On the upcoming trust system
The trust system is something that I'm looking forward to for several reasons. It allows for community moderation that is "decentralized" to a point. It takes pressure off of the admins to police content. The possibility of being able to ensure that quality content remains the core product of this site. There are also negatives like the possibility of creating a "power user" class that is resented by the rest of the user base or the potential for misuse by those with the power. Along with some more complex issues such as disagreements between trusted users about how to interpret and curate content. These are all things that we as a community should iron out before a larger scale rollout of this system.
What I wanna talk about today is something a little bit different tho. From my experience with other sites that have achievable user class "upgrades", there will, almost no matter what the precautions put in place, be users that will game the system to rise up through the ranks as quickly as possible. From my point of view, as long as there is a system, written or not, about what needs to be done to achieve the "Trusted" status, there will be users that will do their best to get their as quickly as possible. There are a few ways that this can be looked at:
- It's fine because while they may not be contributing for the "right" reasons, they are still acting in what is seen as a positive manner in the community.
- Concern that because they are only working towards the status symbol "Trusted" that they are not going to be acting in the best interests of the website, but in the interests of keeping the status.
- Wanting to keep this kind of behavior to an absolute minimum because want everything should be as ideal as possible.
While this discussion is had on a fairly regular basis, the consensus seems to be that it is a necessary evil to endure because it would be both too much work to police/figure out who is acting for the right reasons (even standardizing what the "right reasons" are is hard).
The way this can be combated by having requirements that would be deemed too much work for most of the people who are just in it for the status and not for the site. The issue with this solution is that it can make it very difficult for those who truly care about the site to maintain the position that allows them to curate and keep the site in the condition that we aim for.
In the end I think that the deteriorating system will solve at least a portion of these problems because those who are just in it for the status symbol are often likely to quit trying after they are achieve the goal they want. This leads to periods of inactivity, and therefore, decay.
I wanted to post this to see what the greater community had to think about this.
Does anyone have a link to the post detailing the system?
Edit: Never mind, I found it. It's this doc for anyone else looking.
I just wanted to point out that the user reputation, afaik, will not be public, so in that sense there will probably not be a status symbol to achieve. That should help a bit.
I'm not sure if a user will be able to see their own reputation, though. I think it shouldn't be shown, because not seeing it is another disincentive for rep accumulation. However, it runs against the transparency of the system, and people might not feel they're being judged adequately... but I'm not really sure this is a real problem or if this type of user is desirable on the first place...
I know the system will not be public, or probably even private, but the user will definitely know if they have the trusted status, which will be what people will strive for.
yknow i think in an ideal case the user wouldn't even know their 'true' trust status in any given community. I mean, you don't get an objective measure of how trusted you are in real life, why should tildes be different? I could see an indicator that tells a user how relatively strong their trust in a community is, but definitely no numbers.
While I like the way you're thinking about this, I don't know how they would implement users not knowing what their trust status is when there are plans to have extra permissions allowed to those who have trust.
Cool, just in case you didn't know. Anyway, don't you think the fact that other people won't be able to see their rep wouldn't make the user care less about getting it just for showing it off?
Also, IIRC, the idea is that there will be different tiers of trusted user. So the basic tiers will alow for tagging comments, for example, and the higher will provide extra functionality (curator, mod features, etc.), so I guess the user will be able to get an idea of their approximate tier even if it's not shown.
What I mean is that I think the main problem with this type of user is that they want others to know they are high up, their main goal is not to be powerful, but to let people know they are, right? And that won't be so easy, I think.
I think there are both kinds. There are some that will want to get the status because they want to be able to brag/flaunt it and there will be users that just want the increased power because they enjoy having power over others.
Probably, yes. I think the bragging ones should not be a big problem due to rep being private and trust decay, as you mentioned. But I don't think there's much to be done about the second group... However, as long as they don't abuse their power, I don't think it should be a problem.
I've been thinking about the trust system a fair amount since I joined here, and my biggest concern is that it could easily lead to an echo chamber type of effect.
For example, let's say we're looking at political discussions, where that type of echo chamber tends to be the most prevalent. You may have broadly left-leaning and right-leaning people who tend to vote for content that aligns with their views, while mostly ignoring the posts that they fundamentally disagree with. Let's also assume that left-leaning people outnumber those on the right, as seems to be the case based on the small sampling of people who have responded to this post.
Without any further intervention, that could quickly lead to a liberal echo chamber (I say this as someone on the pretty-far-left myself). I'd love to see something done to address this, and to really allow quality content from a diverse set of perspectives to bubble up to the top. In my mind, that could result in the sort of genuine, respectful, and informed discourse that is sadly missing from a lot of sites, and it seems like something that could really help distinguish Tildes from the rest of the communities out there.
I wonder if something clever could be done by clustering users with similar voting patterns, and weighting the votes from each of those clusters to ensure a greater variety of content (this could also allow votes that cross clusters to be weighted more favorably, as they demonstrate broad appeal). Done in a reasonable way, it seems like this could give a voice to those outside of the site's mainstream.
I wouldn't want this sort of thing applied with too heavy a hand, there's a very fine balance that would need to be struck... And this all relies on each of those clusters voting for quality, substantive posts... But I've yet to think of a better way to avoid the problems that come with group-think.
I don't have as much concern about people who want to be a trusted user just for the status symbol or as a game, i am much more concerned about the potential for groupthink. Even if there is no malicious astroturfer or propagandist working their way up to the top (e.g. by being an early adopter and being a model citizen for now), there is a risk that a system that gives power to people to limit what others view (or promote some things more than others) will cause the same sort of polarization we see elsewhere.
I’m out of the loop—what exactly does being trusted entitle you to?
It will most likely let you tag others posts at the lowest levels and as you become more trusted you'll be able to curate content and your votes will possibly be weighted more.
That actually seems really interesting- as long as it doesn't tip the scales too much, I think weighted votes is a fantastic idea. Obviously that will need to be rigorously tested before public launch to prevent abuse.
Soooo...like slashdot?