certain ways - e.g., admin stepping in to make a point. I don't know that donating money should be a way to distinguish a post.
I worry about that too. If people with cash can just buy more exemplary votes, people with cash have a way to dictate the content, and I don't think that's where we want to go.
Instead I'd have people earning them within their own communities at a flat rate for everyone (maybe one a day, can save up to three) - something that keeps them relatively scarce, but leaves everyone with a couple they can use to spotlight good stuff when they find it.
I do like the charity option, though. Just not the 'cash for promotion' aspect.
I always feel a bit ridiculous when people gift me gold on reddit. My long time wish is that you could, for instance, indicate a charity you support and have people donate to it instead. It's somewhat different with Tildes operating as a non-profit. That said, your weekly gold 'endowment' idea is a good one.
I do like the charity idea. Maybe have a list of charities that have been submitted for, and have passed, review that the person giving the "gold star" could choose from.
Tildes + another charity would be neat, 20% to Tildes to support the platform, and the rest to a Charity partner of the month or something.
I like the idea of having a list of approved charities that users can designate for all contributions on their posts.
Not bad indeed.
That's a good point; I'd be happy just being able to see (like on Reddit) that I contributed to paying for some server time. Kinda like the list of donors to an opera house (below $100, your name is unlisted but you get a tote bag, above $10k you get your name listed in every pamphlet as a friend of the opera). That sort of thing.
Or a limit of 1 gold comment per week might work.
I wonder what effect gold has had at scale at reddit.
I was actually reddit's first (and only) "Gold Engineer", so I know quite a bit about the topic. I won't be able to talk about it in any detail, but it is something that I'm pretty knowledgeable about.
This is something that I've thought about a bit, and I think is a good idea overall if we do it right. In my mind I've kind of named this idea "exemplary vote", because I think it's the sort of thing people would use on content that they think is truly exemplary—examples of "this is exactly what I want to see".
Here's a few quick thoughts:
Have you seen how Hubski does this? You attain a sort of karma as a result of votes cast on your comments, which fills up a 'hub'. Once your hub is filled, you gain a 'badge', which you can award to a comment or post in a similar way to Reddit Gold.
I would say maybe not make it count more than a normal vote at all. It would just be something for people to give recognition while also keeping the site going.
My thinking was it would become a vote multiplier - increasing the weight of all of the votes cast for the topic it's used on - but worthless on its own without other people's votes being cast. The multiplier would also be small, but if other people also hit it with exemplary votes, the multiplier increases each time. We'd have a cap of some kind to prevent it getting too high - but the general idea here is that if a topic gets a good number of exemplary votes and a good number of regular votes, it should be rocketing to the top pretty fast.
We're planning on vote weighting. It's a fascinating way to amplify voting activity and (hopefully) get more out of it than base popularity. It's a good way to keep groups warm and friendly within their own areas, but resistant to outside interference (like brigading). The trick is not being reddit (all equal, washes away culture/community preferences) and not becoming digg (power users with megavotes, creating echo chambers). Need to land right in the middle.
Now, I'm sure you've thought about and probably seen this sort of stuff at reddit, but... one thing to consider is whether there should be ways to limit its use. I imagine a large company would be quite happy to buy e.g. $400 of special credits if it is as effective as a man week of astroturfing, or multiplies their efforts significantly. Maybe you could allow users who donate an extra credit or two, but not in a linear manner – if you get an extra credit for donating a dollar, should you really get 100 for donating $100? Especially if it acts as a vote multiplier and can turn a mildly successful post into a hugely successful one.
It would also kinda devalue the token: if a comment gets one/some, and it definitely means someone involved in the community thought what the person said was really valuable, that means a lot more than a random person paying some money – to me at least.
Personally, I'd suggest considering allowing the donations to create a multiplier on existing reputation-based credits, and in a limited manner. That way, in order to use them, you have to be involved in the community already in some respect.
Idea: when a user receives 1 exemplary vote for a quality comment, that gives them the ability to bestow 1 exemplary vote on another comment they think is quality as well. This makes them of limited supply and rewards quality contrubitions. (This doesn't have to be the only way to get an exemplary vote, but they should be scarce, highly valued and reward quality.)
Would only the original vote cause a "pass on"? Otherwise you'd end up with an infinite number of "passed on" votes coming from the first one (unless someone just didn't ever use theirs).
Yes. I post something of quality that resonated with you, so you give me one of your two "exemplary votes". I now have one and you now have one. I then give my vote to some other person who already had one. They now have two, you have one and I have zero.
How you seed these exemplary votes to users in the first place and how you steward the "exemplary votes economy" are different challenges.
Good idea, but please, for the love of all that is good design, not a monocle.
Lol yeah I couldn't think of a nice term for it other than sticker.
I kind of like the idea of adding one (or more) positive tags to the comment/post tagging system that mean specific things (like the negative tags do) rather than something like a star which could mean anything, though that seems like an odd thing to require payment for.
Gold/star/monocle should have no external benefit outside of signifying a comment/post that went above expectations. Like /u/rhencke said, having benefits creates a stratification of the userbase that isn't great.
And there's the name - stars.