Submission gamification and the "karma" problem
I did some reading about the trust system listed in future goals today. I think that's pretty good for moderation, but one thing that I wanted to open a discussion about is submission gamification...
I did some reading about the trust system listed in future goals today. I think that's pretty good for moderation, but one thing that I wanted to open a discussion about is submission gamification within ~, but not specifically with regards to trust/responsibilities, but one that encourages good quality submissions, or at least will isolate bad quality submissions.
With sites like reddit and others, where you have a singular generic Who's Line Is It Anyway style points system or "Karma" the acquisition of "Karma" is a driving factor for submitting content to the site. However, with this system it tends to encourage content that goes viral, hence we see the /u/GallowBoob's of the world producing low-effort content or free-booting other people's content for "karma profit".
I don't particularly think this is a very healthy system for content as a whole, but it does seem to achieve viral attention & interest and a somewhat constant stream of stuff (not necessarily good).
Someone in the Promotion thread had suggest gamifying getting the invites out there which got me thinking (although, not on board with that particular idea).
With comments tags we can categorize the type of comment we're seeing, and hopefully in the future filter the content we're seeing. If the submission incentives were based around tags instead of androgynous points of no meaning, perhaps we could get members actively seeking positive tags, similar to how someone aiming to become part of the moderation apparatus would seek this "trust" goal.
People seeking to be on top of the [Unbiased]
or [Thought provoking]
tags would (at least on the surface) be generally trying to produce unbiased and thought provoking content (bot voting & bullshit aside).
And people like /r/GallowBoob may become king of [Viral]
or [shitpost]
but we'd have the ability to filter those tags away and let people that want to meme it up meme it up on their own and not drown quality content.
Obviously this is all idealistic on paper, but with how much effort quality posting takes compared to shit-posting it'd be nice to try and give a little recognition (similar to this trust system) to those who strive for it, and not drawing the ire of unfounded censorship trolls/complaints for other areas.