452 sats \ 7 replies \ @Voldemort 28 Mar \ on: Some thoughts on SN rewards meta
I am going to spew some thoughts. Hopefully some of them will be meaningful.
What is the goal of zapping, in the first place?
My thoughts that might be way off base, are that zapping was aimed at incentivizing meaningful contributions to the site (rather than trolling), incentivizing people to post here over some other site, and enabling people to reward others for posting things that they like.
Those are rather surface level. In a deeper sense, zapping ought to make the question "what do users like and want" irrelevant. Zapping serves as a quasi-price mechanism that aggregates this information. Where zaps go is what the users want. But this is where it could get muddied, especially once the site gets bigger - rewarding people who give zaps acts as a subsidy that is compounded by giving zaps to people who zap popular posts early. Subsidies blur market signals.
Here is an example: Suppose someone documented their entire process of developing a new recipe in weekly installments. Most people might not like it. I would. But why would my zaps that go towards a niche topic that I value earn me less than giving zaps to one of the many bitcoin posts that get more zaps because they are popular? In theory, the only reward I should get is the continuation of the material that I like. So if it sounds like I am whining about not getting more rewards, I am actually arguing for zero rewards from zapping.
I have more thoughts on this, but will respond with them in a comment below.
Rather than discuss what it means for a community to flourish, I will consider signals that a community is flourishing.
My first thought went to animals - people talk about animals released to the wild in this way. Signals of flourishing might be gaining weight, being accepted into a group, mating.
For communities of people, signals might be demand to be in the group, membership fees increasing (could be actual fees or something like home prices), people not leaving.
It is fascinating that so many people on SN are vehemently opposed to "shitcoins" because if SN had its own currency you could use the price of the currency as a proxy for flourishing. You'd also not get arbitrary increases in prices for things like territories. Tokenomics matter. But I digress.
Typically, membership fees are a function of supply and demand. Prices increasing might indicate there are more new members than leaving members. So Maybe SN could measure something like how many accounts haven't been active in a certain number of days/weeks/months vs. new members.
I don't think new members need to be incentivized, however. If they are signing up they likely already realize the value.
I outlined what I would do for daily rewards in a different post. Basically it is a function of how many sats their post received compared to others in the same topic at similar times. Potentially also a function of the max sats a single person gave it. In my view, the goal of daily rewards should incentivize me to give people more rewards if they have content I like. Right now it is to give rewards to things other people like. Unfortunately I don't like what most people on this site like so that means
- Even if someone agrees with me they are not incentivized to give me sats if they think others will disagree. In turn, this disincentivizes me from making more contributions.
- If I want to max my rewards I am forced to give sats to things I don't like.
I want to make sure it is clear I am not complaining. I am a fan of the site. I am merely speaking in hypotheticals. IE, I still create posts even if they don't get zapped much.
Many interesting thoughts in this post, but lunch is not infinitely long.
Even if someone agrees with me they are not incentivized to give me sats if they think others will disagree. In turn, this disincentivizes me from making more contributions.
This is the bizarre beauty and horror of Keynesian beauty contests, as I linked in the writeup: the fallout from being rewarded by what other people are rewarded for. Here's a thought experiment:
Imagine that SN were visited by a user who posted My Little Pony fanfic. The current SN readership suggests these posts would not be richly rewarded, although who can say. And this fictional user would reasonably say: well, they don't appreciate my genius here, fuck this noise.
Is that a bad outcome? Under what circumstances would it be a bad outcome?
Being slightly less ridiculous, I have posted things that were a ton of work that were not well-rewarded. I admit to feeling kind of annoyed, like my internal model that I am a valued member of this place had been violated. So then what?
- Do I tune my interactions, in order to win better rewards?
- Do I persist, even though people don't value those kinds of things, in the hopes that I will discover an audience for them and they will eventually come to be valued?
- Do I say: well, this isn't that place for that.
You can make a case for any. Which one you do depends on what you're after, I suppose -- the old "find the right objective function" thing @Undisciplined just mentioned.
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Is that a bad outcome? Under what circumstances would it be a bad outcome?
It is a suboptimal outcome if the incentive model disincentivizes a subset of users who deeply yearn for my little pony content to not zap the author.
If there are no users who have such yearnings, it is not suboptimal.
Anyone interested in a betting pool for when we see a my little pony territory?
Being slightly less ridiculous,
ridiculous things lead to interesting thoughts. In all seriousness, I wonder what it means for a community to be able to sustain a sub-community of bronies. Most people view that behavior as completely untenable, so its likely not possible in smaller communities. Or are bronies so unique that they can't be defined as a sub-community, but rather a blight on existing communities that are simply tolerated so as to not break the law?
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Anyone interested in a betting pool for when we see a my little pony territory?
I'm guessing it won't be till the oft-hypothesized re-jiggering of how much territories cost, unless some rich Brony truly has a passion project. Which I am here for, if any such person is lurking.
In all seriousness, I wonder what it means for a community to be able to sustain a sub-community of bronies.
Good question -- there must be some sufficient size where it can be viable on a general-interest site, or a site with another interest that is not Bronies. I've been pleasantly surprised by the activity my territory ~mostly_harmless gets, which is not as fringe as MLP, but which is also not even about any particular topic, more a way of being.
And yet people show up! So maybe whatever the carrying-size required for Bronies is, we're at it?
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I have posted things that were a ton of work that were not well-rewarded.
Do you have an example, because that probably means I missed it?
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Oh you sweetheart. I guess it pays to whine :)
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Thinking principally of this one in the Capital Formation series.
To be clear, you should be playing me the world's smallest violin, because I earned almost 4k sats on that. But it's also true that I worked on it every day for a week, let's say ... 3 hours of work to compile, edit, etc. [1]
I did / do those things (and everything here) mostly for myself, but I can't lie and say it didn't take the wind out of my sails a little bit.
[1] If it doesn't seem like it contains 3 hours of work, that's testament to me being ... obsessive about some stuff.
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Looks like I had already given it my standard great post zap and it's up to 13k now.
I think there's a small cadre of people who put posts over 10k and it's somewhat random if they'll see your post quickly.
Darth mentioned to me that he circles back through and gives big zaps to posts that generated a lot of good comments.
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